Ask a Manager

How to Navigate Clueless Colleagues, Lunch-Stealing Bosses, and the Rest of Your Life at Work

By: Alison Green

Narrated by: Alison Green

Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York's work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations - featuring all-new advice!  

There's a reason Alison Green has been called "the Dear Abby of the work world". Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don't know what to say. Thankfully, Green does - and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You'll learn what to say when:

• Coworkers push their work on you - then take credit for it
• You accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit "reply all"
• You're being micromanaged - or not being managed at all
• You catch a colleague in a lie
• Your boss seems unhappy with your work
• Your cubemate's loud speakerphone is making you homicidal
• You got drunk at the holiday party

Praise for Ask a Manager:

"Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.” (Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together)

©2018 Alison Green (P)2018 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"A must-read for anyone who works... [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.” (Booklist)  

"The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience." (Library Journal) 

"I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces - and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor." (Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide) 

A must read/listen to book!

This should be a mandatory reading for anyone pursuing any position in any company. Detailed,flawless information and cues on how to communicate at work and also in life. Loved it !!

very helpful

truly useful book for communication atbwork and actually in life as well.
.loved it.

Perfect Recipes for any Workplace Scenario

I loved how she used specific workplace scenarios and gave several examples of how to deal with them. Many workplace books and podcasts give general principles, but it can be difficult to come up with the specific words to deal with those scenarios in real life. This book was so practical and I would recommend to anyone who wants to act with more kindness and candor in their professional lives.

Extremely useful

This book may help navigate common, yet delicate scenarios at work and in general everyday communication. I will definitely apply the tone used, subtle and respectful, while direct. Very few phrases I would not use, and opt for a little more flexibility, but that's just me.

A book everyone should own

This is one of those books that I would recommend to just about everyone. Why? Because it has very simple rules for communicating with other people. It makes communicating in a professional yet compassionate and truthful way straightforward and easy to understand. It is not always easy to do, but Alison Green does a wonderful job making it as easy as possible. Long ago, a previous employer offered a few short classes that dealt with many of these same topics. We will likely face many of these scenarios whether in our personal or professional lives at some point, so it is best to have the tools and this handy reference as a guide. Alison does a great job of including the extreme cases to keep the book light and humorous. She also has a website that is a great companion to this book.

As expected, middle manager advice is bad.

Perspectives like those presented from this author seem to be targeted to working environments with ineffective management, where the author appears to be suggesting that employees have the responsibility to act for the managers. In truth, the examples presented here (because the author cannot manage to arrive at actual advice, the book takes the form of a disconnected and overly simplistic flood of examples) relate to underhand manipulatiom tactics which have no ability to improve your situation at work - much less to heal a bad workplace.

I regret this purchase, so I encourage others to listen to a sample if available and to look to actual sources - not this middle-school presentation about projecting work ethics with none of the substance to back it up.

In terms of performance, it is not the author's fault, but the voice is exactly the same as that ironic-Karen-meme lady, which adds another layer of doubt to the "questionable" advice blog. 0/10 would not recommend as background noise.