Focus on Leadership: Book Review

What To Do When You Become the Boss by Bob Selden

The book review presented below is provided by Peter Nicholls. Mr. Nicholls is the director of Work Leisure International. His business is Lifestyle Management and his professional background is in the area of recreation and leisure development and planning. He has a special interest in business treating employees as "whole people" and not just 9-5 work robots. Hence, his interest in this book.

What To Do When You Become the Boss is published by Outskirts Press (2007), ISBN# 978-1432714284.

Review

What a refreshing joy it was to read Bob Selden's wonderfully practical book which at last takes management out of the 19th century Fayol/Taylor approach and shows us how management really works in the 21st century. What's the big difference? Recognizing people management today is all about managing "24/7 human beings," not "9-5 work robots."

For too long managers have tried to push square pegs into round holes – fitting emotional beings into inanimate systems. When they don’t fit, find one that does. 19th century workers had no choice but to accept whatever they were told. Today's workers make their own decisions about life and work.

Selden's book drips with experience, with liberal use of humane words and phrases like discuss, agree, share, praise, involve, enjoyment, appreciation, frequent and immediate feedback, recognition, thanks and - dare I mention it - feelings. He doesn’t flinch, however, from the tough bits and gives sage-like advice on how to sack an unsatisfactory worker.

Selden also realizes that a good management book is a tool for finding answers when required. Selden respects our differences. In his categorization of managers (readers), I am largely an activist, and so I liked being directed to the sections I should read first.

Selden echoes Ken Blanchard's famous saying "when did you last catch an employee doing something right?" with a refreshing emphasis on building on peoples' strengths. But he also emphasizes the need for praise to be genuine.

What to do When you Become the Boss will be welcomed by the emerging scene of female managers who instinctively apply emotional intelligence principles (and by the x and y generation young leaders). Older managers who are being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century of people management will find Selden's book to be the ideal secret reading under the bedcovers.

About the Focus on Leadership Book Review: the Leader Network's book review feature introduces leaders to worthwhile leadership reading selections.