Book Review – The Six Conversations of a Brilliant Manager by Alan J. Sears

The Six Conversations of a Brilliant Manager by Alan J. Sears is a book I gained a lot from. Written in a fictional format just like a novel, it explains some complicated aspects of management in simple to understand language using an interesting story. This is a very easy to read and understand book. The story is focused on six conversations that managers at some point in their career will need to have with the people they manage.

The main character in the book is Sam Mitchell who is suddenly promoted to be the UK Operations Manager of DecisionsMaker, a tech company, after his boss leaves the job. Sam doesn’t have experience as a manager, and he’s been put in charge of an unhappy team at a time when the company is going through some major challenges. The fact that he has been told by Arnold Kramer, one of the company’s founders to come up with results a month after he started in the role does not help. Add to that having to manage a difficult team and the scene for an interesting story on effective leadership and management is born.

Book Review – Delegating Work

Another book in the Harvard Business Press Pocket Mentor series, this one focuses on helping managers to delegate work more effectively. The aim of this book is to show managers how to:

• Identify tasks to delegate
• Assign tasks and monitor their progress
• Handle any problems with delegated tasks

Written by Thomas L Brown, this book has just 77 pages and is split into two main sections. One with the main content titled, Delegating Work: the basics, and a second section with extra tips and tools on the subject.

The first section is further divided into five topics, each of which I have reviewed briefly below.

What is delegating?

Here you will read some useful information on what delegating is. The purpose of delegating, benefits of delegating and concerns managers have about delegating are discussed. You will also learn about the difference between empowerment and delegating. Here are two nuggets for you: