Book Titles

Acting confident will help you become confident. Confidence is also important because, like all emotions, it is contagious and will spread to followers.

The ability to convey confidence isn’t something most bosses are born with; they learn it through mentoring and experience.

People want to oversee, work for, and patronize winners, and it comforts and calms them to believe the boss is in control.

Everyone wins if you can bring yourself to give your people as much credit as possible and take as little as possible.

Refusal to accept blame, pointing fingers at others, and wimpy language can help bosses keep their jobs for awhile, but it usually backfires in the long run.

Experiments… show that managers who took responsibility for bad events like pay freezes and failed projects were seen as more powerful, competent, and likable than those who denied responsibility.

…willingness to accept blame for future setbacks shows how, to get and keep a management job, skilled bosses talk and act as if there is a strong link between their actions and followers’ performance.

Ask your people what they need to succeed and then try to give it to them. Obvious, isn’t it? It is also remarkably rare.

The best bosses dance on the edge of overconfidence, but a healthy dose of self-doubt and humility saves them from turning arrogant and pigheaded.

Listen to those under your supervision. Really listen. Don’t act as if you’re listening and let it go in one ear and out the other. Faking it is worse than not doing it at all. – Coach John Wooden