Cheryl Stone, SPHR, reviews Margaret Morford’s book Management Courage: Having the Heart of a Lion. She finds the book a quick read that will be useful to human resources professionals.
In her book, Management Courage: Having the Heart of a Lion
1. Be painfully honest.
2. Never treat people identically.
3. Don’t use individuals or policies as a crutch.
4. Ask for and give real feedback.
5. Take the blame.
6. Leave soul-sucking situations (yes, she said “soul-sucking!”).
Morford applies her own career experiences to each of these principles to demonstrate their effectiveness or the pain of having not followed them. She ends each chapter with “unsettling questions to test your management courage.” This book is a quick read with powerful advice. Morford is as good a writer as she is a speaker — able to drive points home without a lot of fluff.
As Morford acknowledges in her book, it takes great courage to manage against the norm and the path of managing with courage is “always the one that is the hardest for you personally, makes you the most uncomfortable, and causes you the most pain for the longest period of time.” Still, she makes a good case for her principles and assures the reader that managing with courage will set the good managers apart as ever-increasing competition for the best employees creates a need for us to reassess our management style.
Cheryl Stone, SPHR, is Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Training for BankWest, Inc., a South Dakota community bank. Cheryl is a poster on the HRHero.com Employer’s Forum and has worked in the field of human resources for more than 20 years.