"Regardless of which studies you choose to look at, when American workers are asked if they are satisfied with their jobs, the results tend to be very similar: Between 70 and 80 percent report they're satisfied with their jobs" (p. 61).

"How does one explain these findings? …Because people are likely to seek jobs that provide a good person-job fit, reports of high satisfaction shouldn't be totally surprising. Second, based on our knowledge of cognitive dissonance theory (discussed in this chapter), we might expect employees to resolve inconsistencies between dissatisfaction with their jobs and their staying with those jobs by not reporting the dissatisfaction. So these positive findings might be tainted by efforts to reduce dissonance" (p. 61).

"We have come to understand that technical skills are necessary but insufficient for succeeding in management. In today's increasingly competitive and demanding workplace, managers can't succeed on their technical skills alone. They also have to have good people skills. This book has been written to help both managers and potential managers develop those people skills" (p. 2).

WHAT MANAGERS DO
"Managers get things done through other people. They make decisions, allocate resources, and direct the activities of others to attain goals. Managers do their work in an organization. This is a consciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals" (p. 2).