The Decisive Manager: Get Results, Build Morale, and Be the Boss Your People Deserve

The Decisive Manager is an ideal resource for anyone, at any level, who manages people and the problems that arise. It’s an essential read for working out issues between coworkers, addressing problem areas, and getting everyone on track to succeed.

People issues. They seemingly arise out of nowhere and just don’t go away. It’s critical that managers handle them right.

As a manager, you need to know so many things about managing people, but you don’t even know what to ask! The Decisive Manager can help. With examples of typical situations that managers encounter and advice on how to handle them, it’s an easy-to-use guide for people managers and has information on hiring to firing, and everything in between.

• Finding and Hiring the Best Talent: recruiting, interviewing, job posting, job offers, onboarding, and more.
• Creating a Positive Employee Experience: employee engagement, retention, and employee motivation.
• Paying and Rewarding Employees: compensation transparency, employee wellness and mental health, and rewards and recognition.
• Helping Employees Grow and Develop: creating a learning culture, strategies for doing so, and the manager’s role in employee development.
• Understanding Policies and Practices: the role of policies, applying them to specific situations, harassment and office romance.
• Ensuring Graceful Endings: layoffs, terminations for cause, exit interviews and more.

The important issues surrounding remote and hybrid work are also addressed, including how to best support your staff, onboarding from afar, and keeping accountability yet flexibility for all.

Concerned about navigating the changing workplace and avoiding legal pitfalls? There are questions and essential answers about these issues, too. Managing people correctly is critical to every manager’s success. The Decisive Manager will help with those unexpected challenges that arise too often. This is an essential read for all who lead.

About the Author

Barbara Mitchell and Cornelia Gamlem are authors, speakers, and consultants. They bring a wealth of business and human resources experience to their writing. Both worked for major corporations before starting their individual consulting practices where each worked with a variety of organizations. Together, they wrote The Big Book of HR, The Essential Workplace Conflict Handbook, The Conflict Resolution Handbook, the award winning The Manager’s Answer Book and They Did What? Barbara is also the coauthor of The Essential HR Handbook.