Advice For Managers Available In Book Form

It’s not easy being a manager.

You have to figure out how to get your employees motivated, how to keep your boss happy and how to get all the work done.

Many companies do not have the money for training, so it often is up to the individual manager - and that’s especially tough if you are new on the job.

Each year, kazillions of business books are published to lead you on your way.

Many are pretty bad - full of useless flow charts or crammed with trite advice.

But there are some good books out there, and human resource managers, executives, professors and others have weighed in with their favorites.

For the new manager, grab a copy of “The Manager’s Survival Guide: How to Avoid the 750 Most Common Mistakes in Dealing with People” by Allan Krieff.

It explains many things managers need to know, said Roger Walter, human resources manager for Stewart & Stevenson, a manufacturing company in Houston. And it includes a lot of don’ts: Don’t show favoritism and don’t be insensitive.

And, Walter said, it also includes the important: how to break bad news.

Getting ahead isn’t just technical knowledge, you must know political skills.

H. Joan Ehrlich, of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, recommends managers read “Skills for Success” by Adele Scheele.

It teaches how to network and how to let other people know your accomplishments, Ehrlich said. Women especially need that kind of help because they don’t tend to toot their own horn.

When Marcie Zlotnik, president of GST TotalNet, a telecommunications company, is faced with a tough personnel problem, she reaches for “The Manager’s Troubleshooter” by Clay Carr and Mary Fletcher.

It examines 125 tough supervisory problems and suggests why the problems may have cropped up and what to do about them, Zlotnik said. The book also explains how to get on with other managers.

To learn how to understand behavior at work, Michael Hitt favors “Organizational Behavior,” a popular textbook written by Don Hellriegel, John Slocum Jr. and Richard Woodman.

The text explains how to motivate and lead others, said Hitt, professor of business at Texas A&M University. And it’s written clearly, he added.

Business coach Sandy Vilas likes “Love & Profit: The Art of Caring Leadership” by James Autry.

The book explains how to combine management skills with a philosophy about caring for employees and their families, said Vilas, who owns Coach University, an organization that trains business coaches.

Several managers pointed to Stephen Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” as their favorite road map.

It teaches the importance of figuring out what you can change and how to focus on that, said Angelo DeNisi, director of the Center for Human Resource Management at Texas A&M.

Bambi McCullough, senior vice president of human resources at Sterling Bank in Houston, said the classic helped her better organize her time and reinforced the importance of team work.

For the new manager who doesn’t have a lot of time to read the classics, Michael Pellecchia suggests “The Ultimate Business Library: 50 Books that Shaped Management Thinking” by Stuart Crainer.

It offers a quick overview of key players such as Dale Carnegie (who is still the foundation of every self-help book), W. Edwards Deming (the quality guru) and Peter F. Drucker (who focused on the knowledge worker), Charles Handy (who dwelt on organizational design and change)and Abraham Maslow (who developed a hierarchy of needs), said Pellecchia, who sells business books on the Internet.

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