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Your job is not to get everyone to like you
What a manager actually controls, and what it costs when they hand it away.
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01 The problem
Boss and leader are two different jobs held under one title
Pinelli separates them line by line. A boss has employees, gives orders, wants control, focuses on profit, and can fire people. A leader has followers, teaches the work, looks for solutions, and is respected for character rather than rank. EM Kelly's line, quoted at the head of the chapter, is that a boss says Go and a leader says Let's go.
The point of the distinction is not vocabulary. It is that both people hold the same authority and spend it differently, and the spending compounds. Order-giving produces staff who do what is asked and nothing else, which means the next job also needs an order. Teaching produces staff who can decide without you.
A leader does not need the title, either. The book is clear that someone junior can lead, and that a company of five needs one as much as a company of a hundred.
Employees are the heart of every organization, and in order for them to perform at their best, they will need the guidance and support of a prominent leader.Chapter 1, Leader vs. Boss
The book opens with an exercise. Write a short list of the qualities you think a good leader should have, before you read anything else, then keep it and check yourself against it later.
02 What sets your style
Your leadership style is not entirely something you chose
Pinelli names five styles with real examples: transformational (Churchill, Steve Jobs), participatory (James F. Parker, who kept his staff in their jobs and started a profit-sharing programme at Southwest Airlines after 9/11), value-based (APJ Abdul Kalam), situational (Phil Jackson, who changed his approach player by player) and servant leadership, which puts the staff's needs first.
Then she takes the choice away. Which one you end up using is shaped from inside by your personality, your beliefs, the culture of the company and the mix of people you manage, and from outside by technology, the local community, and other employers.
That last force is the one that reaches your staff directly. They visit other businesses. They see the market salary, the working conditions, the incentive programmes, the whole environment, and they measure you against it. The bar you are managing to is set in buildings you do not own.
Sometimes, it isn't the leader's choice to be hard on their employees, but it's because of the poor company culture that leaders are forced to be that way.Chapter 2, Company Culture
Answer one question from the book's own quiz honestly. An employee has been performing poorly lately, so you (a) stay out of it and wait for them to come around, (b) talk to them and find out whether something is affecting their work, or (c) give them a warning for slacking. Your answer names your style.
03 What disengagement costs
A manager who checks out does not leave alone
Shane was a data analyst who liked his job and had been there three years. A new manager arrived, dodged every question about how he wanted the department run, and began asking Shane to fill in for him: supervising others, monthly reports, filing, on top of his own work. Two roles, one salary.
Meanwhile the new recruits and interns had nobody to guide them. When Shane finally said he could not carry both jobs, the manager threatened to have him fired. Shane resigned. Soon after, more of the IT department followed him out.
Pinelli lists why managers stay at arm's length: it takes work, they feel underpaid for it, they assume the complaint is not genuine, or there are simply too many staff per manager. None of those reasons changes the bill.
Their reason for leaving was poor leadership and toxic working conditions.Chapter 1, Shane's Experience
Set up regular sessions with your team, as a group and one to one. When someone's work slips, speak to them privately and ask what is going on before you judge it. Never correct a person in front of the room.
04 Getting the truth
Staff price their honesty against their job security
Pinelli is blunt about why employees hold back: they are afraid their feedback will affect whether they keep working there. So the first job is not asking better questions, it is removing the cost of answering. Keep it anonymous, so nobody has to give a name or show a face.
The methods she lists are ordered by how early they catch a problem. Pulse surveys are one or two questions, never more than five, handed out as often as weekly. Employee engagement surveys run quarterly or annually. New employee surveys catch first impressions before they harden. Interviews are useful but never anonymous, since you know who you are talking to.
At the far end sit exit interviews and public review sites: Indeed, Glassdoor, InHerSight, Careerbliss, Comparably. That is the same information, arriving after it can save anybody.
It's good for leaders to find out before these employees decide to post their experiences on review sites.Chapter 4, Exit Interviews
Start a pulse survey. One or two questions, five at the very most, no names required, and tell your staff plainly what you will do with the answers. The book's other prompt: find out what each person's own goal is.
05 How you open the meeting
When you sign the paychecks, I and we are not interchangeable
Pinelli sets out a meeting: fifteen people from the marketing department, work behind schedule. The manager opens with a run of I statements. I called this meeting. I delegated the tasks. I expected an update. I want an explanation. I think I should put more pressure on you.
Her reading is that the room stops listening and starts defending. Nobody in that meeting is going to volunteer the real reason the work is late, which was the only thing worth finding out. The same concern opened with we, us and together keeps the door open: can you tell me how we can work together to get things done?
The rest of the chapter follows from the same asymmetry. Ask for input rather than announcing conclusions. Use humour, but sparingly, because a manager who jokes constantly stops being taken seriously. And do not assume everyone in the room follows your English: find out who struggles, arrange translation, and hand out translated visual aids.
The leader has power in his words, so they must ensure that they're using them correctly.Chapter 4, Try to Use 'We' instead of 'I'
Write the first sentence of your next meeting before you walk in, and check it for I. Two questions from the book that work as replacements: how do you feel about this change, and do you have any ideas that could help me create a smoother line of communication?
06 Boundaries
A limit you set afterwards is not a limit, it is a reaction
Eddie managed an accounting firm and had encouraged his staff to use social media to build relationships at work. One of them, Shelly, started messaging him privately over a weekend. He let it sit, then replied that he only wanted to discuss work. She was humiliated, and told the office that he had messaged her first. His career ended over it.
Pinelli's diagnosis is not that Eddie handled the reply badly. It is that there was nothing to point at. No limit had been stated, and no consequence attached to crossing it, so the first time the question came up he had to invent an answer under pressure.
She names four kinds of limit to set in advance: physical (your space, your desk, your hours), emotional (how much of yourself you expose, and what you are not responsible for), time (when meetings happen, what does not need you), and communication (contact outside office hours, and what is never acceptable to send).
Eddie's career ended, all because there were no clear boundaries set with clear consequences for employees to follow.Chapter 6, When to Draw the Line
Write one sentence for each of the four kinds, in the form the book uses. For example: please don't contact me outside of office hours unless there is an emergency. Then say them out loud to your team, before anything happens.
07 The empathy trap
Empathy without perspective makes rules optional
Angela was the HR manager at NM Trading in Durban, known for going out of her way for people. David, seven months in the job, came to her in tears: his daughter had been hospitalised, he had money trouble, he wanted a raise. Angela promised him one. It was against company policy, and she had not checked with anyone above her.
She had not checked the story either. The daughter had been in hospital, but months earlier, and had been doing well since. David was not the first person Angela had bent the rules for. The investigation cost her the job.
Pinelli quotes Wharton's Adam Grant on this, via Nicole Lipkin: empathy that is not paired with the right perspective can leave a leader overwhelmed by their own emotions and compromise their decisions. Her practical point is that Angela had real options inside the rules. A work loan. A fundraiser. She skipped straight past both.
There are policies in place for a reason and that's why every business leader should follow through with them, no matter how urgent a situation may seem.Chapter 6, Angela's Experience
Next time an emotional request lands, do three things before you answer: verify what you were told, take it to someone above you, and look for the option that helps inside policy. The book's own test is to ask what the business goal is while you feel the pull.
08 Engagement
People who are kept out of the work stop offering any
Macy joined a law firm as an intern and was thrilled to be there. A year on, hired permanently, she files documents, makes the tea and sends a few emails. Her manager will not look at her ideas or let her near a case file. The three others who interned with her are in the same position, and they talk to each other about it.
Nothing was done to Macy. She was simply left out of decisions, brainstorming and team activities, and that was enough. She stays for the experience, which is a different thing from staying for the job.
The same rule governs the social media work the book is built around. Staff will not carry it unless three things are true: they know what the strategy is for, they know what they are allowed to post (a written policy naming who handles which account, what to do in a security breach, how the law applies, and what goes for personal accounts), and there is a reason to bother. Get all three right and the work comes back: contests, behind-the-scenes content, product launches, faster replies to customers.
They confide in each other and talk about how oppressed they feel in the company.Chapter 5, Employee Engagement
Put your social media policy somewhere interns and new starters will actually find it: the handbook, the website, or an email to everyone. Build it with input from HR, marketing, legal and staff, launch it in a session where people can ask questions, and revisit it every two years.
09 The whole book
Three managers, three ways of misspending the same authority
Pinelli tells the book largely through people who got it wrong. Read together, the three case studies are the same mistake wearing different clothes: a manager treating the gap between them and their staff as something to be avoided, indulged, or left undefined.
Disengaged
Shane's manager offloaded his own duties and answered no questions. Shane resigned after three years, and colleagues followed him out citing poor leadership.
Too nice
Angela granted a raise against policy because the request came with tears. She never verified the story or asked her superiors, and it ended her job.
Undefined
Eddie invited his staff onto social media without saying what was off limits. One private message he never asked for finished his career.
The book ends where it should. Your job is not to get everyone to like you; it is to cultivate a workplace where your employees thrive. Everything else in it is a method for telling those two apart.
Adapted from How to Win and Influence Your Staff in the Social Media Age
Sheryl Pinelli · © 2022 DVFZ Training Consultancy Services · 19 cited sources in the source edition