Office of Employee Relations & Compliance

The following books are available to SDSU faculty, staff and students upon request. Call 619-594-6464 or email Office of Employee Relations and Compliance.

• A Survival Guide for Working with Humans written by Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D. Real-life strategies which enables you to engage with the most difficult people. Has interactive quizzes, true-to-life problem and conflict scenarios, and helpful profiles of common personality types. Covering everything from knowing when to speak up (and how), to gracefully navigating through uncomfortable but necessary confrontations.

• Coping with Toxic Managers, Subordinates….and Other Difficult People written by Roy H. Lubit. Many managers engage in destructive behavior that does considerable harm to their subordinates, their organization, and eventually themselves. Whether they are narcissistic, unethical, rigid, or aggressive, working with them can be a nightmare. This book will teach you how to develop your emotional intelligence and protect yourself and your organization from the destructive impact of toxic managers.

• Dealing With People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst written by Dr. Rick Brinkman & Dr. Rick Kirschner. This book is designed to teach you how to cope with individuals who can make life stressful or keep you from achieving important goals. This best selling guide will teach you: (1) how to identify the 10 most unwanted behaviors and how to deal with each of them; (2) how difficult people think, what they fear, and why they act the way they do; (3) how to be persuasive and use your influence; and (4) how to cultivate “take charge” skills that turn conflict into cooperation.

• First, Break All The Rules written by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman. Great managers vary in age, race, and sex but they all share the same amazing trait: they do not hesitate to break virtually every rule held sacred by conventional wisdom. This book will explain how the best managers select an employee for talent rather than for skills or experience; how they set expectations for him or her – they define the right outcomes rather than the right steps; how they motivate people – they build on each person’s unique strengths rather than trying to fix his weaknesses; and, finally, how great managers develop people – they find the right fit for each person, not the next rung on the ladder.

• How Full Is Your Bucket? written by Tom Rath & Donald O. Clifton. This National Best Seller reveals how even the briefest interactions affect your relationships, productivity, health, and longevity. Organized around a simple metaphor of a dipper and a bucket, and grounded in 50 years of research, this book will show you how to greatly increase the positive moments in your work and your life-while reducing the negative. Filled with discoveries, powerful strategies, and engaging stories, this is sure to inspire lasting changes and has all the makings of a timeless classic. This is a great book for managers, supervisors, educators or anyone interested in strategies to increase positive outcomes in one’s workplace and life by adjusting their working and relationship methods.

• How to Win Over Depression written by Tim LaHaye. This book is a classic best-seller that has helped thousands worldwide beat today’s most painful emotional epidemic. This book covers the causes and treatments of depression, including physical imbalances and the therapeutic use of anti-depressants. Written in simple language to explain methods which go beyond the physical and emotional components of depression and into a more rooted spiritual path of release.

• Leadership and Self-Deception written by the Arbinger Institute. This book shows how the most personal and organizational problems are the result of a little-known problem called “self-deception”. Through an entertaining and highly instructive story, this book shows what self-deception is, how people get trapped in it, how it undermines personal achievement and organizational performance, and-most-importantly-the surprising way to solve it.

• The Bully at Work written by Gary Namie & Ruth Namie. Workplace violence may snatch the daily headlines, but outside the spotlight, the pain and degradation of corporate bullying shatters lives nationwide. Those being bullied at work feel more than merely overworked and under appreciated. The fear, shame, humiliation, and loss of dignity that originate at work can creep into every other aspect of life. This book will assist in stopping the hurt and trauma that workplace bullying does to an individual.

• The Elements of Great Managing written by Rodd Wagner & James K. Harter. Based off a study involving more than 1 million people interviewed on what makes a great manager. This book follows great managers as they harness employee engagement to turn around a failing call center, save a struggling hotel, improve patient care in a hospital, maintain production through power outages, and successfully face a host of other challenges in settings around the world.

• To Do or Not To Do written by Gary Winters & Eric Klein. For any manager who has been searching for the fundamental, simple truths behind the leadership challenge: control, power, accountability, commitment; this book has captured their essence and spun them through a storytelling style that is both engaging and powerful. Great leaders make great decisions, this book will show you how they do it by taking the quality of your decisions up a notch.

• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There written by Marshall Goldsmith. This book address the most common problems faced by managers in any industry. It discusses the key beliefs of successful leaders and also the behaviors that hold them back. Also discussed are the fundamental problems that often come with success – and offers ways to attack these problems.

• You Want Me to Work with Who? Eleven Keys to a Stress-Free, Satisfying, and Successful Work Life…No Matter Who You Work With written by Julie Jansen. A helpful guide to surviving, and even getting along with, the most problematic personalities in the workplace. This book involves strategies developed by a career coach to assist in dealing with colleagues who may be: domineering, deceitful, disorganized, indecisive, lazy, lewd, uninspired, unintelligent, underhanded, rigid, rude or just downright mean.