Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best...And Learn from the Worst: Sutton, Robert I.: 9780446556088: Amazon.com: Books

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Robert I. Sutton

Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best...And Learn from the Worst Hardcover – Bargain Price, September 7, 2010

by Robert I. Sutton (Author)

4.4 444 ratings

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Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst

Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst
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If you are a boss who wants to do great work, what can you do about it? Good Boss, Bad Boss is devoted to answering that question. Stanford Professor Robert Sutton weaves together the best psychological and management research with compelling stories and cases to reveal the mindset and moves of the best (and worst) bosses. This book was inspired by the deluge of emails, research, phone calls, and conversations that Dr. Sutton experienced after publishing his blockbuster bestseller The No Asshole Rule. He realized that most of these stories and studies swirled around a central figure in every workplace: THE BOSS. These heart-breaking, inspiring, and sometimes funny stories taught Sutton that most bosses - and their followers - wanted a lot more than just a jerk-free workplace. They aspired to become (or work for) an all-around great boss, somebody with the skill and grit to inspire superior work, commitment, and dignity among their charges. As Dr. Su

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Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Business Plus
Publication date

September 7, 2010
Dimensions

5.75 x 1.25 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0446556084
ISBN-13

978-0446556088
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Want to be a better boss? Unaware that you're a terrible one? Sutton (The No Asshole Rule) is here to help. The cost of callous and cruel superiors is considerable: employees with an abusive boss are more likely to work slowly, make deliberate errors, and even suffer heart attacks. With examples from such diverse workplaces as Pixar and Anchor Steam brewery, Sutton reveals how the best bosses take diverse and intertwined steps to create effective and humane workplaces, and offers tips on taking control, getting and giving credit appropriately, taking responsibility, staying in tune with employees, and squelching your potential inner jerk. Using real-life examples and insight gleaned from 30 years of experience as a manager, Sutton teaches his readers to become the boss employees enthusiastically want to work for. This entertaining, satisfying guide is a wakeup call for bosses everywhere--and a survival guide for those who work for them. (Sept.) (c)
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Review

I loved this book - immediately my favorite business book. There are so many great principles and ideas to live up to, backed up by real data - it should be every boss' responsibility to read and understand it. (John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla Corporation, producer of the Firefox web browser )

Good Boss, Bad Boss does a wonderful job of challenging conventional wisdom while outlining a clear and compelling rationale for thinking differently. From Sutton's useful steps for getting "in tune" with what it feels like to work for you, to evidence that eliminating the negative is more powerful than accentuating the positive, to the importance of demonstrating confidence with the admission that you're not always right. Good Boss, Bad Boss teaches the art and the science of practical leadership for the 21^st century. I would consider it a must-read for anyone looking to improve their impact and accelerate their desired outcomes. (Brad Smith, CEO of Intuit )

This book is the personal coach that every boss deserves: warm, smart, and freakishly good at translating scientific research into practical tips that will help keep you at the top of your game. (Chip & Dan Heath, authors of Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard )

We are damned lucky to have Bob Sutton. While his every word is backed up by significant research, he writes in simple sentences that make enormous sense. Typical in this book, Sutton's little chart in Chapter 3, 'Smart Versus Wise Bosses,' is worth, all by itself, 100 times the price of admission. Good Boss, Bad Boss is as good as it gets. (Tom Peters, author of The Little Big Things and co-author of In Search of Excellence )

It has been damn near impossible to find consistently good and objective insight and analysis from business thought leaders. But Robert I. Sutton, a professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford and the Stanford Institute of Design (where we have overlapped), is an exception. His new book, out now, is his best to date. Good Boss, Bad Boss is food for thought for managers and leaders in organizations large and small. It is packed with insight, lists of "how to" suggestions, and questions for bosses to ask themselves. (Reuters )

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Business Plus; First Edition (September 7, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0446556084
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0446556088
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 1.25 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #595,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #196 in Business Image & Etiquette
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Customer Reviews:
4.4 444 ratings

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Robert I. Sutton

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Robert Sutton is a Stanford Professor, organizational researcher, and best-selling author. His seven management books include bestsellers The No A**hole Rule, Good Boss, Bad Boss, and (with Huggy Rao) Scaling Up Excellence. His latest book is The A**hole Survival Guide:How to Deal With People Who Treat You Like Dirt.

Sutton was named as one of 10 B-School All-Stars by BusinessWeek, described as professors who are influencing contemporary business thinking far beyond academia. Sutton is an IDEO Fellow and co-founder of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Center for Work and and Stanford Design Institute (the d.school). His latest adventure at Stanford is the Designing Organizational Change project, which you can learn about at http://stvp.stanford.edu/doc. He has written over 150 academic and popular articles and chapters, and over 1000 blog posts. He often leads workshops and gives speeches about his books and is academic director of several Stanford executive programs including Customer-focused Innovation. Sutton tweets @work_matters. Visit www.bobsutton.net to learn more.

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

444 global ratings

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Love this book, excellent follow up to the last book!

Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2010

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As an avid fan of Robert Sutton's previous work (the no ***hole rule), I picked this one up just in time to take it on vacation with me overseas. Once I cracked it open, I simply couldn't put it back down and plowed through it in a couple days.

As with the last book, this one is a fun read both in terms of literary style as well as the content itself. It's not just rehashing common sense with anecdotes from the author's experiences or those of people he interviewed, but a genuine attempt to weave these things together into a cohesive narrative that is built on actual research. The author, as with his previous work, successfully marries together both entertaining story telling and new knowledge in this book, which is something you rarely find in books of this sort.

The flow of the book is fairly excellent, with many of the topics staying on track from start to finish and meshing well from one chapter to the next. You don't find yourself having to jump around from place to place to pick up or re-read previous points, because everything proceeds in a fairly nice linear fashion from start to finish, as it should. I abhor books where the author references past chapters or, far worse, chapters you haven't gotten to yet, but Sutton doesn't seem to do much of that at all.

In terms of actual, applicable learning, I think this book is actually one of the few in this genre that made me think and helped me reshape the way I look at not only my boss, but how to define a good or bad boss. Lots of times we inherently want to believe those kinds of distinctions are black and white, but Sutton does a good job of delving into why it's more of a gray area, especially when you take a broader view. In reality, bosses are rarely good all around or bad all around, but instead some kind of a mix.

In the end, Sutton does an outstanding job of not just highlighting what makes a bad boss, but also explaining why those things make someone a bad boss. I think the latter is far more important and provides a much better learning opportunity for people leaders and employees alike. Sutton also helps his readers to understand not just how good and bad bosses think, but also to some extent helps us understand why employees think the way they do about their leaders.

Overall this was a great read and I do feel like it challenged some of my previous beliefs and did impart some genuinely new knowledge. It sounds funny say that, but in this day and age you can't always make that claim after reading a book, especially in this field.

If you liked Sutton's last book, you definitely need to pick this one up. It's a natural follow up and you'll probably enjoy it even more than the first.

3 people found this helpful

Thordur Gudmundsson

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2023

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As a group leader this has been a book to learn from. I will put it in my library to read it again.

2 people found this helpful

Jonathan Littman

Authentic Stories and Novel Insights

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2010

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Bob Sutton launched an international revolution with his brutally honest bestseller, the No A**hole Rule, and in his latest book he's turned his deep experience and knowledge about what makes a lousy boss into becoming a good one.

What's refreshing in these authentic and often humorous pages is that the solutions are not formulas. Being a good boss requires a myriad of wise "little ways" to eke out improvements, and a very big one, being a decent person. We learn the importance of Lasorda's Law, how George Washington used an aura of confidence "to learn on the job," and how a NASCAR pit crew manager innovated to turn saved seconds into victories.

Sutton tells it like it is, and it's worth the price of admission just to find out the name of the Hollywood Producer Jerk who ejected his assistant onto the side of a freeway for the crime of looking at him in the rear view mirror, and to learn the critical lessons of a chapter entitled "Squelch Your Inner Bosshole."

Sutton knows more about the thin line between a good or bad boss, and understands it's a daily human skirmish, less about meeting goals and quarterly numbers and more about understanding our need to produce, create, share and be appreciated. But you won't find happy talk here. Some of my favorite stories are inside gems about how cleverly orchestrated conflict delivers results, how Brad Bird of Pixar sought out "malcontents" to produce the hit movie "The Incredibles," or how the Senior Editor of The Onion maintains creativity every week in a 3-day brainstorm.

Leave your novel at home and put this valuable book in a visible spot at your cube or on your desk. It's bound to be the subject of conversation. Who knows, your boss may even thank you.

5 people found this helpful

Robert B. Mintz, Ph.D.

Quintessential Sutton

Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2010

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When was the last time you read an engaging, spot-on, crisp, in-your-face, business book . . . whose resonance not only made you laugh but also made you wonder what you were thinking by getting into organizational life in the first place? Right, probably Bob's LAST book!

As a recovering corporate type who now consults on organizational and leaderhship issues I encounter the grim realities that Bob captures powerfully on a daily basis. Bob nails the rise in incredibly bad behavior on the part of (usually) well-intended but flat-out over-worked senior leaders. We are pounding ourselves and our people so hard for short term results of any kind that we have forgotten how to get the best out of them. We have never needed peak levels of creativity, engagement, and risk-taking by our very best people. But what do we do? We unwittingly create toxic cultures of fear and risk aversion and when it doesn't work out or our best people bail we look everywhere but into the mirror to find culpability.

Most of my clients are getting this as a gift (though they claim they don't have time to read). This smart, wry, and witty indictment is MOST required for those who profess they don't have time to read anything. And it's not just another guy talking about the problems. It's all about solutions. If you pick one book to read as you think about your business and talent challenges in 2011, THIS is one you will be glad to own.

18 people found this helpful

Decent and entertaining management book

Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2018

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Most of the book is a series of examples on the importance of being a humane, self-aware, and capable boss.

I would say that it likely preaches somewhat to the choir, in that arrogant and self-aware bosses are unlikely to be swayed by the book (or even read it), while good bosses (or those trying to be good bosses) are likely to already hold to these principles. That said, it is a useful reality check that even the best people, in bad circumstances, can fall prey to being bad bosses, and in that, the book does decently well. But it could do that in many fewer words.

7 people found this helpful

Top reviews from other countries

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Andreas M

Der Titel sagt alles

Reviewed in Germany on March 23, 2021

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Ziemlich genial
Kompetent, verständlich und klar

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Cliente de Amazon

recomendable para entender a los jefes y para ser un buen jefe

Reviewed in Mexico on November 8, 2019

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muy buena lectura para ser un buen jefe y evitar a los malos jefes, no se deje llevar por términos cotidianos que utiliza, la sustancia de las lecturas es lo que vale.

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Mama

Must have

Reviewed in Canada on November 5, 2019

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Loved it , quick read and so much great success plans

R. Sampathkumar

Four Stars

Reviewed in India on September 26, 2017

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Solid practical advice, with lots of food for thought and reflection, by Bob Sutton.

Humphrey Schillevoort

Leerzaam en makkelijk te lezen.

Reviewed in the Netherlands on December 29, 2016

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Good boss, bad boss is een makkelijk te lezen en leerzaam boek. Het is goed gedocumenteerd waarbij de schrijver blijk geeft van een grote ervaring en academische belezenheid. Ik heb het boek aangeschaft na het volgen van de MOOC daarover en die combinatie is aan te raden. Het boek is aan te bevelen aan studenten managementwetenschappen, maar ook aan managers en management consultants.

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