Great line managers are decisive, clear, inclusive, compassionate and fair, but there are too few of them around just when we need them most. They can make or break an organisation and energise or destroy the relationship it has with its employees. At the same time, companies invest too little effort in ensuring that line managers have the skills, personality, emotional intelligence, compassion and know-how to excel.

This book will help make sure that you’ll shine at the most important and influential management jobs you will ever have. It offers practical but evidence-based guidance on becoming an excellent line manager in a world of work that is more diverse, more hybrid and remote, more precarious, more stressful, more digitised and more demanding.

Drawing on the author’s own research and practical experience, together with best-practice case studies from contemporary organisations and interviews with innovators in the field, this book sets out a vision and a pathway for those who want to raise the standard of line management in modern organisations.