Fixing Management: A Manager’s Guide to Moving from Ineffective to Exceptional
Do you believe people are either born leaders or not?
I did so for many years. I avoided leadership roles and limited my career until I started researching the topic and discovered what good management could look like. I’ve discovered that it is not some mysterious intuition that a few of us have. Effective management is reproducible and teachable!
This guide delves into real-world scenarios, offering timeless, actionable insights to navigate common managerial hurdles:
Each chapter presents a relatable short scenario and analysis of the demonstrated ineffectiveness. This is followed by practical solutions and expert advice based not on personal anecdotes but on decades of research and experimentation in various countries and cultures.
This advice will equip you with the tools to lead with confidence and competence. Whether you’re a seasoned manager or new to the role, this book is your roadmap to effectiveness in building a thriving, high-performing team, leading to professional success and growth.
Performance management: hiring, 1:1s, feedback, development plan, performance review, firing
Influence: communication with DiSC, conflict resolution, motivation, stakeholders, managing up
Team culture: psychological safety, interviewing, meeting etiquette, engagement
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
It’s exactly what I needed: not lengthy theory like so many other books, but rather short demonstrations of each topic, with concrete advice on how to behave and why they are effective.
Not only for managers
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Great book for managers, people on the management track and more. The book presents many real-life examples you might encounter at work. The best part is that these examples are both actionable and grounded. I find the book a must read for people who want to become great managers, but also for anyone being managed. You will encounter many managers in your life, each with a different style. This book can be your secret weapon to identify them, understand their reasoning and influence them to boost your career. As you grow into more senior roles you’ll find out that often involve mentoring others, taking on more responsibility, giving feedback, navigating conflict, and influencing the team and stakeholders beyond just doing your individual work. All of this is covered in the book.
Gaelan Taylor
Based on real experiences (which I could immediately recognize through my own experience)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I am still reading it, but I already find this is much more practical and grounded in reality. Reading the 1:1s section, I have personally seen all of the situations described and that felt really cool. The author definitely is drawing on experience rather than espousing theoretical ideas.
Jonathan Shmuel
Must Read for every manager or aspiring manager
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Wonderfully written, experienced based, no fluff – a perfect read for every manager or aspiring manager
Ziv
A Must-Read for Managers Who Want to Grow
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A practical and inspiring guide for any manager! Clear advice, relatable stories, and actionable tools you can use right away. Highly recommend!
Alex
Must read for all managers!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This is a great book for everyone who is a first time manager or who wants to simplify review and update their managerial skillset.
It’s an easy read which lives from examples and explains you actionable insights which you can directly apply on the job!
Leading Managers: The Director’s Guide to Scaling Impact
Move from managing tasks to building an organization.
The leap from managing a team to managing managers is one of the hardest transitions in a leader’s career. You are no longer responsible for the work; you are responsible for the people who manage it. Most directors are never taught how to make that shift. This book is the manual they were never given.
Leading Managers delivers a practical, scenario-driven guide to mastering the director role. Not theory: reproducible systems you can apply tomorrow morning.
Inside, you will learn how to:
Lead managers without micromanaging or over-rescuing them
Build a culture of accountability across teams you don’t directly control
Turn vague organizational strategy into clear goals your managers can execute
Navigate ethics, confidentiality, and the hard calls that come with senior leadership
Use AI as a genuine leadership tool – not a shortcut, but a force multiplier
Design resilient structures, run effective skip-levels, and scale without losing effectiveness
Whether you are stepping into your first director role or looking to professionalize the management layer you already lead, Leading Managers gives you the tools to build a high-performing organization that delivers results and retains your best people.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I just finished reading this, and it’s exactly the manual I wish I had earlier. Making the jump to managing managers is a notoriously tough transition, and most leadership books out there are just too theoretical to be useful on the ground.
What I appreciate most about Yaniv’s approach is how practical and systematic it is. It’s not fluff; it’s reproducible systems you can actually implement the next morning. In my day-to-day work, building resilient architectures and using AI to scale operations are absolute necessities, so seeing a leadership guide treat AI as a genuine force multiplier—not just a buzzword—really resonated with me.
It gave me a fresh perspective on building accountability across teams without falling into the micromanagement trap. It’s a straightforward, no-nonsense read that I highly recommend to anyone trying to step up and professionalize their management layer.
Finally, a management book for the middle layer
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I’ve read plenty of management books and most target either first-time managers or CEOs. This one hits the sweet spot for directors and senior managers who are managing other managers and figuring out what that actually means.
Every chapter opens with a scenario that felt uncomfortably familiar, breaks down what went wrong, and gives you something concrete to act on. No fluff. The sections on assessing manager performance and the surprisingly honest take on AI were worth the read alone.
Short, structured, and easy to come back to when you hit a specific situation. Already passed it along to two people on my team.
Marc
Practical Wisdom for Modern Engineering Leaders
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Leading Managers is an excellent and highly practical guide for anyone transitioning into engineering leadership or seeking to become a more effective manager.
Yaniv Preiss combines real-world experience with clear and actionable advice on the challenges that managers face every day: building trust, coaching engineers, handling difficult conversations, setting expectations, and balancing technical excellence with business outcomes.
What makes this book particularly valuable is its pragmatic tone. Rather than relying on abstract theory, Yaniv shares concrete lessons and frameworks that can be applied immediately. The book reflects a deep understanding of both engineering and leadership, making it especially relevant for software engineering managers and technical leaders.
I strongly recommend this book to new managers, experienced leaders, and anyone interested in scaling teams while maintaining a healthy engineering culture. It is a thoughtful and practical resource that will remain useful long after the first reading.
