If you have spent much time in the work force, you have no doubt been on the wrong end of poor management practices by your manager.

If you've had direct reports, it is a safe bet you have made some poor leadership decisions. Managing people is one of the most difficult tasks a manager faces.

For the most part, managers learn by trial and error and generally the learning process involves lots of errors.

Bruce Tulgan, author of The 27 Challenges Managers Face, has written a comprehensive guide to help managers reduce the number of errors and graduate from putting out fires to leading a highly productive team. In my opinion, it is not possible to manage employees working above entry-level positions.

You can lead them. And you can coach them. That is what this book is all about - methods to coach and lead your direct reports so that everyone is working together as a team.

The first chapter of the book explores the fundamentals of leadership by coaching. Mr. Tulgan repeatedly states that the fundamentals are all you need. And he gives you the basics of leadership by coaching.

The guide is more about preventing problems than continually solving them. According to Mr. Tulgan, you prevent problems by having high-quality one-on-one dialogues with every single person you manage.

By high-quality, he means highly structured and highly substantive. This means: "Making expectations clear; Tracking performance and providing ongoing candid feedback; Provide support, direction, trouble shooting, and guidance; Making accountability a process, not a slogan and Recognize and reward in line with performance."

After setting the foundation, Mr. Tulgan explores the 27 most common problems managers face.

The problems are group under several common themes. Each common theme is defined and explored and then the individual problems are dealt with.

Mr. Tulgan has developed these 27 common problems based on substantial research and experience working with numbers of managers.

So there are plenty of real world examples used to illustrate the lesson he is making.

The broad groups of problems are:
Challenges being the "New" manager
Challenges of teaching self-management
Challenges of managing performance
Challenges of managing attitudes
Challenges of managing superstars
Challenges of managing despite forces outside your control
Challenges of management renewal

These lessons are valuable for anyone involved in managing employees. It will probably be most helpful to middle managers/team leaders in established companies.

It is probably helpful to read the book from cover to cover and then to keep it on your desk as a reference guide for help in handling specific situations as they arise.

The first chapter should be read/reviewed from time to time to make sure you are providing the proper leadership by sticking to the fundamentals.