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Welcome to Management: How to Grow From Top Performer to Excellent Leader
You've done it! You've been promoted to manager. Now what?
Every year, millions of top performers are promoted to management-level jobs--only to discover that the tactics that got them promoted are not the tactics that will make them effective in their new role. In Welcome to Management, Ryan Hawk--the creator and host of The Learning Leader Show, "the most dynamic leadership podcast out there" (Forbes) that will "help you lead smarter" (Inc.)--provides practical, actionable advice and tools designed to ensure that transition is a successful one.
Drawn from in-depth interviews with over 300 of the most forward-thinking leaders around the world, as well as his own professional experience going from exceptional individual producer to new leader, this essential tactical guide for newly promoted managers offers an actionable three-part framework for successfully transitioning into your new position. Learn how to:
- lead yourself: build skills and earn credibility. Compliance can be commanded, but commitment cannot. People reserve their full capacity for emotional commitment for leaders they find credible, and credibility must be earned.
- build your team develop a healthy and sustainable culture of mutual trust and respect that creates cohesion. This includes effective hiring and firing practices.
- lead your team: set a clear strategy and vision for your team, communicate effectively, and ultimately drive the results the organization is counting on your team to deliver.
Through case studies, hundreds of interviews, and personal stories, the book will help high performers make the leap from individual contributor to manager with greater ease, grace, courage, and effectiveness. Welcome to management!
Every year, millions of top performers are promoted to management-level jobs--only to discover that the tactics that got them promoted are not the tactics that will make them effective in their new role. In Welcome to Management, Ryan Hawk--the creator and host of The Learning Leader Show, "the most dynamic leadership podcast out there" (Forbes) that will "help you lead smarter" (Inc.)--provides practical, actionable advice and tools designed to ensure that transition is a successful one.
Drawn from in-depth interviews with over 300 of the most forward-thinking leaders around the world, as well as his own professional experience going from exceptional individual producer to new leader, this essential tactical guide for newly promoted managers offers an actionable three-part framework for successfully transitioning into your new position. Learn how to:
- lead yourself: build skills and earn credibility. Compliance can be commanded, but commitment cannot. People reserve their full capacity for emotional commitment for leaders they find credible, and credibility must be earned.
- build your team develop a healthy and sustainable culture of mutual trust and respect that creates cohesion. This includes effective hiring and firing practices.
- lead your team: set a clear strategy and vision for your team, communicate effectively, and ultimately drive the results the organization is counting on your team to deliver.
Through case studies, hundreds of interviews, and personal stories, the book will help high performers make the leap from individual contributor to manager with greater ease, grace, courage, and effectiveness. Welcome to management!
1 pages, Audio CD
Published April 10, 2020
180 people are currently reading
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
January 28, 2020
Ryan Hawk just produced the book I needed 8 years ago. During my college years, I
played 4 years of college tennis and after my senior year, I was offered an assistant coach
position at the same school. It was a very tough transition because I went from an individual
contributor to leading some of my teammates in a matter of months.
Ryan draws examples from his podcast and personal experience to explain how
someone can face this transition period in their careers and feel adequate to handle it
effectively. He starts the book with how one can start leading oneself, then he moves to how
one can build an efficient team. And he finishes with how one can lead the team in an powerful,
meaningful and productive way.
Lastly, I wanted to mention his “Acknowledgment Section”. Ryan has said many times in
his podcast that when he picks up a book, the first thing he does is read the Acknowledgment
Section. He does that, because in that section he can see who were the people that influenced
the writer the most in his life. Ryan’s “Acknowledgement Section” is one of the most thought
out and detailed section I have ever read. I wish he would write a book just about the people he
acknowledged in his book.
If you are an individual contributor now but has aspirations to move up to a
management position, or you are already in a leadership position: read this book! It will give you
so many insights that you could start preparing for or using on day 1!
played 4 years of college tennis and after my senior year, I was offered an assistant coach
position at the same school. It was a very tough transition because I went from an individual
contributor to leading some of my teammates in a matter of months.
Ryan draws examples from his podcast and personal experience to explain how
someone can face this transition period in their careers and feel adequate to handle it
effectively. He starts the book with how one can start leading oneself, then he moves to how
one can build an efficient team. And he finishes with how one can lead the team in an powerful,
meaningful and productive way.
Lastly, I wanted to mention his “Acknowledgment Section”. Ryan has said many times in
his podcast that when he picks up a book, the first thing he does is read the Acknowledgment
Section. He does that, because in that section he can see who were the people that influenced
the writer the most in his life. Ryan’s “Acknowledgement Section” is one of the most thought
out and detailed section I have ever read. I wish he would write a book just about the people he
acknowledged in his book.
If you are an individual contributor now but has aspirations to move up to a
management position, or you are already in a leadership position: read this book! It will give you
so many insights that you could start preparing for or using on day 1!
July 5, 2020
Like Ryan's podcasts (which I highly recommend), this book offers practical strategies that will help high performers make the leap from individual contributor to manager with greater ease, grace, courage, and effectiveness. I wish I'd have read years ago! Here's a summary of the content:
Lead yourself: Earning credibility - Do not expect respect, buy-in, and attentiveness from your team as an automatic benefit of your new role and title as their boss. Compliance can be commanded, but commitment cannot. People reserve their full capacity for emotional commitment for leaders they find credible, and credibility must be earned. Whether on the field or in the office, the best way to go about earning the credibility that leads to commitment is by modeling the behaviors you want your team to exhibit.
Lead Yourself on the Inside - To lead yourself well, we must begin by taking a hard look at what is happening in your heart and mind. The real work of leadership begins inside your own head. What are the commonalities of those who sustain excellence over an extended period of time? These six words: Build yourself into a learning machine. “Learning ma¬chine” efficiently captures two important concepts: thoughtfulness and intentionality. A person who is a “learning machine” is intentionally and constantly seeking new information with the goal of be¬coming better. Machines are not organic; they don’t spontaneously generate. They have to be built. The same is true for a person to become a learning machine. Consider the Cycle of Learning, which involves 4 steps.
Step 1: Learn – Proactively seek information sourced from mentors and coaches.
Step 2: Test - Scholar Anders Ericsson outlines a four-step process for “deliberate practice”:
1. Set a specific goal.
2. Cultivate intense focus.
3. Ask for immediate feedback.
4. Seek frequent discomfort.
Step 3: Reflect & Adjust
Step 4: Teach – Teaching others cements what you have learned. Your preparation is a powerful engine for learning to take place. Preparation is the greatest medicine for fear. Establish a growth mindset.
Lead Yourself on the Outside - People who have discipline are able to do hard things. Why? Self-discipline gives them the ability to control their feelings and overcome their weaknesses, the ability to pursue what they think is right despite a multitude of temptations to abandon it. In the words of pioneering baseball mental skills coach Harvey Dorfman, it is through self-discipline that one “is a master of, rather than a slave to, his thoughts and emotions.” Therein lies the secret to turning all the intellectual learning into real, tangible change in the physical world. This process starts with mastering what we do with our bodies, with our time, with our effort. Disciplined leaders seek out opportunities to test themselves by purposefully and aggressively seeking out discomfort. You can’t know how far you can go without regularly put¬ting yourself in situations where you are stretched beyond the known and the comfortable.
Knowing where your time goes and being strategic and intentional about what you spend your time doing represent a huge lever that turns efforts to lead yourself into success¬fully leading others.
Build your team: Cultivate a culture of excellence – the social system, collective energy and essence of its people – This comes from leading with vulnerability to create a place of psychological safety and empowering your team to have ownership over their work. It starts with understanding what it means to build an excellent culture and how we, as leaders, work to do it and sustain it on a daily basis so that it lasts. That means creating a place where intellectual curiosity and creativity are encouraged, and understanding when tough decisions of change have to be made.
Demonstrate competence. You possess the necessary and critical skills required to lead in your organizational context.
Exhibit conviction. You display assurance that the chosen course of action will lead to positive results.
Set high standards. You aim high, both for yourself and your team.
Listen to your team. You listen to feedback and you incorporate that feedback appropriately.
Work hard. You put in the time and effort necessary to get the job done.
Do the difficult. You do the hard things, like holding people accountable, confronting bad behavior, and staying true to your values even when it hurts.
Be consistent. Your words, actions, decisions, and investments are in alignment.
There are undoubtedly many different components to building a healthy, performing culture. Three in particular are valuable: trust, vulnerability, and ownership.
Trust is the foundation for everything you will do with your team. You will have to earn it, but it doesn’t stop there. Equally important and maybe even harder to do: You will have to learn to trust your team members. Regardless of your entry point, as the new manager you will have to build trust and overcome the skepticism that’s resulted from previous bad experiences.
Vulnerability is about connection. People connect more with those who are open and willing to share where they’re weak. As the leader, we must work to create a safe place for our team members to share truth. In order to gain trust, we must give trust, and the quickest way to build trust is to share your own vulnerabilities. The key to making it OK to be vulnerable is establishing an environment of psychological safety. Dr. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, defines psychological safety as “a climate in which people are comfortable being (and expressing) themselves.”
The most successful teams are made of people who have ownership over their decisions and their actions. People don’t feel ownership if you tell them what to do. According to Gallup, only 3 in 10 U.S. workers strongly agree that at work, their opinions seem to count.
Manage your roster – the makeup of your team. Surround yourself with excellent people.
Hiring – what are you looking for? Create your list of “must-have” or “nonnegotiable” qualities. Avoid the temptation to enumerate generically desirable virtues. For this to be an effective guide for your hiring process, you need to tease out why each of these qualities is important to you and your business. After defining what you value in a teammate, now comes the hard part: figuring out how to accurately assess if the candidates you are interviewing possess those skills.
Lead your team: Get to know your team and understand what makes them go, because making them go is now your job. How well others perform is now the measuring stick for your performance. You are now responsible for steering the ship without getting to put your hands on the wheel. It’s quite a different problem to solve. And it all comes down to the results. As the leader, you are ultimately responsible for the results that your team produces. Be an excellent communicator with a powerful story that really connects with your team.
In their book In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman coined a simple phrase to describe this most basic form of leading others. They called it “Management By Wandering Around” (MBWA). The purpose of MBWA is to connect with your people through the serendipity of random interactions, to gain a qualitative understanding of what’s happening on the front lines. To be excellent, you need to lead, manage, and coach.
Leading - The act of leading is about providing purpose, direction, and inspiration to the group. It presents a vision, sees the big picture, and devises a strategy to accomplish the mission at hand. It’s thinking through a progression of lenses – from vision to mission to strategy to tactics.
Managing - Great management is figuring out how to work within the current constraints of the system you are in. It is the administration and stewardship of resources. This includes managing change. The primary reason change is met with resistance is uncertainty. One way to help your team navigate change successfully is to help them focus on what isn’t changing. To overcome your team’s resistance, intentionally couple your messages about the coming change with reassuring reinforcements of continuity.
Coaching - If leading is about strategic vision and managing is about administrative stewardship, then coaching is about develop¬mental teaching. To be a coach is to give instruction delivered not to educate or inform but to improve. For the manager of a team, coaching in this manner falls into two types: coaching for professional development (performance) and coaching for personal development (growth). The best coaching for performance happens in the moments closest to when the performance happens. These regular, immediate bursts of micro-coaching should happen daily. Helping your team make the minor tweaks that improve their skill level doesn’t require huge chunks of time devoted to training efforts. Coaching for the personal development of your employees involves more long-term thinking. In this mode of teaching, your goal is to help them grow as a person in ways beyond their job performance.
Lead yourself: Earning credibility - Do not expect respect, buy-in, and attentiveness from your team as an automatic benefit of your new role and title as their boss. Compliance can be commanded, but commitment cannot. People reserve their full capacity for emotional commitment for leaders they find credible, and credibility must be earned. Whether on the field or in the office, the best way to go about earning the credibility that leads to commitment is by modeling the behaviors you want your team to exhibit.
Lead Yourself on the Inside - To lead yourself well, we must begin by taking a hard look at what is happening in your heart and mind. The real work of leadership begins inside your own head. What are the commonalities of those who sustain excellence over an extended period of time? These six words: Build yourself into a learning machine. “Learning ma¬chine” efficiently captures two important concepts: thoughtfulness and intentionality. A person who is a “learning machine” is intentionally and constantly seeking new information with the goal of be¬coming better. Machines are not organic; they don’t spontaneously generate. They have to be built. The same is true for a person to become a learning machine. Consider the Cycle of Learning, which involves 4 steps.
Step 1: Learn – Proactively seek information sourced from mentors and coaches.
Step 2: Test - Scholar Anders Ericsson outlines a four-step process for “deliberate practice”:
1. Set a specific goal.
2. Cultivate intense focus.
3. Ask for immediate feedback.
4. Seek frequent discomfort.
Step 3: Reflect & Adjust
Step 4: Teach – Teaching others cements what you have learned. Your preparation is a powerful engine for learning to take place. Preparation is the greatest medicine for fear. Establish a growth mindset.
Lead Yourself on the Outside - People who have discipline are able to do hard things. Why? Self-discipline gives them the ability to control their feelings and overcome their weaknesses, the ability to pursue what they think is right despite a multitude of temptations to abandon it. In the words of pioneering baseball mental skills coach Harvey Dorfman, it is through self-discipline that one “is a master of, rather than a slave to, his thoughts and emotions.” Therein lies the secret to turning all the intellectual learning into real, tangible change in the physical world. This process starts with mastering what we do with our bodies, with our time, with our effort. Disciplined leaders seek out opportunities to test themselves by purposefully and aggressively seeking out discomfort. You can’t know how far you can go without regularly put¬ting yourself in situations where you are stretched beyond the known and the comfortable.
Knowing where your time goes and being strategic and intentional about what you spend your time doing represent a huge lever that turns efforts to lead yourself into success¬fully leading others.
Build your team: Cultivate a culture of excellence – the social system, collective energy and essence of its people – This comes from leading with vulnerability to create a place of psychological safety and empowering your team to have ownership over their work. It starts with understanding what it means to build an excellent culture and how we, as leaders, work to do it and sustain it on a daily basis so that it lasts. That means creating a place where intellectual curiosity and creativity are encouraged, and understanding when tough decisions of change have to be made.
Demonstrate competence. You possess the necessary and critical skills required to lead in your organizational context.
Exhibit conviction. You display assurance that the chosen course of action will lead to positive results.
Set high standards. You aim high, both for yourself and your team.
Listen to your team. You listen to feedback and you incorporate that feedback appropriately.
Work hard. You put in the time and effort necessary to get the job done.
Do the difficult. You do the hard things, like holding people accountable, confronting bad behavior, and staying true to your values even when it hurts.
Be consistent. Your words, actions, decisions, and investments are in alignment.
There are undoubtedly many different components to building a healthy, performing culture. Three in particular are valuable: trust, vulnerability, and ownership.
Trust is the foundation for everything you will do with your team. You will have to earn it, but it doesn’t stop there. Equally important and maybe even harder to do: You will have to learn to trust your team members. Regardless of your entry point, as the new manager you will have to build trust and overcome the skepticism that’s resulted from previous bad experiences.
Vulnerability is about connection. People connect more with those who are open and willing to share where they’re weak. As the leader, we must work to create a safe place for our team members to share truth. In order to gain trust, we must give trust, and the quickest way to build trust is to share your own vulnerabilities. The key to making it OK to be vulnerable is establishing an environment of psychological safety. Dr. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, defines psychological safety as “a climate in which people are comfortable being (and expressing) themselves.”
The most successful teams are made of people who have ownership over their decisions and their actions. People don’t feel ownership if you tell them what to do. According to Gallup, only 3 in 10 U.S. workers strongly agree that at work, their opinions seem to count.
Manage your roster – the makeup of your team. Surround yourself with excellent people.
Hiring – what are you looking for? Create your list of “must-have” or “nonnegotiable” qualities. Avoid the temptation to enumerate generically desirable virtues. For this to be an effective guide for your hiring process, you need to tease out why each of these qualities is important to you and your business. After defining what you value in a teammate, now comes the hard part: figuring out how to accurately assess if the candidates you are interviewing possess those skills.
Lead your team: Get to know your team and understand what makes them go, because making them go is now your job. How well others perform is now the measuring stick for your performance. You are now responsible for steering the ship without getting to put your hands on the wheel. It’s quite a different problem to solve. And it all comes down to the results. As the leader, you are ultimately responsible for the results that your team produces. Be an excellent communicator with a powerful story that really connects with your team.
In their book In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman coined a simple phrase to describe this most basic form of leading others. They called it “Management By Wandering Around” (MBWA). The purpose of MBWA is to connect with your people through the serendipity of random interactions, to gain a qualitative understanding of what’s happening on the front lines. To be excellent, you need to lead, manage, and coach.
Leading - The act of leading is about providing purpose, direction, and inspiration to the group. It presents a vision, sees the big picture, and devises a strategy to accomplish the mission at hand. It’s thinking through a progression of lenses – from vision to mission to strategy to tactics.
Managing - Great management is figuring out how to work within the current constraints of the system you are in. It is the administration and stewardship of resources. This includes managing change. The primary reason change is met with resistance is uncertainty. One way to help your team navigate change successfully is to help them focus on what isn’t changing. To overcome your team’s resistance, intentionally couple your messages about the coming change with reassuring reinforcements of continuity.
Coaching - If leading is about strategic vision and managing is about administrative stewardship, then coaching is about develop¬mental teaching. To be a coach is to give instruction delivered not to educate or inform but to improve. For the manager of a team, coaching in this manner falls into two types: coaching for professional development (performance) and coaching for personal development (growth). The best coaching for performance happens in the moments closest to when the performance happens. These regular, immediate bursts of micro-coaching should happen daily. Helping your team make the minor tweaks that improve their skill level doesn’t require huge chunks of time devoted to training efforts. Coaching for the personal development of your employees involves more long-term thinking. In this mode of teaching, your goal is to help them grow as a person in ways beyond their job performance.
August 23, 2021
Lacked depth. A lot of "you need to do this to be a good manager" but lacked specific, actionable 'how' for almost all cases and no recommendations on where to get those 'hows'.
February 14, 2020
Ryan has done great work summarizing the knowledge he's gained not only from his own experience in leadership and management but from his experience interviewing leaders he admires about their perspectives, as well.
The three things that most inspired me in this book were:
1. "Always see people as people." As a user experience designer, this is a lens I try to focus on my work daily. People are no more human capital, head count, or FTE as they are user.
2. "...it is our job to lose our best-performing employees at some point." Ryan's call to build a place where people go to improve is deeply inspiring. I have had the fortune to work in places like this and I'm looking forward to being the person responsible for creating this type of environment.
3. "Honor the present." Ryan mentioned this in context of starting meetings on time, but I think the mantra is expandable to every facet of the job. Be present.
If nothing else, this book serves as a great introduction to a broader community of thought. There is an extensive list of referenced works, be they articles, books, podcasts that can help build on the topics Ryan introduces. I'm glad to have it around as I'm sure I'll be referencing it in the future!
The three things that most inspired me in this book were:
1. "Always see people as people." As a user experience designer, this is a lens I try to focus on my work daily. People are no more human capital, head count, or FTE as they are user.
2. "...it is our job to lose our best-performing employees at some point." Ryan's call to build a place where people go to improve is deeply inspiring. I have had the fortune to work in places like this and I'm looking forward to being the person responsible for creating this type of environment.
3. "Honor the present." Ryan mentioned this in context of starting meetings on time, but I think the mantra is expandable to every facet of the job. Be present.
If nothing else, this book serves as a great introduction to a broader community of thought. There is an extensive list of referenced works, be they articles, books, podcasts that can help build on the topics Ryan introduces. I'm glad to have it around as I'm sure I'll be referencing it in the future!
April 8, 2020
Maybe this is me, but at some point in time everything seems to be coming together. Following the books of Tasha Eurich on self-awareness, Kate Murphy’s book on listening and Kim Scott’s book on radical candor I came across this new position on management, dedicated to new adepts of leadership. I loved the minimalism in terms of guidance and honesty of the author on the fact that there is no silver lining when it comes to management, because it always boils down to people. Howk however manages to give enough of starting points and strategies to mark the cliffs and rough edges ahead. The book is full of sports references and follow up readings recommendations, which I love as well. I would recommend it to both seasoned managers as a go-to title for getting back to basics and for beginners who just start their journey with management.
February 6, 2020
I’ve read a lot of management / leadership books. This is the best single volume “introduction” management book I’ve ever read.
This book is written to target the strong individual performer who has just been promoted to their first management job. Don’t pass this book up if you don’t fit into that category. I’ve been leading teams for 20 years, and there was a lot of useful information in this book.
I highly recommned this to anyone who currently runs a team, or might in the near future. There are a ton of resources and a lot of references to other places for continued learning. Truly a great value.
This book is written to target the strong individual performer who has just been promoted to their first management job. Don’t pass this book up if you don’t fit into that category. I’ve been leading teams for 20 years, and there was a lot of useful information in this book.
I highly recommned this to anyone who currently runs a team, or might in the near future. There are a ton of resources and a lot of references to other places for continued learning. Truly a great value.
March 18, 2020
For purveyors of business books and books that aim to improve your self-efficacy, this books feels... like a cliff notes. For example, James Clear wrote a whole book (as did Charles Duhigg) on habits. Hawk has a small section on it. There are various other examples of this, but it works - Hawk’s book is a laser focused reference on how to manage well. Not a deep dive into any of the concepts, but a sprint through the essentials. This is a solid reference to have if just learning, or needing some refreshing, to manage a group of people. (Heavy corporate lean, but as an educator aspiring to school administration, I was able to substitute words and it worked).
November 8, 2020
Great primer for those entering leadership / management roles!
Major fan of Ryan Hawk’s podcast, and now also his book.
Major fan of Ryan Hawk’s podcast, and now also his book.
February 10, 2022
For the bros.
August 26, 2022
Audiobook - if you like sports cliches and war tropes, this one’s for you. Some okay advice but no depth. Really, one for bro culture.
February 7, 2023
This book is based on a flawed fundamental assumption that good management is universal, but that is only partly true. For management advice to apply to both military leaders and white collar workers, it must be very generalized, and this generalized advice is easy to find in other books, so there isn’t much value added here.
When the author provides specific examples, they are almost always pulled from the military, sports, or sales, the areas he knows, despite having interviewed hundreds of leaders. So, I can only recommend this book to someone who has not read another management book AND is a new manager in sales, sports or the military. But even for those managers I would recommend reading Bringing Up the Boss instead. It’s much more practical.
As someone who studies management, I cannot agree with some of his ideas.
First, that in-person work is best. It’s only best because that’s the way work was designed. We need new ways of working that are designed around virtual; we don’t need to force everyone back in the office because leaders like the author cannot be bothered to change.
Second, he encourages managers to reduce burnout for their employees but then praises behaviors that lead to burnout when he talks about who to hire.
Finally, he never says it out loud but there is subtext here that the type of culture he values is a kind associated with “sales bros”, which is apparent for example, when he talks about a reward being a trip to the horse track.
Overall, this is another generic manager book that is either too generalized to be useful or to specific to a toxic sales culture. But the author at least got the 10,000 hours myth right and has some interesting insights here and there, so it was not a complete waste of time.
When the author provides specific examples, they are almost always pulled from the military, sports, or sales, the areas he knows, despite having interviewed hundreds of leaders. So, I can only recommend this book to someone who has not read another management book AND is a new manager in sales, sports or the military. But even for those managers I would recommend reading Bringing Up the Boss instead. It’s much more practical.
As someone who studies management, I cannot agree with some of his ideas.
First, that in-person work is best. It’s only best because that’s the way work was designed. We need new ways of working that are designed around virtual; we don’t need to force everyone back in the office because leaders like the author cannot be bothered to change.
Second, he encourages managers to reduce burnout for their employees but then praises behaviors that lead to burnout when he talks about who to hire.
Finally, he never says it out loud but there is subtext here that the type of culture he values is a kind associated with “sales bros”, which is apparent for example, when he talks about a reward being a trip to the horse track.
Overall, this is another generic manager book that is either too generalized to be useful or to specific to a toxic sales culture. But the author at least got the 10,000 hours myth right and has some interesting insights here and there, so it was not a complete waste of time.
March 23, 2020
I started to listen to the Learning Leader podcast around episode 7 and was hooked immediately. As a curious person who has led teams, I quickly learned new skills and action items from this podcast. Fast forward several years later and having this book in my hands. The things I learned along the way in Ryan's podcast are outlined in this book. It's a treasure trove of information for anyone who wants to be a better leader and more importantly, impact people's lives on a daily basis.
Pro's- As with the podcast, Ryan always looks for ways to make these thoughts practical and actionable. It's what separates his work from many others. You will learn many skills that you can implement today like leading effective meetings, coaching and tough conversations, etc. The stories relate the ideas well.
Con's- As in any good review, you have to give constructive feedback and this is why I don't normally give 5 star ratings. Ryan is an athlete and his family has a history of athletics. He speaks to many athlete's. I also am someone how enjoys sports as well. However, many peers would quickly dismiss this book based on all the sports analogies. It is heavy in this area. With all of Ryan's guests, I think he could easily pull enough information that wouldn't be so sports heavy, but that is all I could find to critique.
Pro's- As with the podcast, Ryan always looks for ways to make these thoughts practical and actionable. It's what separates his work from many others. You will learn many skills that you can implement today like leading effective meetings, coaching and tough conversations, etc. The stories relate the ideas well.
Con's- As in any good review, you have to give constructive feedback and this is why I don't normally give 5 star ratings. Ryan is an athlete and his family has a history of athletics. He speaks to many athlete's. I also am someone how enjoys sports as well. However, many peers would quickly dismiss this book based on all the sports analogies. It is heavy in this area. With all of Ryan's guests, I think he could easily pull enough information that wouldn't be so sports heavy, but that is all I could find to critique.
February 10, 2020
I've really enjoyed Ryan Hawk's "welcome to management". What impressed me most was the vast amount of golden nuggets from some of the best leadership gurus out there: Robert Greene, Liz Wiseman, Dan Coyle (just to name a small few). His curation of this wisdom along with his own personal stories made this a highly readable book. Reading all of the books mentioned in this book would take several years. The recommended actions at the end of each chapter are also extremely helpful. What I found most compelling - especially for new managers - is that he is very upfront about leadership lessons that have taken me years to learn. For example: details matter, don't leave important items to chance, prepare - don't waste opportunities. By the end of the book, readers should be able to answer the question that Ryan start's off with all of his podcasts "how do you sustain excellence". There is a lot in this book - almost too much at times. That said, I would highly recommend it for new leaders as a great starting point and for seasoned leaders who are looking to up their game or as a reminder of what leadership excellence is.
August 21, 2020
I really enjoyed this book and think it is a perfect Graduation Gift for a college student heading out to his or her first job. Ryan is an amazing leader with a ton of experience that is foundational to the connections and relationships he has built though his podcast.
This book takes all of the great stuff he has learned and experienced and puts it out there for his readers. I also think this book is a great read for experienced leaders. So many of the examples that Ryan provides will spark self reflection on one’s own leadership journey, while providing a diversity of insights and perspectives.
I read this book as part of a weekly reading group that tackled a few chapters at a time - I find that I get so much more from a book when I am part of a group that digs in and shares highlights with each other.
This book takes all of the great stuff he has learned and experienced and puts it out there for his readers. I also think this book is a great read for experienced leaders. So many of the examples that Ryan provides will spark self reflection on one’s own leadership journey, while providing a diversity of insights and perspectives.
I read this book as part of a weekly reading group that tackled a few chapters at a time - I find that I get so much more from a book when I am part of a group that digs in and shares highlights with each other.
January 31, 2021
It's been a long time since I read a book on leadership on its own, instead of trying to deduct leadership lessons out of the storytelling of applied experience. This book proved to be a good choice, given it's a summary of all the good advise and quotes he came across in countless other books and on his very own podcast. I noticed my experience of such a book has really augmented, now that I'm just new in a leadership position. For sure, I'll be able to translate some ideas into practice and some into a framework while further making sense of my experiences. For that matter, the introdcution of McChrystal was not just a formal begin, but an added value. If you forgive the author his many references to american football, everyone is a child of his own experiences, it's a short but good book. I'll definitely try out his podcast as well.
November 27, 2021
Great leadership is about solving problems. Run toward the problems, and work to solve them. Don’t fixate on getting promoted. Focus your attention on doing great at your current job. And then doors will open. It's about climbing the mountain and never reaching the summit, yet still enjoying the climb.
Common sense book that gets you acquainted with many of the topics you'll encounter in your career as a manager, and a few guidelines on how to tackle them. Subtracted one star because this feels more like a motivational book than a howto.
I can't think of a better 'summary' book though. I read this one before other well-known management books, and looking back if I only had *one* book to recommend, it probably would not be this one. But, if you're a new manager and want to quickly understand what it's about, read this first! It will at least put you on the right track
Common sense book that gets you acquainted with many of the topics you'll encounter in your career as a manager, and a few guidelines on how to tackle them. Subtracted one star because this feels more like a motivational book than a howto.
I can't think of a better 'summary' book though. I read this one before other well-known management books, and looking back if I only had *one* book to recommend, it probably would not be this one. But, if you're a new manager and want to quickly understand what it's about, read this first! It will at least put you on the right track
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August 10, 2021Management requires a different skill set than what it takes to be a top-performing team member. And if you’ve recently been promoted to a leadership role, there’s still more to learn. Welcome to Management is a guide written specifically for top-performing contributors transitioning into team leadership positions.
Welcome to Management spans case studies, personal anecdotes, and interviews, revealing what effective leadership looks like in a variety of professional fields. To find a practical framework for developing yourself into a leader and carrying your team to sustainable success, head over to our blinks for Welcome to Management.
Welcome to Management spans case studies, personal anecdotes, and interviews, revealing what effective leadership looks like in a variety of professional fields. To find a practical framework for developing yourself into a leader and carrying your team to sustainable success, head over to our blinks for Welcome to Management.
April 25, 2020
It's a good survey of a lot of other people's reading and probably best suites to the new manager, as the title suggests. The author seems early in his career and the advice reflects that position and seems like a survey of the thinking of a lot of other management thinkers (and the subjects of his podcasts).
May 6, 2021
Excellent summary of great leadership practices as based on a great podcast.
I especially appreciate the breath of books and authors he cites. Combined with his "real-world" experience I found it good as it helps me as I enter my new management role.
Overall one of the better business books I've read
I especially appreciate the breath of books and authors he cites. Combined with his "real-world" experience I found it good as it helps me as I enter my new management role.
Overall one of the better business books I've read
January 16, 2022
Enjoyed it. An easy read, but a lot of good concepts. It seems to be an organizing of concepts that Ryan has learned and implemented over the years, combined with a lot of quotes and illustrations from his leadership podcast, that I didn’t know existed before I read the book. Highly recommend both the book and his podcast.
January 13, 2023
I have such mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, it does have some helpful and kind advice. On the other, I think it falls into the trap of assuming you're a part of a stereotypical corporate structure. There's also a large amount of football talk throughout.
I think I'm still going to buy a copy of it, since I listened to it. I do think there will be helpful parts to reference.
I think I'm still going to buy a copy of it, since I listened to it. I do think there will be helpful parts to reference.
August 31, 2023
Incredible story telling and very practical advice. The material in the book is dense and lengthy, but its necessary. With that said, the book is a very compelling way to convey messages. Ryan Hawk really practices what he preaches in the book in his writing style.
June 9, 2024
Аж появилася земля під ногами. Тепер є від чого відштовхутися, бачу куди йти і маю інструменти.
Як побачите мене, то запитайте, що вдалось застосувати з цієї книжки.
І залишу цитату:
"Preparation is the greatest medicine for fear."
Як побачите мене, то запитайте, що вдалось застосувати з цієї книжки.
І залишу цитату:
"Preparation is the greatest medicine for fear."
April 17, 2020
Been avidly listening to The Learning Leader Show a lot recently and Ryan did and excellent job distilling what he’s learned from his life and the lives of others into this book. Well done.
April 1, 2021
Thorough review of the basics.
April 19, 2021
Highly recommend to those about to begin a management career and those up to about 5 years in.
December 22, 2021
This book guided me during my first leadership experience! I will recommend this to new leaders over and over again!
April 17, 2022
This book is full of good, practical advice for new leaders. Excellent read.
October 11, 2023
Excellent & straightforward read with fascinating secondary sources pulled in!
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