Focus on Them: Become the Manager Your People Need You to Be

Perfect the Skills to Excel as a Manager

An engagement crisis, a management skill shortage, a retention problem―call it what you will, today’s research and workplace insights emphasize that many employees leave managers. . . not companies.

Good managers know they need to deliver results to be successful. But great ones? They understand the essence of managing encompasses something more: making connections, embodying the right skills, and developing their direct reports. They also realize managing well takes practice. With Focus on Them, you’ll get the tools and know-how to excel as a manager.

Edited by the Association for Talent Development’s own management authority Ryan Changcoco, research expert Megan Cole, and content developer Jack Harlow, this book explores ATD’s new management framework―the ACCEL model. Each chapter, written by a leader in management and talent development, focuses on one of the five skills all managers need:

Accountability (Timothy Ito)

Communication (Ken O’Quinn)

Collaboration (Winsor Jenkins)

Engagement (Hunter Haines)

Listening and assessing (Michele Nevarez)

By investing in your own development―boosting your ACCEL skills―you signal to your employees that you’re serious about their development and learning, too.

Becoming a manager isn’t climbing a mountain. By focusing on the basics, you can transform from a results-oriented manager to the super people manager your employees need.

Ryan Changcoco is an author, blogger, thought leader, and facilitator on the topics of management development and employee engagement. As the senior manager for ATD’s management development and TD industries group, Ryan is responsible for identifying and partnering with subject matter experts from all over the world to develop content in the areas of management development, leadership, and industries training. Ryan is also the program director for the ATD/Yale Management Excellence program. Prior to ATD, Ryan served as a business consultant for several large healthcare organizations, including Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Ryan is also the co-founder of a physician advisory and consulting group called The Physician’s Edge, which is dedicated to helping physicians become more adept at the business side of healthcare. As an author, Ryan has contributed to a few healthcare publications including Talent Management in Healthcare―Exploring How the World’s Health Service Organisations Attract, Manage and Develop Talent (2017) and Leadership in the World’s Healthcare Sector (2018), both of which were published by Palgrave Macmillan UK. When asked what three phrases best describe him, Ryan’s response is: optimist, traveler, and free spirit.

Megan Cole, PhD, is a research analyst at the Association for Talent Development (ATD). She regularly writes research reports, blogs, and magazine articles, as well as hosting webcasts. She has authored numerous research reports on talent development topics including The Science of Learning: Key Strategies for Designing and Delivering Training, Needs Assessments: Design and Execution for Success, and Change Enablement: Skills for Addressing Change. One of her first projects at ATD was creating research around the ACCEL model―published as ACCEL: The Skills That Make a Winning Manager―that eventually led to the creation of Focus on Them. Megan has since been involved in the development of other ACCEL-related content. Megan has also worked as a market research analyst and an instructor at Arizona State University. She has published articles in several peer-reviewed journals, including Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, and most recently Journal of Social Psychology. Her work has been featured in Time, Forbes, Huffington Post, PBS News Hour, and US News & World Report. Megan received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Central Florida. She earned a doctorate in communication from Arizona State University.

Jack Harlow has spent his entire career managing people―writers, that is. As a developmental editor with the Association for Talent Development, Jack works behind the scenes with notable subject matter experts―such as Clark Quinn, Karl M. Kapp, and the Focus on Them contributors―to develop book concepts that resonate with readers. Just like managing direct reports, Jack’s role empowers him to apply ATD’s ACCEL model: He applies a human-centered culture of accountability with authors and other stakeholders. He leverages his experience with language to communicate clearly and build trust. He adopts a collaborative mindset to coach authors through the publication process. He applies the latest findings around workplace apathy to engage authors. And finally, he listens to authors because their stories are the ones worth telling and he wants to see them all shine. Before joining ATD, Jack served as an editor for Communications Development Incorporated, an editorial and design house in Washington, D.C. There he filled a jack-of-all-trades role as proofreader, copy editor, content developer, and project manager on economic and development reports for the World Bank and United Nations organizations. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, Jack lives with his wife, Casey, and three pets Obi-Wan, Wookiee, and Barney. He has a masters in publishing from George Washington University’s College of Professional Studies and a bachelors in English language and literature from the University of Maryland.