How to Deliver Bad News and Get Away with It: A Manager's Guide - Hardcover

by Mahesh Guruswamy (Author)

A manager's guide to those unavoidable uncomfortable discussions

Delivering bad news is never easy, but there are ways to do it that minimize the pain for everyone involved. How to Deliver Bad News and Get Away with It shows business managers how to navigate these inevitable tough conversations using the best possible approaches.

Drawing from software executive Mahesh Guruswamy's personal experience, this practical guide walks you through delivering bad news to employees, stakeholders, customers, and even bosses. With humor and grace, it covers, among many other topics:

- How to talk to an employee about an improvement plan

- How to tell a client a project is delayed

- How to give your boss less-than-glowing feedback

- How to admit that you have to break a promise

Although there are many books on the inspirational side of leadership and how to lead effectively in general, few tackle the less-fun but critical topic of having the unpopular but necessary conversations all managers must have, making this book essential for any leader's library.

Author Biography

Mahesh Guruswamy is a seasoned product development executive who has been in the software development space for over twenty years and has managed teams of varying sizes for over a decade. He is currently the chief technology officer at Kickstarter. Before that, he was an executive running product development teams at Mosaic, Kajabi, and Smartsheet.

Mahesh caught the writing bug from his favorite author, Stephen King. He started out writing short stories and eventually discovered that long-form writing was a great medium to share information with product development teams. The essays he wrote over the last few years culminated in this book.

Mahesh is passionate about mentoring others, especially folks who are interested in becoming a people manager and newer managers who are just getting going. Anyone interested in a one-on-one coaching session with him can reach out to him at sensibleexec@gmail.com or connect with him on LinkedIn (https: //www.linkedin.com/in/maheshguruswamy/).

Mahesh resides in Orange County with his wife, Krishma, and son, Vivaan. In his free time, you can find him either running in the trails around South Orange County or reading cosmic horror fiction.