Management Pocketbook

Our books are very different, and not just because they are pocket-size (more on this later). Imagine an overhead slide, the sort that trainers frequently use: keywords, bullet-point lists and lots of visual support. Our Pocketbooks are very similar. We strip away all the superfluous information, the padding, and present just the key facts. It cuts down on reading and saves valuable time.

Coaching is aimed at improving performance at work. This is done by turning the activities people do into learning situations, in a planned way and under guidance. The Coaching Pocketbook defines the coach's role and explains how coaching differs from the other 'helping skills' of advising, instructing, counselling and mentoring. There are four key stages to coaching, namely assessing current performance levels, setting outcomes for learning, agreeing tactics/initiating action, and giving feedback. The author explains each stage and then moves on to summarise the various skills required.

Fully engaged and motivated people perform better, enjoy greater job satisfaction, are more loyal and bring the manager and team leader the outcomes they have targeted. Doug Miller, author of the Engagement Pocketbook, has distilled decades of theory on the topic of engagement to produce the SPARC model designed to help managers on a day-to-day basis get the best out of their people. HR professionals, coaches, mentors and trainers will also find the model insightful.

The Mentoring Pocketbook - now in its second edition and significantly extended - shows how to design and manage a mentoring scheme, how to prepare to be a mentor, how to conduct mentoring sessions, how to maintain the relationship through the different stages and how to evaluate mentoring. Before looking at the actual mentoring process, the authors deal with the uses of mentoring within organisations (particularly in the context of managing change and mission/value statements) and explain how mentoring differs from coaching, training and appraisals.