Engagement: Transforming Difficult Relationships at Work - Hardcover

by Lee G. Bolman (Author), Joan V. Gallos (Author)

Master the interpersonal side of management to enhance productivity and boost success

Engagement is the manager's essential primer for dealing with difficult people and managing your team. Bestselling authors Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos are back with an engaging business novella that relates real, practical techniques captured in the 4-step SURE model for handling people problems. The story centers around a manager in a new job, and her experiences applying the four steps in leading her new team. Brief interludes punctuate the story throughout to provide room for reflection, and to explain the complex interpersonal dynamics at play in commonly encountered situations. Key lessons are underscored as the foundation for a sound people strategy, and the features and details of each rule are laid out in a clear, concise manner. You'll learn alongside the story's manager as she uses the model to find artful solutions to problems that could have easily derailed her chances of success.

People are the hardest part of a manger's job. No matter how well-matched their skill sets, there is always the potential for interpersonal conflicts and strains to throw the team off-course. This book shows you deft strategies for addressing those challenges with a well thought-out framework for getting your team fully invested in the group's success.

• Find creative solutions to persistent issues
• Dig into the interpersonal dynamics at work
• Learn how to handle--and manage--difficult people
• Apply key strategies for engaging the team

This compact, easy-to-apply set of guidelines draws on your leadership skills while providing a strong foundation for a new managerial approach. Effective management is frequently a tightrope between results and morale, and Engagement shows you how to find your balance and steady your team.

Front Jacket

In Engagement, bestselling authors Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos offer a compelling workplace parable to illustrate the strategies and skills needed to make unworkable relationships positive and productive. The book introduces the four-step SURE model, which offers rules of engagement for staying alert, grounded, and productive when faced with the prickly, taxing, or toxic folks who block progress, weigh you down, undermine your confidence, leave chaos in their wake, and cause a disproportionate share of headaches and sleepless nights.

Bolman and Gallos advocate that deeply engaging oneself, one another, and the situation is the best route to transform difficult relationships. They show how to unhook from the anger, stress, and frustration that limit your ability to see and appreciate better possibilities.

Working with difficult people--a problem employee, bully boss, chronically complaining coworker, mean-spirited associate, Machiavellian teammate, or troubled colleague-- all take a combination of strategy, confidence, determination, and skill. The authors show how to apply the four-step SURE model for overcoming the obstacles and frustrations that difficult people present.

Because it is written as a parable, Engagement offers you the opportunity to slow down and think about your reactions, compare your solutions with others, and view events through multiple perspectives--your own, the authors, and the characters in the story.

Engagement helps to better understand yourself, respond more effectively in your workplace, and handle challenges in ways that bring out the best in you and others.

Back Jacket

The essential resource for mastering the interpersonal side of managemen

In Engagement, bestselling authors Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos offer a compelling workplace parable to illustrate the strategies and skills needed to make unworkable relationships positive and productive. The book introduces the four-step SURE model, which offers rules of engagement for staying alert, grounded, and productive when faced with the prickly, taxing, or toxic folks who block progress, weigh you down, undermine your confidence, leave chaos in their wake, and cause a disproportionate share of headaches and sleepless nights.

Bolman and Gallos advocate that deeply engaging oneself, one another, and the situation is the best route to transform difficult relationships. They show how to unhook from the anger, stress, and frustration that limit your ability to see and appreciate better possibilities.

Working with difficult people--a problem employee, bully boss, chronically complaining coworker, mean-spirited associate, Machia-vellian teammate, or troubled colleague--all take a combination of strategy, confidence, determination, and skill. The authors show how to apply the four-step SURE model for overcoming the obstacles and frustrations that difficult people present.

Because it is written as a parable, Engagement offers you the opportunity to slow down and think about your reactions, compare your solutions with others, and view events through multiple perspectives--your own, the authors, and the characters in the story.

Engagement helps to better understand yourself, respond more effectively in your workplace, and handle challenges in ways that bring out the best in you and others.

Author Biography

LEE G. BOLMAN holds the Marion Bloch Missouri Chair in Leadership at the Henry W. Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri - Kansas City. He is the coauthor of How Great Leaders Think; Reframing Organizations; The Wizard and the Warrior; and Leading with Soul, all from Jossey-Bass.

JOAN V. GALLOS is professor of leadership at Wheelock College, where she also served as Vice President for Academic Affairs. Gallos is coauthor of Teaching Diversity: Listening to the Soul, Speaking from the Heart; editor of both Organization Development: A Jossey-Bass Reader and Business Leadership: A Jossey-Bass Reader (second edition); and creator of the teaching materials for the full Jossey-Bass Reader Series.

BOLMAN and GALLOS are the co-authors of Reframing Academic Leadership, also published by Jossey-Bass.