Essential Managers: Learning To Lead
This handy-dandy little book aims to prove that not only are great  workplace leaders made, not born--they can be made in 72 visually snazzy pages  or less! In a quick-reference thumbnail format, it shows you how to learn from  others and develop the personal strengths that will make you into a good leader,  form and lead effective teams, exercise authority and delegate tasks,  communicate clearly and set clear goals, and, finally, to inspire excellence in  others through motivation, establishing a shared vision, managing "openly,"  boosting achievement, and being adventurous. A seminar's worth of boxed tips,  checklists, and flow charts bring it all to life for you, from getting the most  out of meetings to assessing your own leadership skills. Granted, if you're  looking for very specific or in-depth guidance, you may find this book too  cursory and general in its approach. But if you're looking for a thumbnail guide  to the basics, it'll do you just fine.It's worth mentioning that the book is  also part of reference publisher Dorling Kindersley's Essential Managers  series--20 itty-bitty li'l books on business and career topics ranging from  communication, leadership, and decision making to the management of time,  budgets, change, meetings, people, projects, and teams. Combining theFor  Dummiesbook series's talent for breaking down a lot of information into  bite-size bits and sidebars with Dorling Kindersley's signature design style of  crisp, classy graphics on a gleaming white backdrop, they don't represent the  cutting edge of business thinking and they don't necessarily reflect any unique individual perspective. Instead, it's as though someone collated the best  general thinking on these 20 topics and rolled them out into 72 brightly  designed and easy-to-read pages, studded along the way with boxed tips, color  shots of a multiracial cast of "coworkers" animatedly hashing through the  workplace issues of the day, and a self-test of one's skills in the topic at  hand on the last few pages of each volume. Again, they're not for anyone looking  for more in-depth or focused help on any of the subjects they cover, but they're  perfect as a quickie general-interest reference... and let's face it, they're so  cute and look so smart in a neat little stack or row that you'll probably want  to buy a whole bunch to give to your entire staff or department.--Timothy  Murphy