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TRADING UP: A Career Guide by John D. Arnold

TRADING UP: A Career Guide

By

Pub Date: March 23rd, 1984
Publisher: Anchor/Doubleday

A battery of self-tests, checklists, scenarios, signposts, rules, and whatall--delivered like a drill (not much sweet-talk, anyhow) and intended, along with other recent products of a tighter job market, to help people make a go of the jobs they have. The major sections, however, comprise such market-staples as ""Managing People Relationships and Problems,"" ""Communicating,"" and ""What Next?""--advancing. There are tips for subordinates on handling bosses--how not to take criticism, how to raise a sticky concern. There are tips for bosses on handling subordinates--considerably more vague and pappy, as it happens, than the injunctions to employees. (How to build trust, delegate authority, etc.) There is somewhat more sustained discussion--and less bulleting and targeting--as regards communications; but Arnold just isn't a particularly invigorating communicator. (Re repeating back what people say: ""This approach is very effective in counteracting the common tendency to get absorbed in thinking about what you're going to say to people rather than listening to them, a fact which many speakers detect by your non-verbal signals which can be very discernible to them and create tension and distance between you."") Without zip, without a human element, this is just one more of same--for folks who like to take instructions.