RETAILOBSERVER.COM JANUARY 2017
14
B O O K R E V I E W
I
f managers lived in their dream worlds, their employees would
consistently strive for greatness, play well in team settings, and hang
their heads and pledge to work to higher standards on the rare
occasions when their performance slips.
What managers get more often: employees who only want to play by
their own rules (and not those of the company), negative employees who
sow discontent even among more upbeat staff members, employees with
inexplicable temperaments—and the list goes on and on.
After twenty years in the tech industry (first as a software engineer,
then as a manager, including the team that created Xerox's first ever
digital print production system) and now as a consultant for clients
including Oracle, Microsoft, NASA, and Intuit, Alan Willett is well aware
that star employees and problem employees can sometimes be one and
the same—and that even when an employee isn't a star, extenuating
circumstances may prevent managers from considering termination.
In Willett's new book, LEADING THE UNLEADABLE: How to Manage
Mavericks, Cynics, Divas, and Other Difficult People, Willett helps
managers refresh their leadership style in order to steer the most contrary
team members towards true team unity.
This begins with changing one's leadership mindset. When leaders
start with the belief that all employees—even troublemakers—have good
intentions, they put themselves in a position to solve underlying issues,
instead of constantly putting out fires on the surface. Exceptional leaders,
Willett explains, see trouble as information-rich data: when something is
going wrong repeatedly, there is often an opportunity to make a business
process more efficient. Willett also guides managers through the difficult
but necessary process of follow-through—because when employees have
bad habits, it's going to take more than a brief conversation to implement
good habits.
LEADING THE UNLEADABLE:
How to Manage Mavericks, Cynics, Divas, and Other Difficult People
Author: Alan Willett is president of Oxseeker, a leadership
development and organizational culture change consultancy
whose clients include Oracle, Microsoft, NASA, Intuit, and more.
Publisher: AMACOM Books
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