Mind Tools for Managers by Manktelow and Birkinshaw

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12May2019

Mind Tools for Managers by Manktelow and Birkinshaw

  • By Ian Bradley
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I still remember the day when I came to work in my first managerial job as Chief Psychologist in large university-based health sciences center in Montreal. Youthfully naïve and thinking that the position was some celestially guided reward for being an effective and hard working clinical psychologist, I was woefully unprepared for what awaited me.

 

I was unprepared to integrate a disparate staff of varying therapy orientations, values and aspirations for the department.  I was equally unprepared to deal with my own administrators who wanted more productivity from the department whose members expected me to shield them from those same management philistines that valued rapid therapy turnover rather than good therapeutic alliances.

 

I caught myself that first day hoping that the phone would ring with someone telling me how to deal with all these challenges, and maybe provide some helpful hints as to how I might actually accomplish some of my own leadership goals.

 

I wouldn’t have needed that phone call if Mind Tools for Managers had been written in 1980.  In fact, if I could recommend just one book for anyone transitioning into a leadership role it would be Manktelow’s and Birkinshaw’s comprehensive review of everything every manager needs to know.

 

Their review covers personal advice on managing your own stress, managing teams and motivating the people in them.  It reviews most major principles in positive psychology, cognitive behavior therapy, HR principles and I/O psychology that touch upon the world of work.  Each principle, and there are far more than a hundred, is clearly described in ways that make its application to management straightforward.  The book also provides extensive references mostly to web-based links for the reader searching for more information or background.

 

The book is not only a great review for all seasoned managers but also a requirement for new ones.


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