Book Review: "It's Okay to be the Boss" by Bruce Tulgan

Do you feel you don’t have enough time to manage your people? Do you avoid interacting with some employees because you hate the dreaded confrontations that often follow? Do you have some great employees you really can’t afford to lose? Do you secretly wish you could be more in control but don’t know where to start?

Managing people is harder and higher-pressure today than ever before. There's no room for downtime, waste, or inefficiency. You have to do more with less. And employees have become high maintenance. Not only are they more likely to disagree openly and push back, but they also won't work hard for vague promises of long-term rewards. They look to you—their immediate boss—to help them get what they need and want at work.

How do you tackle this huge management challenge? If you are like most managers, you take a hands-off approach. You empower employees by leaving them alone, unless they really need you. After all, you don't want to micromanage them and don't have the time to hold every employee's hand.

Of course, problems always come up and often snowball into bigger problems. In fact, you probably spend too much of your time solving problems and falling behind on your work... which leaves even less time for managing people... which opens the door for even more problems!

According to over 15 years research on the front lines of the workplace, Bruce Tulgan, author of "It’s Okay to be the Boss," one of the biggest problems in corporate American today is an under-management epidemic that is affecting managers at all levels of the organizations and in all industries. 

There are many consequences of under-management including:

• Unnecessary fires and squandered resources
• People going in the wrong direction
• Low performers hiding out
• Mediocre performers thinking of themselves as high performers
• High performers considering leaving
• Managers doing tasks that should have been delegated

Based on his extensive research Bruce suggests another way—a clear, step-by-step guide to becoming the strong manager employees need. It challenges bosses everywhere to spell out expectations, tell employees exactly what to do and how to do it, monitor and measure performance constantly, and correct failure quickly and reward success even more quickly. 

He recommends the following 8 ‘back to basic’ techniques. These are practical best practices—tools for dealing with the obstacles of managing by focusing on what you can control.

These basics of managing include:

1. Manage people every day—spend more time with them
2. Talk like a performance coach or a teacher—in a clear, direct, and honest way
3. Take it one person at a time—tune into each person and figure out how to help that person, customizing your approach to every individual
4. Make accountability a process, not a slogan
5. Make expectations vividly clear every step of the way
6. Track performance in writing every step of the way
7. Solve small problems early—before they turn into big ones
8. Do more for some and less for others—doing more for people when they deserve it, finding ways to reward people in a fair, transparent way.

That’s how you set employees up for success and help them earn what they need.  It opens our eyes to the undisciplined workplace that is overwhelming managers and frustrating workers and invites bosses everywhere to accept the sacred responsibility of managing people.  Bruce’s message:

It’s okay to be the boss — BUT be a GREAT ONE!

By Karen Houston-Johnson, VP, Credit Union Resources, Inc.