Mentor Manager, Mentor Parent: How to Develop Responsible People and Build Successful Relationships at Work and at Home

By Linda Culp Dowling and Cecile Culp Mielenz, Ph.D.

Mentor Manager, Mentor Parent grew out of a conversation between Linda Culp Dowling, a management coach, and Cecile Culp Mielenz, a child development consultant. Linda routinely advises managers who have difficulty maintaining performance standards without resorting to threats or offering rewards. Cecile counsels frustrated parents whose primary technique for handling misbehavior is to intensify control with time-outs, grounding, and loss of privileges.

The authors recognize that managers and parents both assume that controlling behavior will guarantee results and exhibit four distinct control styles: the boss, manipulator, martyr, and mentor. However, only the mentor practices non-controlling strategies, realizing that both employees and children must eventually control their own choices for behavior.

After providing the reader with a self-assessment of his or her control style, the book presents a complete mentoring model of four strategies: structuring, coaching, conferencing, and letting go. Within each strategy, the authors describe three fundamental skills, provide worksheets for practice, and share over 150 real-life stories from the struggles and successes of managers and parents.

• Offers a step-by-step, practical approach that you can use immediately to make a difference in the lives of your employees and children every day.
• Reveals perceptive parallels between managing and parenting for anyone who is a manager at work and has children at home.
• Speaks to powerful human experience in both organizations and families.
• Appeals to every learning style with thoughtful narrative, hands-on worksheets, and over 150 true stories about the struggles and successes of managers and parents.
• Builds your confidence as you practice the same mentoring skills at work and at home.
• Belongs in the library of every manager and parent!