Practical answers for daily management challenges. Stepping onto the management career ladder means added responsibilities, heavy workloads, new business challenges, high expectations, and increased chances for errors. Combined with little training or formal management education, these make for potential workplace pitfalls. Managers who want to position themselves for future career growth need a wise and helpful consultant or at the very least a go-to reference that gives them a fighting chance to survive. Florence Stone, a 30-year veteran of the American Management Association, shares proven management information, realistic advice, skill-building techniques, and tools that can spell the difference between success and failure. Both newly hired managers and those promoted from within can develop core skills from the basics of planning, budgeting, and tracking to assembling a team, delegating, and disciplining. Communication and listening skills, leadership, conducting meetings, change management, and work-life balance issues are among the 24 specific areas that managers can learn about to: Boost confidence while lowering stress related to new job duties. Improve personal and team productivity. Increase job satisfaction. Demonstrate required skills while growing professionally. Special interactive sections include self-assessment tests to measure knowledge and attitudes, checklists to ensure no action is left hanging, and stories of manager blunders proving that others have been down the same road. This is the complete one-stop resource for managers committed to succeed.