Managing people

Last week I had to go to a workshop on managing staff. This is required at UQ by all staff who perform annual staff appraisals.
On this topic two resources I have found helpful are a short DK book and an article in the Harvard Business Review, "What great managers do":

there is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest: They discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it. Average managers play checkers, while great managers play chess. The difference? In checkers, all the pieces are uniform and move in the same way; they are interchangeable. ...... In chess, each type of piece moves in a different way, and you can’t play if you don’t know how each piece moves.

I thank my wonderful wife for bringing these resources to my attention.