Work Happy - by Jill Geisler (Paperback)

About the Book

Offers advice on achieving happy workplaces, providing steps on improving each element of management, from collaboration and communication to conflict resolution and coaching.

Book Synopsis

When Jill Geisler was appointed to news director of her local station at the age of 27, her senior managerial experience was limited to a high school job at a candy shop. Thirty years later, she is one of the leading consultants for managers across the country. WORK HAPPY shares what she's learned over the years, specifically, what makes good bosses great.

Oftentimes, managers find themselves in the same position as Geisler did 30 years ago; they were good performers, so they were tapped to lead a team. But what made them good at their craft isn't guaranteed to make them good at helping others excel. They have managerial skill gaps, big ones, and their mistakes can hurt employees, businesses and their own careers. In WORK HAPPY, Geisler specifically addresses these skill gaps and provides managers with practical and precise research-based tools they can put to use immediately.

The book is divided into three sections: What Great Bosses Know and Do; How Great Bosses Grow Great Employees; and How Great Bosses Build Great Places to Work. The chapters in each section address the various challenges that managers face in the work place and specific advice for conquering them. Chapters include:

- What Employees Never Forget-and Never Forgive

- Manage Yourself So You Can Lead Others

- Tough Times, Tough Love; Handling Problem People and Tricky Situations

- Why It Pays to be a Coach

- How to Make Collaboration a Way of Life

- Would Your Best People Tell Their Best Friends to Work Here?

Along with the advice in each chapter, Geisler also includes quotes from real employees about great bosses and what they do so well, warnings about misapplying the book's advice, and quizzes and self-assessment tools for manager's to self-diagnose their strengths and weaknesses.

In WORK HAPPY, Jill Geisler teaches managers to commiserate with challenges, laugh at absurdities and celebrate success.

Review Quotes

"Geisler, head of the Poynter Institute's leadership and management faculty and voice of the popular podcast What Great Bosses Know, has distilled years of management experience and study into this practical step-by-step guide to improving leadership skills. Covering topics including types of power, how to give and receive constructive feedback, coaching versus fixing, self-awareness and self-management, Geisler provides useful quizzes and assessments to help the reader translate the concepts into personal learning. This positive, useful work is sure to be a go-to manual for those new to management."
--Publishers Weekly

"In a crisp, clear, upbeat style, Geisler cracks the code for what it takes to lead and to manage, even in times of change. Her experience as a leader, a coach, and a trainer of leaders comes through on every page. If you face the complex challenge of being your best as a leader and manager, WORK HAPPY puts a management guru by your side."--Peggy Holman, author, Engaging Emergence

"Jill has a talent for making great leadership seem slap-your-forehead simple. That's because her work in WORK HAPPY sits atop mountainous research and real-life experience that has been honed and scrutinized by some of the most exacting leaders around. The result is practical, rock-solid advice that you're ready to act on before she's done talking."--Keith Woods, vice president, NPR

"Jill Geisler has an uncanny ability to unravel the most complicated workplace problems and come up with creative solutions to resolve them."--Bob Schieffer, CBS News

"Jill Geisler's writing mirrors her compelling workshops. WORK HAPPY is a smart and substantive book that offers meaningful, practical advice to leaders at all levels in any organization."--Robert M. Steele, Ph.D., director, Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics, DePauw University

"Simply put, this book is a gift. A gift to any young manager in a new stretch assignment. A gift to any senior executive seeking to inspire a workforce. A gift to anyone driven to learn how to become a better leader. Jill Geisler's intelligence and warmth, captured within these pages, offers the reader an indispensable blend of best practices and comforting thoughts. She has created a safe place to think about becoming a better boss---which makes her something of a gift, too."
--Robert King, senior vice president, ESPN

"Want to be a Great Boss? Then read WORK HAPPY, which explains with detailed work plans and assessment tools how to create a great work environment that gets results. Get one book for yourself---and another for your boss too. You'll both be happier for it!"--Charlene Li, author, Open Leadership, and co-author, Groundswell

"Want to love your job and reap the rewards of a productive staff? The secrets to achieve that are found in the pages of WORK HAPPY, as Jill Geisler challenges everything you know to manage yourself in order to lead others to success."--Susana Schuler, vice president of news, Raycom Media

"WORK HAPPY is an accessible, useful encyclopedia of managerial guidance artfully drawn from Jill Geisler's years as a master boss, learner, teacher, and coach. I just wish she had written it forty years ago....would have saved me lots of angst."
--Marty Linsky, Cambridge Leadership Associates, and faculty, Harvard Kennedy School

About the Author

Jill Geisler heads the leadership and management faculty of the Poynter Institute. She teaches, writes and consults on critical issues for leaders and counts among her clients The Boston Globe, CNN, and the Washington Post. Jill holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin a master's in leadership studies from Duquesne University.