DK Publishing has written a whole series of "Essential Manager" books on various aspects of management. One of the best in the series is Robert Heller’s book, Dealing with People.

This quick-read, itty bitty 72-page book—available at www.bn.com for $7.00—provides practical tips on how to influence behavior and build positive relationships in the workplace.

Learn all you need to know about managing staff—from understanding why people behave in certain ways to recognizing talents and encouraging creativity. With the help of many charts, checklists, case studies and sidebars, you’ll learn how to develop basic people skills like understanding human behavior, building people’s confidence and gaining their trust.

What does it take for an organization to win? Former GE CEO Jack Welch lays out his formula for success in Winning, his collaboration with Suzy Welch, former editor of the Harvard Business Review.

Welch outlines things to do and pitfalls to avoid in a number of areas, including leadership, hiring and people management, business strategy and mission/values development, budgeting, quality and managing your own career.

Welch talks a lot about the importance of communication and devotes a whole chapter to candor. "Lack of candor basically blocks smart ideas, fast action and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got — it’s a killer," says Welch. "Lack of candor is when too many people – too often – instinctively don’t express themselves with frankness. They don’t communicate straightforwardly or put forth ideas looking to stimulate real debate. They just don’t open up. Instead they withhold comments or criticism. They keep things to themselves, hoarding information."

What does candor accomplish? How does it lead to winning? Three things, notes Welch. "Candor gets more people in conversation and when you get more people in the conversation, you get idea rich. Any organization that brings more people and their minds into the conversation has an immediate advantage.

"Second," continues Welch, "candor generates speed. When ideas are in everyone’s face, they can be debated rapidly, expanded and enhanced, and acted upon. Third, candor cuts costs. Just think of how it eliminates meaningless meetings and b.s. reports that confirm what everyone knows. To get candor, you reward it, praise it, and talk about it. Most of all you yourself demonstrate it in an exuberant and even exaggerated way."

Winning, by Jack Welch. Printed by Harper Business. 372 pages.

Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach and build self-confidence

• Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live it and breathe it
• Leaders get into everyone’s skin, exuding positive energy and optimism. Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency and credit!
• Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls
• Leaders probe and push with a curiosity that borders on skepticism, making sure their questions are answered with action
• Leaders inspire risk-taking and learning by setting the example
• Leaders celebrate.

Nearly every manager has walked away from a discussion with regrets, saying to him or herself, "I could have handled that conversation a lot better."

Crucial Confrontations, a sequel to Crucial Conversations, a best selling communications guide, offers insights about skills you can practice in tense, tough every day conversations in the workplace.

The content deals with disappointments that result from poor conversations: broken promises, violated expectations, and overall bad behavior. And in a stress-filled, fast-paced world, the frequency of poor conversations is increasing.

The authors suggest four tips to safely and effectively master confrontations with others:

• Don’t undermine character. Avoid drawing negative judgments about those you confront, and reflecting your attitude in your demeanor or talk. Such behavior does nothing for the relationship or the problem except make it worse.
    
• Begin with facts, not accusations. The book helps readers identify the issues behind the emotions and expose their root causes.
    
• Determine common ground. Good communicators are candid about disagreements but work just as hard to build a foundation of agreement.
    
• Minimize defensiveness. The authors teach how to recognize defensive behavior and intervene in ways that foster safety for the other person. When people feel safe, they can be confronted about almost anything. Knowing how to cultivate that sense of security is a valuable communication skill.

Crucial Conversations, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler. McGraw-Hill: New York. 284 pp.

Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one of the most popular business management books of all time. Now Covey has written a new book that builds on his earlier teachings. It’s called, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, and it’s published by Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster (409 pages).

‘People are not thriving in the organization’

The book provides guidance for understanding how to harness the power and potential of yourself, your co-workers and those you manage in the workplace. "Despite all our gains in technology and productivity, people are not thriving in the organization," says Covey. "Consciously or unconsciously, people decide how much of themselves they will give to their work depending on how they are treated. Choices range from rebelling or quitting to creative excitement."

The 8th habit, which is about the journey and behaviors required to find your personal voice and then inspire others to find theirs, is an idea whose time has come, notes Covey. "Leadership is helping others find their voice by communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly they come to see it in themselves."

Adds Covey: "Vision, discipline and passion rule the world" and success is about "how to develop the internal power and moral authority to break out of problems and become a significant force in solving them."

Four roles of modern leadership

Covey sees four roles of modern leadership which he lays out in detail in the book. They are:

• Pathfinding (finding and creating a clear vision that sets the direction for others to follow; then mobilizing commitment and engendering organizational capability)
   
• Modeling (having a conscience of caring, then demonstrating the right behavior traits in your work)
   
• Empowering (providing the spark that motivates others to step beyond mediocrity to excel), and
    
• Aligning (the discipline that comes with execution for business success).

He contends that 90% of failed leadership involves character failures and cites behaviors to avoid such as: criticizing, complaining, comparing, competing and contending. On the flip side, he advises: "Be trustworthy, build trust, be sincere and listen to other people and involve them in decision making to get commitment."

In terms of day-to-day management, he cites the "execution gap" that exists in many companies because leaders fail to translate corporate vision from 30,000 feet into actionable line-of-sight behaviors among front line workers to achieve critical objectives.

Says Covey, "The execution gap is created by lack of clarity, commitment, and inability to align jobs to the talents and passions of the people who do the work.”

Some things to think about…
A few interesting quotes to ponder that Covey references in his latest book:

On self-awareness:
"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."
-- Psychiatrist R.D. Lang

On courage:
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."
-- Ambrose Redmoon

On trust:
"No man for a considerable period can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true."
– Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the U.S. military, lives depend on how well the plan gets executed in the real world environment. Flawless Execution, written by James Murphy, a former F-15 pilot who later became a successful business CEO, lays out how the military

Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief-Win cycle can be applied to execution of business planning.

Coach brings this book to the attention of its readers because so many companies and organizations struggle with practical execution of their well-thought-out business plans. As Murphy states in his book: "Second-rate standards, second-rate performance and second-rate desire lead to the graveyard of Corporate America." In contrast, he says, "great companies are built around extraordinary individual execution; the better the individual executes, the better the company performs."

The importance of effective communication in achieving great execution is highlighted through the book. At the outset of a key initiative, inclusion must be the name of the game. "Every department needs to contribute from the beginning and understand the nuances of the mission…and help plan the details…instead of the plan coming down from the ivory tower," notes Murphy.

The author stresses the vital nature of open planning "to let everyone see the causes and effects of ideas in real time across all departments." He argues that open planning "also triggers intense, passionate, and unspeakably valuable buy-in by the people who have to put the plan into effect. Nothing defeats a plan faster than apathetic, bumbling, reluctant executors," says Murphy.

Many ideas are brought forth in the book about how to effectively prepare and execute. Murphy puts a lot of emphasis on the "debrief" after the execution phase is completed. He points out that only a small percentage of companies in corporate America have any system for looking back and evaluating execution errors and successes. During the debrief, all results of a mission – good and bad – should be communicated to learn lessons that can be applied to execution on future projects. A de-brief should be done right after the project is completed, while information is still fresh in the mind.

Questioning during a de-brief should be structured to ensure that all aspects of the mission are covered. And it’s absolutely critical that the debrief leader establish a tone conducive to open communication. The debrief leader sets the tone by criticizing his or her own mistakes, in the first person.

Flawless Execution, by James D. Murphy. 218 pages. Published by HarperCollins Publishers. You can easily find the book online at Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, etc.