BOOKS
Paul’s books are available for purchase through HarperCollins Leadership, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Audible, and at bookstores nationwide.
The content below includes book excerpts published by HarperCollins Leadership, AMACOM Books, and SHRM that grants users permission to access one chapter of each book for personal use.
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Every manager needs to be prepared to face tough situations that management training never warned them about. Mergers & acquisitions, union organizing attempts, worker burnout, talent scarcity, managing the remote and hybrid workforce, and more leave us feeling like we’re building the plane while flying it. As part of the prestigious First-Time Manager series, Leading Through Crisis is designed as the ultimate go-to resource for handling disruption and workplace crises effectively and constructively. Chapter 45, “When Global Crises and Natural Disasters Affect Your Company and Rock Your World,” will help you determine the macro steps necessary at critical intervals to address whatever may come your way.
75 Ways for Managers to Hire, Develop, and Keep Great Employees contains the best of all its predecessors – the most critical interview questions, the most challenging tough conversations, critical keys to documenting progressive discipline and structuring terminations, and everything you’ll want to know about creating a friendly and inclusive work environment where employees can motivate themselves and find new and exciting ways of reinventing themselves in light of your organization’s changing needs. Download and share Chapter 4—Avoiding Litigation Land Mines—which covers wage & hour quagmires, layoffs and separation packages, performance appraisal bombshells, and more!.
Ranked as the #1 bestseller in Amazon’s “Human Resources and Personnel Management,” “Management Skills,” "Business and Organizational Learning," and “Job Interviewing” categories, 96 Great Interview Questions to Ask Before You Hire provides readers with the tools they need to elicit honest and complete information from job candidates, plus helpful hints on interpreting the responses. Chapter 8, entitled “Millennials— The Future Generation of Your Workforce,” addresses the specific challenges posed by the millennial generation. The premise of this book is that the best workers have the most options. Positioning yourself and your company to identify individuals with the strongest track records and to appeal to those top performers is what the interviewing and selection process is all about.
Ranked as the #1 bestseller in Amazon’s “Labor and Employment Law” category, 101 Sample Write-Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems has been SHRM’s #1 bestseller over the years, and Chapter 5 is available to you! This book excerpt addresses commonly asked questions and provides practical answers to tricky employee relations questions. In short, this chapter will provide you with the key fundamentals of workplace due process and critical insights into employment law all in one place.
101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees was ranked as the #1 bestseller in Amazon’s "Human Resources and Personnel," "Business Mentoring and Coaching," "Conflict Resolution and Mediation," and "Business Decision-Making and Problem Solving” categories. 101 Tough Conversations helps you communicate even the toughest and most uncomfortable messages in a caring and compassionate way while still upholding the highest organizational standards. These chapters will help you help others raise their own expectations of themselves while protecting your company legally by engaging in open and honest dialog in a caring and supportive way.
2600 Phrases for Effective Performance Reviews ranked as the #1 bestseller in Amazon’s “Communication in Management,” “Human Resources and Personnel Management,” "Business Communication Skills," "Running Meetings and Presentations," and "Foreign Language Reference" categories. It offers resources that will not only help you identify strengths and gaps in your employees’ performance, but also help drive future behaviors that lead to success. This free download includes Paul’s well known “Ten Tips for Maximizing Your Performance Appraisal Documentation Skills,” highlighting how to reward top performers, avoid grade inflation, appreciate the legal significance of the record you’re creating, and engage your employees in the performance evaluation process.
Setting future goals is arguably the more important half of the performance review equation because—rather than assessing past performance—it drives future change. The Introduction addresses how to create effective development plans for your employees, as well as for yourself. It provides specific goal-setting examples for some of the most challenging aspects of management and leadership, including goal phrases for motivating teams, communicating more effectively, mentoring and coaching, and creating a more inclusive work environment.
A tired performance appraisal form will fall flat and lose your audience, no matter how much you invest in high-end software systems or high-touch management training. Chapter 5 will show you how to reinvent and reinvigorate both the content and form of your appraisal template and raise the performance bar by revising the descriptors that you use to assess employee performance.
Workplace Ethics
Ethical challenges can overwhelm even the strongest leaders. Ranging from designing a diversity & inclusion strategy to creating a practice for handling harassment allegations fairly or establishing employee expectations properly in terms of performance and conduct, frontline operational leaders need a resource they can turn to for guidance and wisdom. Mastering common ethical challenges begins with educating employees, and Chapter 24 provides you with a practical and transparent script for creating and sustaining an ethical workplace.
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New Managers
Becoming a great manager is a learnable discipline that will allow you to develop strong teams and create an environment where staff members can do their very best work every day with peace of mind. Whether you want to learn more about coaching and mentoring employees, inspiring employee engagement, or holding employees accountable to high performance and achievement standards, New Managers teaches practical leadership wisdom and knowledge in an easy-to comprehend format. Download Chapter 1 on how to become someone’s favorite boss to launch your journey into people leadership!
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Effective Hiring
Effective hiring and onboarding is where the employee lifecycle begins: get this right from the very beginning, and you’ll hire highly productive team members who are self-motivated and focused on achievement. Chapter 8, “The Emotionally Intelligent Interview,” helps you master building strong relationships with candidates from the very first meeting while appealing to Gen Y and Gen Z’s top priorities—career and professional development. Download this sample chapter now to learn how to bond with candidates, set your expectations prior to extending an offer, and prepare new hires to onboard with confidence and excitement.
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Leadership Offense
The Leader-as-Coach model is a refreshing cultural construct for today’s modern workplace. It creates a culture of strategic clarity, clear goals and objectives, high expectations for success, and ongoing accountability. It’s based on creating high-trust relationships, becoming someone’s favorite boss, and helping staff members do their best work every day with peace of mind. Read Chapter 1 to learn how selfless leadership, emotional intelligence, and authenticity make a coaching culture work. Then determine how to pay it forward and become known for growing teams, turning around flagging units, and developing high-potential employees so that you can scale your leadership career.
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Leadership Defense
Leadership defense is all about employee accountability and setting appropriate expectations. It breaks down the best practices for constructive confrontation and/or progressive disciplinary action in order to rehabilitate flagging performers and, when necessary, structure terminations that will withstand legal scrutiny. Written in an easy-to-understand style with steps and guidelines that will help you avoid common legal and ethical pitfalls, it helps you understand your management rights while holding team members to high performance standards. Chapter 15 on avoiding the preemptive strike of “pretaliation” will help you avoid a leadership landmine that can overwhelm even the most confident (yet unsuspecting) leaders.
Translations
As Asian markets in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and other areas continue to expand their economic growth, HarperCollins Leadership, the American Management Association, and the Society for Human Resource Management are offering their libraries of best-selling books to help demonstrate U.S. best practices. A number of Paul’s books have been translated for these markets, specifically into Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Vietnamese, Turkish, and Indonesian, as part of these programs.