Cy Wakeman

The author has exactly one good point to make but it takes her 162 pages of repetition to make it. And then contradict herself. And then reiterate in a different way. The one good point is - take drama and emotion out of the workplace when you can. If you have employees who like to complain rather than work on solutions, hear them out for an amount of time appropriate to the situation and to the employee's value to the organization, lead them to think about how much of the complaint is verifiably true (not just "feels" true) and then turn it around and give them responsibility to come up with a solution. Taking emotion out of the workplace isn't a great solution for people who are passionate about their jobs but it can be helpful for a manager to pause, take a breath, and look at the situation without emotion clouding thoughts. Her other piece of advice seems to be - employees who don't say 'how high?' when you say 'jump' (without any explanation for why the employee is being told to jump) should be fired.

I'll give her one star for the reminder about how easy it is to let employee drama drag down an organization but this isn't groundbreaking and an article on workplace drama would have served as a better management aid than Wakeman's drawn-out, contradictory, self-congratulatory book.… (mehr)