The author grew up in a small town in Hawaii, surfing, spearfishing, and hunting exotic fruits in the local rainforest, never imagining that he would one day work for a large multinational corporation on the mainland. He finally started to build a career, worked through self-doubt and an intense fear of failure, and eventually became a manager with Electronic Data Systems (EDS), founded by Ross Perot. Over three decades, he learned that to maximize one's career opportunities, including financial, you must earn the respect of your peers and managers, and be valued for your solid and consistent results.

You know the colleagues you most respect on the job and why, but what are managers looking for when they observe, review, and judge your work and performance? What can you do to increase your profile and impact?

As an individual performer, do you hold back from offering an opinion or suggestion in meetings for fear of looking stupid? Do you consider declining a new assignment or opportunity because you think it's beyond your capabilities and the prospect overwhelms you with fear?

As a leader, do you struggle to tell an employee that their work is subpar or behaving unprofessionally? Are you hesitant to assign undesirable work to someone? Are you giving that raise/bonus or new opportunity/promotion to the most deserving person? How can you be certain and confidently back up your decision if challenged?

The author experienced, confronted, and worked through these types of situations, working with people in the trenches every day. He spent 32+ years with EDS/HP. He started as a programmer and rose through the ranks to eventually manage EDS' 192-person Southern California Systems Engineering/Solution Center in Los Angeles. He had to guide new employees, mentor new leaders, judge people's performance, determine who to promote, terminate people, and stand up at all-hands meetings to announce budget cuts and salary freezes. Worse, he had to announce then personally lay off many people due to corporate down-sizing. In the book, he provides hard-earned career advice from successes and failures along his profoundly personal journey.

Individual Performer to Manager can offer you a competitive edge in advancing in your career. It has received excellent reviews as a career and management guide by Kirkus (among the top 10% of Indie reviewed books, Nov 2019), The San Francisco Book Review (Star Rating 5 of 5, Dec 2019), and Publishers Weekly/BookLife (Jan 2020, with a sponsored author Q&A in the June 29, 2020 Edition).

Excerpts from Individual Performer to Manager:
"If your main concern is for people to always 'like' you, then you will never be a respected and successful leader. When people are not performing satisfactorily, when they are behaving in a manner that does not meet your or the company's standards, you must have the courage to confront people one-on-one to make sure they understand from you directly, that they are not meeting your expectations. If you don't take any action, or send someone else to do it, you will undermine and diminish people's respect for you...."

"As a leader, you should acknowledge your people in your day-to-day interactions with them, not once a month, or during a six-month or annual review. You should seek out and always give credit where credit is due, never take credit when it belongs elsewhere, and never take credit alone for something you should be sharing with others."

www.NormOshiro.com