BOSSHANDBOOKS® Products
Handbooks
Handbooks are a way to provide busy managers condensed information that is user-friendly and easily read. BOSSHANDBOOKS® uses an 8.5 x 11 format of approximately 40 pages that can be fitted readily into a briefcase to be read at leisure. They are suitable as text books in in-house training programs or handouts or resale in full-day workshops.
SUCCESSFUL MANAGERS: SUCCESSFUL ORGANIZATIONS
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To order Successful Managers: Successful Organizations, go to our Order Page.
Four additional handbooks are in various stages of development. They will be put into print as they become available. They are:
How to Create Productive Work Teams
In today’s workplace, teamwork is necessary, yet little is understood about what makes a work group a team. This work book examines group process
and what it takes to create a fully functioning team. It will be based on the author’s experience and training in managing group process.
Workplace Conflict: Causes and Cures
This handbook will discuss how physical work space, community involvements, workplace interactions, and individual psychological issues can contribute
to conflict. It will provide descriptions of more common conflicts, and offer suggestions to managers on how to resolve them.
Narcissistic Managers: How They Hurt the Bottom Line
Management is a magnet for people who have an exaggerated sense of their abilities, love to exert power over others, and know their thinking is the
only possible approach. This
handbook will help organizations understand and minimize the damage done by individuals exhibiting these traits.
The Making of a Manager
The first edition of The Making of a Manager was written in 2001. It is built around the Macek Management Checklist, a
list of 20 core competencies needed by managers. It will explain the reasons why each skill is included in the list, how it can be identified, and what managers can do to increase their level of each skill.
An age-old problem experienced in virtually every enterprise is assignment of responsibility without authority equal to the task. This paper discusses
the relationship between responsibility and authority and provides a basis for determining how much authority must be delegated in order to fulfill the
assigned responsibility.
Employers hire personnel to produce products and services. The workplace has changed considerably as we have gone from a manufacturing to a service economy.
In a manufacturing economy, personnel worked side-by-side along assembly lines and were predominantly males. In today's service economy, there are more
women. Work is accomplished by teams working in close interaction. While the workplace has long been a place for meeting the person we eventually marry,
today's work environment presents much more opportunity for relationships to develop. That means employers must think through their approach to dealing
with potential complications. This paper will focus on evolutionary changes in human sexuality, workplace dynamics, and discuss ways of keeping work and
romance in their place.
Price: $5
Conflict takes its toll in every workplace. Instead of producing goods and service they are paid to produce, personnel can waste considerable resources
with plotting and counterplotting, or sabotaging the quality and effectiveness of a compan’s product or service. This is a cancer that cannot be
tolerated. This paper speaks to this issue and offers advice on how to deal with conflictual situations.
In normal social protocol people make statements they do not entirely believe themselves but do so in order to make another person feel good. We are all
guilty of telling such “white lies.” In the work setting, accurate information is what counts. This paper provides an example of how messages
going up the chain of command can lead to serious blind spots on the part of CEO and board. It provides some suggestions on how to create greater safety
for personnel to give honest feedback.
We often equate working hard with productivity when quite the opposite can be true. Employers are not purchasing misguided effort but a product. This
paper discusses why it is in an employer’s best interest to encourage its personnel to work smarter rather than harder and how that shift in paradigm can
be achieved.
Some people learn early in life that they gain recognition and payoff by being helpless. They can carry this attitude into the workplace with serious
consequences. Personnel are hired to do a job, not to be dependent and helpless. This paper speaks to the psychology of learned helplessness and how it
can be addressed in the work situation. 
Most of us like to believe that our point of view is most accurate and that of others is wrong. Obviously, we cannot always be right, and others can have
information that can cause us to change our views entirely. Work settings by their nature require collaborative effort. Situations in which there are
winners and losers are always a loss for the company. This paper provides insight into this attitude and examines how it can unwittingly be fostered at
the highest levels of management. 