Developing Management Skills

by David A. Whetten, Kim S. Cameron

Develop ten essential management skills.

With an emphasis on self assessments, Developing Management Skills gets readers involved in the learning experience, helping them connect the theories to their own lives. Further, this text focuses on developing the ten essential skills needed for success and gives readers tangible goals to work towards.

Based on suggestions from reviewers, instructors, and students, a number of changes–including new skill-assessments and cases, and updated research–have been incorporated in the eighth edition.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Management, Textbooks, Leadership, School

720 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another text book, but this has some great, practical advice for managing yourself and others. Really good information on how to improve your communication and deal with conflict.

[Mohamed Yehia · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best books on soft skills development. Its main strength are: research based, full of exercises & case studies, include a big number of skills, condensed and focused reading materials.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to read this for class - I enjoyed that it was full of exercises and case studies.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting subject and lots of good information. And fairly easy to read for a textbook.

[Cairee Greenleaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d recommend this text to anyone in business.

[Joe Cole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Used it in my undergrad class. A thorough and easy read! Very interesting material, not the type where you dread flipping open the pages compared to other textbooks.

[Mark Oppenlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

As academic books go, this one is dense and intimidating. I'm not a particularly slow reader, but in this text, each 30-40 page chapter would easily take me several hours to read. Nonetheless, I found this book engaging and compelling. Rather than approaching the topic of management from a research or scholarly perspective, the authors treat this book more as a practical field manual for managers (that just happens to be informed by research).

Each chapter begins with a skill assessment (some of which were on-line and would be tied to a class if one were reading this text in school) and then moves on to a learning section, describing management theories and skills. The learning sections are not footnoted which keeps the reading free of distractions. But the references section in the back is massive, so you know that Whetten and Cameron have done their homework. The chapters cover topics ranging from "managing stress and well-being" to "motivating others" to "building effective teams." The final section of each chapter includes practice and analysis, sections which often includes case studies and scenarios.

If you're looking for a book to help you start thinking about what it means to be an effective manager of people, this could be a good place to start. It's think and dense, but if you read it a chapter at a time as I did, it's well worth the investment.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

An early edition of this was assigned as a text in one of my Organizational Behavior courses when I was an MBA student. I found it both useful and engaging then, and have since used later editions in some of my own classes. The topics addressed are especially important for managers, and the chapters are well grounded in theory and research, but not so pedantic as to put off practitioner readers. Each chapter contains several useful self-assessment exercises to assess current state, then developmental exercises and other material that focus on developing competency in the tools and skills highlighted in the chapter. Finally, each chapter concludes with additional self-assessment exercises to assess progress. For its purpose, it is an outstanding book.

[Danelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the first school books that I actually look forward to reading. I've been reading this book in my spare time, we haven't even been assigned to read it yet! It is awesome and I am learning so much about managing in all walks of life. The authors are great, and funny! (Specifically this book is for librarian types taking INFO 500+ courses. I am certifying as an information technology specialist and this class is required.)

[Jamie Pennington · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book. I have been an executive director of several non-profits in various parts of the mid - west for 14 years and I wish I had read this book 14 years ago. I can not wait to begin implementing some of the strategies in this book. This is a text book for a business management course I am taking in about a month. I hope to learn as much from this class as I did this book. The book is a bit long. Rather expensive. And sometime a bit repetative but a good book.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though this is pretty outstayed as far as the publication date, I was surprised at how relevant the Emotional Intelligence section was. Consider this a large reference book, but I enjoyed most of not- especially the part about designing work to fit the employee.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved The Tests!

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are valuable insights in this book, but not all of it is worth applying.

[Stan · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a text book, actually pretty good.

[Lori Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read book new managers, executives, and entrepreneurs.

[Rainey · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for Org Topics

[Kelly Fogg · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read this for an MBA class. Avoid it if you can. Long sections and no graphics make for hard reading of this researched packed text book.

[Josh Clausen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great approach to the concept of bettering oneself as a manager!