Excerpt from Chapter 1

Have kids? You have all the management training you need.
Believe it or not, caring for your children is good management training. As a parent, you learn to praise and discipline your children, as well as providing guidance, direction, leadership and a pleasant living environment. You teach your children new skills and provide them with additional training via teachers and trainers. You provide them with the supplies needed to perform various tasks . . . You learn that each child is an individual with his/her own personalities, likes, dislikes, motivations, skills and abilities. Lastly, you realize the need to treat each child as an individual and the importance of being part of a family and the responsibility that being part of a family brings. Another thing that a parent quickly realizes (or at least I did) is that you don't have all the answers. As a parent, you find that you must learn new specific skills, like changing diapers, food preparation and family budgeting. You also learn the importance of decision-making.

Excerpt from Chapter 2

Congratulations, you get to manage your friends.
Wow, the old manager left and they had to pick a new one. You had more experience than most of the people in the group. You also do great work, are often asked for help by less skilled team members and are viewed as a team leader. As a result, you were promoted and now you are the manager. First the good news, your pay will probably go up, your friends and family will congratulate you. Now the bad news, your coworkers will now look at you differently. . . . In all cases however, you are now the boss and they will treat you differently. They know that their next raise, promotion, and maybe paycheck is in your hands. They will be nicer to you, let you get coffee first at the coffee machine, laugh a little louder and a little more often at your jokes and slowly start acting more like a subordinate then a peer. You won't be asked to go out to lunch with them as often, but they will always go out to lunch with you if you ask. They will also be more guarded in what they say to you, after all, YOU can't complain about the boss anymore! In reality, you're no longer one-of-the-gang.

Excerpt from Chapter 3

Work is not a democracy it's a dictatorship.
You are not only the manager of your group; you are also its leader. As a result, you certainly can, and should, get input from your staff, but the decision is yours and yours alone. You should be fair. You should be respectful of your staff members and should carefully weigh your options. That being said, you also have to make decisions based on what is best for the company, not because you like it or because it feels good, but because it's your job. This attitude is best summed up in the expression "Business is Business," and it's true. I once had to layoff a friend; he understood but I hated it. A friend also once laid me off. Even though I agreed that her decision was the correct one, she hated to do it. In both cases however it was decided fairly, it was the right thing for the company and that is what we are paid to do.

Developing trust
Trust is an essential component of teamwork and leadership. A trusted relationship between you and your subordinates is essential to your success and effectiveness as a manager. You must be able to trust them and they must be able to trust you. Trust is an interesting thing between a subordinate and a manager. The manager has to take the lead. As the manager, you must demand honesty from your staff and make your anger known if someone lies, only tells you the good news and not the bad news, or tells half truths. In return, when one of your staff members promptly and honestly tells you about bad news and/or unpleasant issues, you must work with them constructively to solve the problem, rather then punish them for it. You will find that your constructive attitude toward their problems will help them learn to trust you.

Motivating your group
Management in the truest sense of the word is the ability to get things done through the efforts of others. That said, as the manager, it is very important for you to understand, that while it certainly is important for you to personally do a quality job, it is equally (and probably more) important that your group does good quality work. Now, this is a very key point for you to understand: People do their best work when they are properly motivated. The thing you have to figure out is how to motivate them. From my perspective, motivating people has two main components; environmental and individual. . . .

Excerpt from Chapter 4

The Seven types of difficult employees.
Let's say it like it is. Managing difficult employees stinks. . . With all that said, now let's discuss what to do if you do have a difficult person on your team. To begin, there are several different kinds of difficult employees. I like to categorize them as Sleazy, Grumpy, Lazy, Brainy, Tardy, Dummy and Troubled. (Yeah, I know, but this was more fun then categorizing them as types 1 through 7).

Excerpt from Chapter 5

Managing Up
Managing up is one of the most important things that you must learn to do. To a large extent, the levels of management above you control your success and future at the company. If they like you, respect you, and think that you can help their careers, they will increase your responsibility, promote you, raise your pay and generally make your work life more pleasant.

Managing Down
. . . In a manor of speaking, most of this book is about managing down. As a result, the only thing I will say here is to remember to communicate with your subordinates in an honest, constructive and consistent manor. Remember at all times, that your success as a manager is in large part based on the success of the people under you.

Managing Across
. . . Managing across. Ah yes, this is where the fun begins. Rule number one is to be a team player. It will make it easier for you, easier for your boss and easier for your group.

Assuming that your peers are also managers, your boss is then a manager of managers. . . Unless you are very, very good or you are best friends with your boss, if you are not a team player, you will eventually be pushed out of the organization.

Excerpt from Chapter 7

Giving Promotions
Giving someone a promotion sounds like it should be easy. You call the person into your office, tell him he has been promoted and to continue doing great work, shake his hand and send him on his way. In one sense, it is that easy. However, there are a number of factors to consider when deciding who to promote and when to promote them. Additionally, there are a number of ramifications associated with giving someone a promotion and they're not all good. (Yeah, I know, you thought this one would be all good news. Well, welcome to management.)

. . .When you promote someone, you are telling that person, and the rest of your team, that the person being promoted embodies the desirable qualities, attitude and attributes that facilitate recognition and promotion. As a result, you are not-so-subtlety telling the rest of your staff to act in the same manner. Promoting someone is the strongest statement you can make to the other people of your team of how to act if they would also like to be promoted.

Excerpt from Chapter 11

Playing favorites
By favorites, I mean giving a specific employee preferential treatment. It is human nature to like some employees more than others. Many lifelong friendships began as manager and subordinate. Personal friendship between a manager and a subordinate only becomes a problem when the manager openly and clearly has one set of rules for his friend and another set of rules for everyone else. As the manager, you must treat all your subordinates fairly and equally. If you don't, the other members of your team will resent it. This resentment has the potential to hurt productivity, create infighting within your staff, cause your group to lose respect and confidence in you and ultimately cause people to leave. Lastly, it will be harder for you to hire internal candidates because they know they will be treated as a second-class citizen within the department. In the long run, picking favorites can drastically reduce your effectiveness. When you are in the office, business is business and all staff should be treated equally. Remember, ultimately it's your career what will suffer.