The Good Boss Project: Becoming the Manager You Mean to Be

A fresh and life-affirming vision of management as one of the most meaningful jobs you didn't know you had, revealing how growing your employees is the key to fueling the bottom line and fueling your soul, from an acclaimed author and beloved NYU Stern professor.

What does it feel like to be a boss who meant something, grew someone, and did something bigger than themselves? Good bosses manage people, not just performance, and leave behind legacies while boosting their organization’s bottom line. NYU Stern School of Business professor Dr. Dolly Chugh calls this sacred work.

In The Good Boss Project, Dolly uses leads from employees to track down managers known to be good bosses. By interviewing both the manager and the people who work for them, she unpacks how good bosses refuse to choose between high standards for performance and high standards for humanity. You will meet managers in small startups, big companies, the military, investment banking, and even a lice removal clinic…as well as a meditation guru, Broadway and Hollywood director, and March Madness championship basketball coach. Grounded in a sense of purpose, each offers a vulnerable peek into their inner lives as a manager, including what works on the good days (and what doesn’t on the bad days).

Drawing on these stories plus the latest research from social psychology, organizational behavior, and behavioral economics, Chugh shows how to get more developmental value from delegation, spend less time solving your people’s problems and more time empowering them to solve their own, create a culture that serves as the emotional DNA for teams, and be the employer people say they will follow anywhere. Along the way, she equips you with the concrete skills you need (today) to be the good boss that (amazing) people want to work (hard) for and deliver (extraordinary) results for.

Being a good boss is sacred work. The kind that leaves a legacy. Whether you’re a new manager, a not-so-new manager, or a seen-it-all manager, The Good Boss Project is your pep talk and toolkit for becoming the boss you mean to be.