Book Review : Moxie for Managers: The Secret to Evolving from Manager to Leader

I hope that every manager in my organization reads this book

"Moxie for Managers" by Ann Tardy is a must read for anyone who wants to be a manager and for people who want to know what to expect from a good manager.

Ann Tardy's approach to management is that you cannot motivate people, but you can learn how to help people motivate themselves. The manager's job is to influence this internal motivation by understanding what is important to each person. By working on helping people fulfill what is important to them, make them feel respected and valued (something we all want) in turn inspires loyalty and enthusiasm. When I worked for the bad managers, I felt I was there to help them. When I worked for the good managers, I felt they were there to help me. This books helps helps explain what specific actions made me feel that way. Ann Tardy makes it surprisingly simple.

Moxie has many discussions and specific example how to motivate people. People are very similar in some basic respects. I recognized myself in a number of examples in this book. Bad managers took credit for my work or assigned achievements to their entire team, my good managers went out of the way to give me credit. I felt appreciated, I felt my hard work was noticed, I worked even harder.

Ann Tardy discusses how to give flexibility and control to the members of your team which improves morale and overall productivity. Again, examples are simple and specific. It becomes clear why we all hate to work for micro-managers and why micro-managing is counter-productive.

I liked the section on Participatory Bias. When people come up with solutions to a problem, those solutions gain immediate support because they were generated by the people rather than the solutions that were imposed by the management.

Each chapter ends of with a set of specific actions a manager can take to apply the skills discussed in that chapter in their work place. These actions are simple and realistic, and would apply to any work environment.

This book is a must read for any manager and any organization. What the book suggest is not difficult to achieve, but requires discipline and willingness to give up some control. But there is a huge payback for those actions. I am going to post a recommendation for this book at work and I hope that every manager in the organization reads it.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★