Book review – Leadership: Essential Steps Every Manager Needs to Know

Leadership: Essential Steps Every Manager Needs to Know, by Elwood N. Chapman and Sharon Lund O’Neil, was surprisingly good. When I first opened it up I must admit that I judged a book by its “cover” and thought that it would not be very good based upon its somewhat cheesy clip art like images. But I looked past the graphics and gave it a chance, which I am glad I did.

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As with many leadership books, this one breaks the art of leadership down into a number of categories. In particular, this book defines the effectiveness of leadership as being the sum of visionary mission, decisiveness, application of mutual reward theory, effective communication, and power of influence, multiplied by a positive attitude. It goes on to explain in detail what each of these mean, how it can best be applied, and the different aspects of each. I found mutual reward theory to be particularly enlightening as I had yet to hear about this theory.

All in all, it is a good book and a rather quick read. While none of the content will revolutionize your career by itself, the information contained in these pages should help anyone identify where they can change to help bring their leadership to the next level.


My Bookshelf

I get asked from time to time what I read. Here is what my current bookshelf looks like.

I recently finished these:
Confronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Get Things Right
The Life of Pi
In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions…When It Counts
I Am Legend

I am currently reading these:
The Peopleware Papers: Notes on the Human Side of Software
Principle-centered Leadership
Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction

I have these lying in wait:
Java Concurrency in Practice
The Algorithm Design Manual
A Beginner’s Guide to Discrete Mathematics
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World

I plan on buying these but want to finish what I have first:
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
The Toyota Way
Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering (Agile Software Development)
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams


I had given up…

So somewhere around 6 months ago I tried to go on technorati and link my profile to this site. I got errors and, following the directions on the page, sent an email to support to get things taken care of. I eventually figured that I wasn’t going to hear back and gave up on it.

I got this email today:

Hello,

Please accept our apologies for the delay in
getting back to you. We are currently
experiencing a backlog in Support, but are
working very hard to address everyone.

I have made a small adjustment in our
system. Please wait 24 hours. At that time,
you should be able to claim your blog.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you
have other questions.

Thank you for using Technorati!

[NAME REMOVED]
Customer Support Specialist
Technorati

What do I make of this? On one hand it is utterly ridiculous that it took 6 months to get a response, even if the response was just to say, “hey, we are really busy – we’ll get back to you when we can.” On the other hand, they claim to have fixed the problem.  Better late than never I suppose.