Abigail Hopewell

On the days I worked from home over Winter 22/23 I pulled out one of the books from my reading pile and gradually made my way through a few pages each morning whilst waiting for my old, creaking laptop to load up.

Accompany those otherwise fairly empty moments was the book Myths of Management by Stefan Stern and Cary Cooper. It challenges some of the assumptions, folklore and lazy assumptions and commentary that surround the role of ‘the manager’. It takes you through 44 myths across 44 pithy, informative chapters – most of which I both recognised and by-and-large agreed with. There’s also a chunky appendix of interviews with renowned leadership and management development commentators, theorists and practitioners.

A few interesting nuggets I took from it include:

From Myth 6: You need to be the smartest person in the room. The concept of ‘disagree and commit’ which Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, uses in many situations. “If you have a conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say ‘Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?’…. it’s a genuine disagreement of opinion, a candid expression of my view, and a quick sincere commitment to go their way”.
I really like this idea and it sounds like a helpful, simple concept to encourage a resolution/team-oriented mindset, and may help stop people getting ‘stuck’ in positions or building resentment.

From Myth 28: Be yourself – it’s all about authenticity. Herminia Ibarra, an expert on leadership development, asserts that “‘be yourself’ is in fact ‘terrible advice’. Why? It is not ‘because it’s not good to be yourself, but…what self are we talking about? We are as many different selves as the roles that we play, in a situation we have to perform’, she says.” Nor is simply being ‘authentic’ adequate – “What if you are, authentically, a horrible person? Your team will not thank you for your authenticity if the experience of being managed by you is unpleasant. Therefore the tip is to “Be yourself, more, with skill… draw on and demonstrate your qualities (more), but use them intelligently and sensitively (with skill).”
Again, a great nugget of wisdom and reality check which is sorely needed when exploring for ourselves what it means to be a good leader/manager and overall decent person at work (and in life).

From Myth 33: There’s nothing wrong with the business, there’s just a few rotten apples. A provocative opening statement to this chapter – “Systems make people behave badly. When things go wrong you need to look at the whole system, not just scapegoat those who get caught”.
This underlines how much we can be influenced by our environment and other people’s behaviours and decision-making. It’s all too easy and convenient to blame individuals when things go wrong. Having cultures which are just

If you’re looking for something fairly accessible in bite-sized chunks to stimulate and challenge your thinking about management norms then this book may be one to add to your reading pile.