Developing as a Professional

I would recommend Developing as a Professional to anyone seeking general, "topline" guidance on professional behavior in the workplace. Its brevity, simplicity and directness help the reader extract its essence quickly. The book's checklist format is excellent as reinforcement for the points covered. In this respect, it is especially useful for anyone who likes a "one-page" communication style. Each topic is self-contained. One may open the book to any of the fifty tips and get immediate answers and guidance without any "pre-work." This is a plus because the reader need not wade through any other material in the book to "get" the points the authors make for that topic. And for those who do wish to dig deeper, Developing as a Professional offers a very good bibliography of suggested further reading, including several other relevant works by the two authors. If Developing as a Professional has a shortcoming, it is that the advice it offers is less effective when the reader is challenged by an especially poisonous workplace culture. In the current economic climate, conscientious professionals sometimes find that they cannot leave these situations as quickly as they'd like, so some advice beyond that offered in the book's Cope With Challenges section would have made it a complete reference. Still, this does not distract from the book's overall very good value, and should not deter anyone from the benefit of this book's sound advice.

Marilyn Manning and Patricia Haddock have put together an excellent guide to a number of workplace problems. The book is full of information on etiquette, writing, dealing with problems like office gossip and how to improve your interpersonal skills. I found the checklist approach in the exercises to be fast, easy to use and easy to remember. There are many other books that deal with the same topics, but few, if any, are as complete or as practical. The authors do not waste your time with tiresome examples or predictable, boring stories. Each tip gets right to the heart of the advice. You can open the book to any page and find useful information.