HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself, Vol. 2: HBR's 10 Must Reads Series

by Harvard Business Review

You're adept at managing your job - working toward the goals of your team, your unit, and your company. But too often busy managers neglect to apply their planning, management, and execution skills to themselves. How do you make time to manage yourself? You need to focus on your work - succeeding in the job you have now. But you also need to think about your career and professional growth - actively plotting, nurturing, and developing the arc of your working life. Finally, you need to balance your work with the rest of your life - finding time to strengthen the connections between your work, your family, and your other commitments.

Get more of the management ideas you want, from the authors you trust, with HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself (Vol. 2). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you stay engaged, be productive, and maintain your sanity throughout your working life.

With insights from leading experts, this book will inspire you to identify areas for personal growth; assess your strengths, work preferences, values, and contributions; build your skill set and stay relevant; develop learning agility; map out a plan for where you'd like your career to go - both short and long term; find fulfillment in your work; and prepare for your next opportunity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business

Audible Audio

Published March 23, 2021

Reviews

[Michael Burress · Rating 5 out of 5]

HBR 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself, Vol. 2 is put together in a very manageable way with a focus on 5 categories and 16 areas within these domains. This will allow anyone easy access to accelerate improving yourself, staff, and organization. So important today with empowerment to laser focus on improvement by chunking down efforts, but remaining purposeful in development for the bigger areas too. Allowing you to sort through the noise and reduce the chaos in todays busy fast paced world of business. An excellent road map to get that promotion, career step, or just enjoy your current position more.

[Sil · Rating 2 out of 5]

I initially picked up this book because I found Harvard's classic Peter F. Drucker's Managing Oneself to be a great read. Unfortunately, this collection of articles fell short of expectations.

The book opens with a discussion about finding your purpose as a leader, offering examples of personal goals from managers. For instance, the CEO of Heineken USA defines his purpose as, “To be the wuxia master who saves the kingdom,” while another declares, “Always find the frogs!” Honestly, I couldn’t take the book seriously after reading these.

The content is primarily aimed at leaders and managers with teams, which isn’t immediately clear before starting. It’s a typical management book, relying heavily on frameworks, acronyms, case studies, and step-by-step guides. While this structured approach might appeal to some, it often overcomplicates ideas that could be explained more effectively by focusing on the underlying “why.”

The bonus article on negotiation strategies was the most interesting for me, it offers actionable advice on responding to counterparts in specific negotiation situations. Another worthwhile inclusion is an article about helping managers focus on their strengths instead of only their weaknesses and how to leverage them effectively. Overall, this book may be useful for some leaders or managers but overall, it was very disappointing.

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have VERY mixed feelings on about 3 of these “best reads”—the ones about how to deal with racism and sexism in the office specifically. I would love to read reviews by BIPOC folks tho since I’m a cis bi white woman. One basically tells BIPOC folx to “keep your head down unless it’s worth it.” Then the next article discusses a woman who called her boss on his inappropriate behavior and he “suddenly” realized the error of this ways and she got promoted to VP the next year (fear of lawsuit and retribution anyone?!?!), and the next says how important it is for men to listen to women in the fight for equality and feminism. Where was that perspective in the race article? The final article does lore racial justice but still has an undercurrent of “keep your head down.” While these authors are all different, what value does it bring to include authors who tell people to endure injustices? This isn’t the 1920s. We have legal recourse available. Why not support BIPOC and women by encouraging them how to build a case against mistreatment in the workplace? So yeah, TOTALLY missed the mark on this one HBR. 3 stars for the other articles.

[Susan Wilson]

Great access to HBR articles. Top 2 for me were Anderson’s Learning to Learn which gave me some extra tools to teach Growth Mindset. Loved getting someone to reframe “It’s boring” to “I wonder why others find it interesting?” I also will use the tools for “Making Yourself Indispensable” where it advises rating your leadership competencies in a matrix measuring your strength, passion and organisation need. This determines where to focus. Good resource.

[Rodrigo Pinillos Osnayo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Complemento (con artículos más recientes) de la compilación previa (On managing yourself, Vol. 1). A diferencia del primero, encontrará menos artículos "clásicos", y aunque cada uno tiene algo valioso que aportar, no todos son igualmente relevantes.

[Putri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of articles are enlightening and I like some articles are quite updated. Many cases are subjected to what happens in the U.S., but I think the solutions can be applied into other cases that have similar concepts. However, in general, the book is not what I expected.

[Kelevilin Kimathi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Managing yourself vol 2

This is a follow-up of the first volume on the same subject..it deals with how to navigate the various environmental challenges you will likely encounter in the journey of life..

[PS Pranika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Resourceful - Practical - Simple