One of the most important decisions you'll make as a manager—and you'll be making it again and again, on a daily basis—is how best to approach and deal with your employees.

Too often, this is a decision that is made by default: managers, especially new ones, don't so much decide on a management style as fall into one, without giving the question much thought: they simply act toward their employees in a way that's comfortable and convenient for them, in keeping with their personalities, or perhaps by modeling themselves on a manager they've worked under in the past. (Some even mimic their parents!)

But this is a big mistake. How you interact with your staff, and indeed with other employees in your organization, will be a major determinant of your success as a manager. It will impact how your employees behave, how they perform, and how they perceive you; and it will go a long way toward determining how your superiors perceive you as well. Your success as a manager depends to a very great extent to how you deal with the question of management style. You should be thinking hard about this question, not simply allowing it to happen to you.

This book will help you to understand the key elements of management style, how to decide when to use each one, and what the advantages and disadvantages of each approach are. By the time you're done reading, you will be the sort of manager who approaches each situation with thought and foresight, rather than one who just stumbles into things.