More Than a Boss

Six Indispensable Leadership Tools For First-Time Managers

By: Nick Brzozowski

Narrated by: Joe Scalora

Length: 3 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Over 37.4 million Americans are expected to quit their job in 2022. If you want to prevent your staff from being a part of this stat, keep reading.

According to Marcus Buckingham, the world's most prominent researcher on strengths and leadership at work, “People leave managers, not companies.” So who are the types of managers that people will stick around for?

What if building a thriving, motivated team didn’t come by accident? What if there were simple, reproducible practices that would move your department or organization in the right direction? What if you could be more than just another boss in your team’s life? What if you could be a leader that your team loves to follow?

In More Than a Boss, you will discover…

• Five strategies for managing yourself (hint: not just your time).
• Seven shortcuts for knowing your team.
• One tool that will motivate nearly any team member.
• What the most popular TED Talks have in common.
• The one tool managers utilize that makes a lifelong impact, while actually saving time.
• When the best time to fire a staff member is (hint: it’s before you hire).
• How more accountability could actually improve the working environment.

This is an audiobook about the basics. I won’t tell you how to become CEO or double your salary, but if your hope is to become the boss that you would have wanted, this is the audiobook for you.

While this can be a great tool for veteran managers, it is designed to be accessible for anyone, especially first-time managers. The language, examples, and tools will relate to you whether you have a team of two or 200. Your team may not even consist of paid staff. Most of my experience with these tools has been working with volunteers in the non-profit world.

©2022 Nick Brzozowski (P)2023 Nick Brzozowski

Practical Tips

More Than a Boss is a useful tool for anyone moving up into an entry level management role for the first time. The book contains practical tips for anyone in this position that can be easily implemented.

Love this

This audiobook is terrific. The tools all about leadership were right up my alley. I learned a lot and I’m going to be listening to this again. The narrator was great too!

Great Book - Everyone Needs to Read This!!!

"More Than A Boss" by Nick Brzozowski is an uplifting and insightful book that offers a fresh perspective on leadership. Brzozowski's writing is engaging and his ideas are practical, making this book an invaluable resource for anyone in a leadership role or aspiring to become one.

The author's emphasis on building strong relationships, fostering a positive work culture, and leading with empathy is truly inspiring. Through real-life examples and relatable anecdotes, Brzozowski demonstrates how being more than just a boss can create a harmonious and productive workplace environment. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to enhance their leadership skills and create meaningful connections with their team.

Amazing book!

I found this helpful from start to finish. In the first chapter the author already delivered impact about optimizing. I really liked the two chapters on motivation strategies and communication. The final chapter was goal setting for managers. Overall I highly recommend this title.

Can be used with a team of Volunteers!

The narrator says, ‘Rinse and Repeat’. That makes perfect sense to do with a strategy that works. I was happy to learn these strategies can be used with a group of volunteers as well. That is how I will implement what I have learned.
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this audiobook if you are looking to be a great leader….and being more than just a boss!

more is right on

I've gotten so much knowledge out of this book. I am feeling more confident going in to lead my team after listening and I've found I get more out of the book each time I listen. So many nuggets of wisdom here!

Fantastic Book!!!

The book details the ten powerful and secret rituals of efficient communication, including choosing the proper individuals, getting to know your employees, motivating, and creating unique ways to show appreciation for your team. For example, he says that employees are loyal and hardworking if they are part of a team and that the leader has fostered an environment of confidence and focus. On the other side, if an employee is having difficulty, it is crucial to train them, help them, and show them their future precise and comprehensible prose with plenty of good, applicable examples.
I will recommend it!!!

At Home Boss

In my career life I really don’t manage people, but I do have to manage my time, my projects and my own personal anxiety. In my home life though I manage my family (which is a huge job in itself). I found this book to have several suggested actions to consider that I can apply to all of those areas of my life. It was an encouraging read and really gave me some good ideas to better understand my ‘team’ (aka kids) and how we can work better together despite our differences and even utilize our differences to make something even more grand….so much so that I have even begun testing my kids with the Enneagram Personality Test that Nick suggestions to better understand each of them.

Are You A Boss?

Many bosses are bosses because of the title they have been given. Are you a Boss? You should be listening to this book. Even those not in leadership positions can gain valuable insights and actions they can take to become better and be an asset to their team.

You're gonna love this. First class

Nick Brzozowski has written that could be the most condensed, succinct book on managerial advice on record—Now in audio.

I bought the audio because hearing the book helped with getting different perspectives that best come to me that way.

More Than a Boss is cleverly designed to be useful for new managers, experienced managers and students. “How can it be so all-inclusive?” you may ask. Easy, because management techniques apply to all businesses and all capabilities—constant review of techniques is a very good idea for the experienced and the newbie who needs to know as much as possible in the shortest time.

The advice he shares in his first managerial book is gleaned from years of personal experience and investigation into *techniques that work,* so much so that an alternative title could be Management Techniques That Work. He acquired his skills and did his management in the most unlikely of places, in church as a youth pastor.

I learned about his book at a restaurant group on Facebook, where many of the members desperately need its help. After all, the restaurant business has the highest failure rate in the United States. Approximately 60% fail within the first year of operation and 80% fail within the first five years.

Other business statistics are not encouraging, either. 18.4% of private sector businesses in the United States fail in the first year. After five years, 49.7% have failed, and after 10 years, 65.5% of businesses have closed. From the very first he makes clear what answers the reader will gleanthat will help avoid these statistics.

“Do you wonder how to create a confident and focused team that enjoys what they do? He says that business success starts by managing yourself: the time, emotions, thoughts, energy, and credibility. These are essential and core values. By adapting these, the manager will be far better positioned for effectively managing a team.

Thematically, the bottom line of the book is this: Either you run the business or the business runs you.

One of the most important aspects of managing is not wasting time—manage it. For this, Brzozowski references Elon Musk who uses “time-boxing,” to set aside a specific amount of time for a particular task. This keeps a person focused on the task at hand mineralizing the pull of distractions. The book states “The goal is not necessarily to finish the task in a block of time but to set up guardrails for when you stop working on it and move on to the next task. Like you schedule appointments with people, you want to schedule appointments with your priorities.” This by itself is powerful good advice, as we can see by the success of Elon Musk. You might say that priorities are people, too.

Another piece of management gold Brzozowski mentions comes from Tim Ferris’s book, The 4-hour Workweek that says to move forward, ‘We must embrace a "low-information diet." In other words, dump all useless information. Instead, assess what you read, listen to, or watch every day and drop anything that does not contribute to your goals.”

In essence: Keep it simple smarty is the core message we get from Brzozowski’s book, a fast read.

Buy it. It is an easy listen and worth a repeat listen. The reader is outstanding. Not an AI.