Suggest a good textbook on Organisational Behaviour/managing and working with people?

[Nereth1]

Hi Everyone,

I'm a relatively young engineer in a relatively small manufacturing company. I have always considered myself more of a technical engineer but I recently have been told by my higher-ups that I am going to have to start managing people more and more in my career, which is going to require some gap-filling, because I have been pigeon holing myself into a technical role and have not practiced the relevant business and management skills.

The first thing I have been told to do is get a book on the topic of organisational behaviour and go cover to cover quite thoroughly. I wasn't able to get a recommendation on an appropriate book, but the advice has been to find a big heavy tome of a book with a lot of content.

I have found in other fields, there are usually a couple of books considered 'bibles' in the field. The ones everyone in that field has on their book shelf. Is there something like this for organisational behaviour? Google gets me several hits but very few discussions on what is good and what is not. I am legitimately interested in improving in this area, but I don't yet have the competence to be able to pick good from bad, so I have to be able to trust whatever I will read.

Can anyone recommend some thorough books on organisational behaviour, appropriate for someone with no management background or similar, but which go into enough detail as to be useful?

Thank you very much.

 

[truckandbus]

My resources are quite dated and I wouldn't consider them textbooks but two good easy reads are "Leading at The Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition" (2000) and "Fad Surfing In The Boardroom: Managing In The Age Of Instant Answers" (1995). The first provides good advice for managing people through your personal behaviours and the second provides fair warning regarding (then) current management strategies and providing advice on how to take the best elements of each.

 

[KENAT]

"I recently have been told by my higher-ups that I am going to have to start managing people more and more in my career"

Why?

Why do you have to do so, as opposed to doing so would open the flood gates to management pay & perks etc.?

Is managing people what you want to do?

Maybe you're better off missing out on a few $ if it means you enjoy more what you do and don't kick the cat every night when you get home then die of a heart attack at 45 from the stress, or kill yourself from the misery of never ending PowerPoint presentations & delusional Gant charts.

Just because they took the management route to chase more $ (or whatever reason) doesn't inherently mean you need to do it.

How do you know it will impact your overall career, it may be what you need to do to progress up the pyramid at your current employer but that's making at least 2 assumptions that may not be correct:

1. You want to progress up the ladder.​

2. You will stay at your current employer for most or all of your career i.e. not quit, get fired/laid off or any of the other reasons you might leave a specific employer​

My perception is that many managers go that route because they're chasing $ and/or their technical skills & abilities are a bit week to make that money the technical route so they take the easier path.

My perception is that they then assume that everyone else is like them.

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(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[Nereth1]

Hi Kenat,

These are all questions I have been running through my head for years, and especially in the last few months. They are very valid. There are a few answers. The simplest is that I have zero opposition to learning this stuff anyway as I expect it to be useful enough in business even if I stay technical (and another comment I have received is that the division between technical and management is not as wide as I think). All learning is good learning, which is an attitude that I think has treated me well so far.

Longer answer: At my current company, other than the guy who has told me this during my performance review (who is himself a very experienced engineer that went into management some 20 years ago, and the current engineering manager), we're a very young team. The guy who told me this has said that he has managed people for the past 20 years and thus on a technical level he is not necessarily in an experienced position any more. As such he has said that I am more or less the "senior engineer"/"technical lead". To that end, he needs me spread across as many projects as possible and adding value to all of them.

From a technical level, dabbling in every single project is optimal to me - we do a very wide range of projects between custom designs and problem solving for clients, to internal manufacturing and quality engineering work. Maximum exposure is maximum experience gained at this stage in my career.

However, both he and I have identified that that leaves me extremely thin on time, and therefore in order to do it, I will have to delegate more of my own work, and in order to add value while doing it, I will have to be able to communicate with, and potentially motivate action from, the people who are actually on those projects. This leaves an obvious need for some people-skills and understanding of organisational behaviour.

So from a technical level, right now, these skills are needed in order to maximize my growth anyway, despite not themselves being the technical skills.

In terms of where I want my career to go, I have always liked the idea of bouncing around and effectively being an internal technical consultant to multiple departments. I didn't know if it was realistic, but by pure luck it has happened at my current company. That kind of position in the future, in larger companies and so on, requires a lot of technical skills (else you are not useful to the people you try to help), but also requires a lot of people skills to actually leverage your knowledge when you won't be applying it yourself. So to that end, gaining the knowledge that he has recommended also helps me potentially move my career the way I want it to move.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Your boss sounds like he's on solid ground in reasoning... he knows he has lost his tech edge by being away too long (be careful you don't end up on the same path) and is willing to bring in help. I don't believe you said how young you were in your career, so there's the possibility making you the jack-of-all-trades (a position I enjoy) won't be as useful as everyone thinks... if you're too inexperienced overall, how much help can you be to a project? Hopefully your boss sees otherwise and is making this decision with eyes wide open.

I wish I could offer some book suggestions, but I haven't seen any myself. I'm paying attention to any suggestions others have, just in case, but I've always found books like that to be a bit too "fluffy" for my taste... common sense things that you already do, or things you need to remind yourself continually that you aren't doing (and a book won't help that). Still, I'm open to the possibility.

Treat people fairly, and treat them with respect. You can't get (externally) frustrated with those in your charge, something more easily taken for granted when you're just one of the guys. Once you learn to handle situations in a calm and collected manner, a lot of them will tend to resolve themselves with a little bit of discussion. when that simple tip isn't followed, that's when problems escalate out of control.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[tygerdawg]

Based on your comments, it sounds like your boss is moving up / moving out. In most organizations in my experience, you aren't allowed to do that until you have your replacement in place & ready. It seems like he's identified you as his replacement and he is attempting to groom you for the job.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

http://www.bluetechnik.com

 

[ornerynorsk]

It may sound cliché or old, but 7 habits is pretty good. Apply first to yourself, and then help facilitate its application by the people working for you. A good manager works for his/her people, not the other way around. Yes, there is expectation and accountability, but you will build solid loyalty, trust, and commitment when you work for them. The troublemakers and drama queens will make themselves sufficiently visible if you are observant, get those weeded out asap.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[Nereth1]

Hey everyone,

I appreciate all of the responses so far in terms of career advice, how to act in teams, and in terms of book recommendations.

I do want to clarify something though - I was told specifically to get a book on organisational behaviour, not a more broad book on management, regardless of if the end goal is the same. It's not necessarily the case that I go into an explicit management position in my company, but it is likely that I will be more often in a position of leadership in both this company and others in my career. The specific field of organisational behaviour is something that my manager suggested as critically important for all of these positions.

So if anyone has looked into this kind of thing before, are there any texts closer to that field that can be recommended? As I mentioned I can find a few with a search, but have no way to see what is good and what is not, so I'm wandering if others have been through this field and picked some favourites.

Thanks again.

 

[TheTick]

Follow Liz Ryan on LinkedIn.

 

[IRstuff]

Don't completely discount management books, since management does not work in a vacuum, and interfaces directly with the behavior of organizations and individuals.

TTFN
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[Nereth1]

Hi IRstuff,

That's pretty close to exactly what I've been told by my manager that started all this.

But he was quite adamant about me going through an organisational behaviour book, and coming to him for discussion as I do it. I think there would be more reading and development to come at the completion of this step one.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Hopefully this is not a passive-aggressive attempt at pointing out a flaw in your own organizational behavior...

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[Nereth1]

It certainly reads like that when described. But it was told to me during an otherwise very positive review in which I was told I would have to take more of a senior/leadership role. That fact, the fact that I had spent the last few weeks mentioning I wanted to know what gaps to fill, and the fact that it's also probably a pretty true weakness of mine, makes me feel like the advice was given with sincerity.

 

[kacarrol]

It's not an organization behaviour book but a co-worker suggested I read "How to Win Friends and Influence People". I wouldn't have looked at this book twice due to the cheesy title but I have a lot of respect for this guys opinion, so I'm giving it a read. Seems pretty good so far, and it's a light easy read.