Work Happy

April 9, 2012
Geisler, head of the Poynter Institute’s leadership and management faculty and the voice of the popular podcast What Great Bosses Know, has distilled years of management experience and study into this practical step-by-step guide to improving leadership skills. Covering topics including types of power, how to give and receive constructive feedback, coaching versus fixing, self-awareness and self-management, Geisler provides useful quizzes and assessments to help the reader translate the concepts into personal learning. Rather than a prescriptive, academic book on leadership, Geisler humanizes the text with anecdotes from her own leadership development as a broadcast news director in Milwaukee, sharing her revelations, corrections, and progress. In addition, she offers insightful observations about leadership, such as how each strength may be accompanied by an “Evil Twin” of perception, for example, high standards may be perceived as being impossible to satisfy and integrity perceived as a “holier-than-thou” attitude. This positive, useful work is sure to be a go-to manual for those new to management. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management.

June 15, 2012

In the 1970s, Geisler (leadership & management, Poynter Instit.) was an energetic young reporter for a major market television station. After being promoted to news director, which required leading a staff of 50, she spent several decades honing her management skills in the news industry. Geisler draws her insights for this book from her curriculum at the Poynter Institute as well as the 360-degree feedback instrument she developed, a performance review that includes feedback from all levels of the organization, i.e., supervisors, staff, coworkers, and customers. Through reading the text, doing the exercises (which necessitate some serious soul-searching and self-critiquing), and putting her ideas into practice, readers can increase the level of happiness at the workplaces they manage. The examples she shares--both positive and negative employee critiques of bosses--are especially helpful in distinguishing between managerial behavior that will inspire rather than infuriate. VERDICT Though there are no earth-shattering revelations in these pages, Geisler offers sound advice for managers on how to be the kind of bosses employees like as well as respect. If her ideas were as easy to implement as they are to read, the workplace would indeed be much improved.--Carol Elsen, Univ. of Wisconsin Libs., Whitewater

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.