Introduction

It can be hard to be a good boss.

Many of us are promoted into our first management position because we've been highly effective individual performers. But when we start to manage others, we find that the new skills we need to succeed are completely different from the ones we needed beforehand.

If we're lucky, we get a few days of management training before we start. But for many, it's straight into the deep end. There are new areas of work to get up to speed in and deadlines to meet. There are poorly performing team members who need help, and there are people to hire. With all these new calls on our time, from above and below, it's hard to know where to start.

And it isn't just when we're first promoted that we need to learn new skills. With each promotion, the work becomes more complex, the criteria for success become more subtle, and our time is increasingly spent on people-related issues. Our ability to develop and learn as an individual becomes central to our further success.

Helping People Be Better Bosses

Unfortunately, although some people learn these new management skills, many do not. For example, in the US in 2016, Gallup found that only 32% of employees were fully engaged in their work - a key measure of manager performance. And in a study by tinypulse.com, only 49% of employees were "fully satisfied" with their supervisor.

These are disconcerting statistics. No manager goes to work in the morning saying, "I'm going to make my team members' lives hell today," yet the evidence shows that there are at least as many bad bosses in the workplace as there are good bosses. Why is there such a disconnect here? We suggest there are three major factors:

• The leadership mystique - We are all fascinated by the larger-than-life leaders in business and politics. Sometimes we are in awe of their ambition and their achievements; sometimes we are appalled at their narcissism. But whatever our reaction, it is these leaders who make the headlines. And this can seduce us into a view that being a leader is somehow more important than being a manager. Leaders, apparently, are the people who shake things up and make change happen, whereas managers sweep up in their wake, implementing a chosen course of action and tying up the loose ends.

  This is a flawed and dangerous view. It is flawed because leadership and management aren't two distinct ways of operating; they are more like two horses pulling the same cart. Leadership is a process of social influence; management is getting work done through others. Anyone who wants to succeed in the business world needs both sets of capabilities. By privileging leadership, we allow people to take the hard work of management less seriously.

• Quick-fix solutions - Glance through the shelves in a large bookstore, and you will see hundreds of business and self-help books. Although there are many different genres, a popular approach is for the author to hone in on one important skill, such as coaching, time management, or mindfulness. "Here is the hidden factor behind business success," the book title declares. "This is the one thing you need to do differently to succeed at work."

  These quick-fix solutions aren't entirely wrong - the skills or attributes they focus on are always important. But they aren't the whole solution. Being effective in the workplace requires a breadth of capabilities, and it requires sufficient experience to know when to use different skills and approaches. The risk of focusing on one skill is that it gets overused and misapplied. When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

• The knowing - doing gap - Despite the vast number of books that claim to unlock the secrets of success, the essence of effective management is actually no great mystery. Here is our quick summary of how to get the best out of your employees: Give them worthwhile and meaningful work to do, give them space to find their own way, provide support when it is needed, and offer recognition and praise for a job well done. These are intuitively sound pieces of advice, and there are plenty of theories and practical experience to support each one.

But even though most managers would nod in agreement when faced with this list, the behavior of many tells a different story: They often fail to convey clear messages, they micromanage, they hoard important information, and they don't offer feedback or praise. There is, in other words, a knowing - doing gap - people know, intellectually, what is required of them, but for some reason, they just don't do it on a day-to-day basis. Management is a somewhat unnatural act - it requires us to behave in a way that goes against our innate desire to be in control and the center of attention. And, like many other activities - golf, for example - you don't get better just by reading a book. You get better at managing by working on it and by seeking feedback and advice.

Why This Book Is Different

So what can we do to close the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of good management? This book helps you by identifying the key skills you need to be a good boss and giving you the essential information you need to start practicing them.

It is based on a body of expertise and evidence that we believe is unrivaled. Both authors have been working in the management field for more than 20 years. One of us (James) is the founder of MindTools.com, one of the most widely used sources of online advice for people in the workplace. The other (Julian) is a leading academic and writer and author of Becoming a Better Boss and Reinventing Management. And both of us practice what we preach - James as the CEO of the Mind Tools organization, Julian as deputy dean at the London Business School. Between us, we have reviewed and evaluated many thousands of tools and techniques, and we have seen how they work in a wide variety of circumstances.

And we haven't just relied on our own experience in choosing the techniques described in the book. We have tapped into the views of more than 15000 businesspeople from around the world. These people filled in a detailed survey with their views on the most important techniques in different areas. We used their ratings to help us choose the top 100 tools featured in this book. The appendix details how we did this research.

So what are the key themes in this book? What is the distinctive point of view that we offer?

First, we take a deliberately nonheroic view of the boss. Indeed, we explicitly use the word boss here to avoid the leader versus manager debate we talked about earlier. For us, a boss is simply someone who has people reporting to her and who is seeking to get things done by working through those people. She doesn't need charisma nor does she have to offer a grand vision. Instead, she is a pragmatic individual who understands the opportunities and constraints in her role and wants to get the best from the people working for her. She is thoughtful about the context in which she is working and adapts her style to the circumstances and to the needs of specific individuals.

To be clear, we have nothing against visionaries like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. The world needs these one-off genius types, but they are dangerous to use as role models. You are much better off aspiring to the nonheroic approach described here because it doesn't rely on you being a genius!

Second, we avoid the quick-fix approach favored by most management books. As we have said, there are many different things good bosses do, so making the right choice involves breadth and perspective. To use a well-known analogy, we aren't giving you a hammer; we are providing the entire toolkit - a set of "mind tools." And we want you to be able to figure out when to use the hammer and when to favor the screwdriver or the staple gun.

One hundred techniques might sound like a lot, but the point here is that becoming a great boss is hard work and requires a diverse set of skills. It's also worth noting that they cluster naturally into sets of complementary techniques, and the structure of the book makes it easy to navigate through these clusters.

Third, our emphasis throughout the book is on tools - ideas that you can actually put into practice. We acknowledge the academic theories that support these tools, and we provide references for those who want to know more on the background concepts, but we focus the text on practical advice and how-to steps. As you read the book, you will find some sections that seem obvious, and this should be reassuring. Every manager is familiar with some of these techniques. The challenge is to become familiar with all of them so you can use the right ones at the right time.

The Structure of the Book

The boss's job is complex and multifaceted. One useful way to make sense of it is to think in terms of three concentric sets of activities (see Figure I.1).The first (in the center) is to manage yourself - to understand your own personal needs and capabilities, use your time wisely, cope with the challenges of the job, and develop your skills over time.

Figure I.1 Your Role as a Boss

The second is to manage your work and people. Recall that management is getting work done through other people, not doing it all yourself, so you should be...