Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People into Extraordinary Performers

by Erika Andersen

Overview

How to develop an all-star staff, even if you don’t know the first thing about managing

“Your employees are, like you and me, flawed and hopeful human beings whose success is at least partly dependent on your skill as a manager, human beings who will thrive with skillful and consistent attention and wither without it.”

Erika Andersen has helped some of the best-managed companies in the world develop their employees. Now she explains how to stay ahead of the competition by investing in your people. You’ll discover that:
• Listening is your most powerful asset. Use it to motivate and build commitment.
• Everything you know about interviewing is wrong. Discover what you really need in a potential employee.
• Successful companies hire for keeps. Get people feeling like part of the team from day one.

Whether you’re a first-time manager or a senior executive, Andersen will help you create a dynamic workplace, where the efforts you make today will blossom into success for years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781591841906
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/18/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.41(w) x 8.44(h) x 0.78(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Erika Andersen is the founder of Proteus International (www.proteus-international.com), a consulting firm established in 1990 that works with CEOs and top executives of many major corporations, including Molson Coors Brewing, MTV Networks, Union Square Hospitality Group, PepsiCo, ESPN, Comcast, Lifetime Television, Madison Square Garden, and Bank of America. Erika and her family live in Kingston, New York. The firm has offices in New York and Minneapolis.

Editorial Reviews

The management lessons Andersen distills from her career as a consultant to corporations like MTV and Bank of America are not innovative-most executives have heard about the importance of listening and establishing clear lines of communication. The centerpiece of her technique is a form of personality typing developed in the 1960s to measure workers based on their assertiveness, responsiveness and versatility. Evaluating employees through these "social styles" templates, Andersen promises, will help determine "how they like and need to be managed." Writing in a pleasant, conversational tone, the author begins each chapter with an imagined scene in a garden, establishing an overriding metaphor for her techniques for everything from creating job descriptions to firing underperforming employees. Andersen makes extensive use of worksheets and what-if scenarios to elaborate her points, and summarizes the "big ideas" in each chapter. For rookies, it's a serviceable introduction to the field. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly