Small Unit Leadership: A Commonsense Approach

I was an NYPD supervisor (Sergeant and Lieutenant)and found this book very helpful. Even if you *aren't* in a military or law enforcement organization, this book can help you. It talks about leadership and personnel management issues that apply to *every* supervisor or leader in *every* business or profession. For example, Malone breaks down personnel into 4 categories: *Willing and able - Tell this person what to do, and when you want it done by, and leave them alone. *Willing but UN-able (such as the "new guy") - Help this person with training and coaching to do what you want done. *Able but unwilling (the classic shirker)- Needs motivation and supervision to get the job done. *Unable and unwilling - ideally, would not be in your organization, but if you are stuck with them, need training, motivation, and supervision to learn what they have to do, and then get it done. (Obviously, if a poor perfomer had personal problems of some kind, their supervisor would have to address those appropriately.) Malone's explanation of these categories alone is worth the price of this book. Another great leadership book: "Top Performance" by Zig Ziglar. He's a sales trainer, but really understands the core of leadership and teaching. Easy to read (I got it on audio tape), and well worth your while.

This book was written for officers in the United States Army. It gives officers an idea of how to manage and develop the soldiers under them. Particularly it gives good advice on how to recognize and deal with certain types of soldiers based on a skill, will, and teamwork scale. To tell the truth, I'm not in the army, but I bought this book to gain some insight into the army's way of managing and developing soldiers. I believe that if you are a businessperson or a teacher, you can learn a lot about how to treat different employees or students. Each person has individual needs that need to be handled in different ways, and I think this is something that this book does a good job of introducing. If you're in the army, you definitely need this, and if you're not, you can still gain a lot of knowledge by reading this.

Simply said-- if you are an NCO or Officer, you must make the effort to add this book to your library. This book is making it's rounds throughout our organization as I type. More importantly--it is positively effecting our current training...pound for pound the best training guide/leadership guide WE have ever read! Train to Lead--Lead the Fight!

This is a great book on leadership! Don't ignore it if you are not in the military. Much of the content carries over to the civilian side of the fence too. I am a first line police supervisor and found alot of good material here. I dare say much of it could be useful in the business/corporate world too.

At last, a leadership book that doesn't have alot of corporate stuff in it. I get really tired of those volumes that have the samurai way, or the military way, or whatever, and then start talking about sales figures and meetings. This one literally is about leading military units, with specifics and an explanation of the broader concept of what leadership is for and how each leader in the chain of command fits together to achieve the goals of the army.I am a squad leader in the police academy, a para-military outfit, and the ideas and advice in this book helped me out alot. I heartily recommend it for anyone facing an NCO billet of any kind.