For organizational leaders, HR professionals, and practicing managers wrestling with employee engagement and retention, It's the Manager offers a clear, research-backed framework that stands well above purely anecdotal management titles. The institutional authority of Gallup — with its decades of data across 40 offices in 30 countries and regions — gives the book's prescriptions genuine grounding. The main caveat is that Clifton and Harter are simultaneously the researchers and advocates for their own findings, so readers who prize multi-source or peer-reviewed literature may want to supplement the book with external perspectives.

It's the Manager: Moving From Boss to Coach

Name: It's the Manager: Moving From Boss to Coach by Jim Clifton, Jim Harter
Author: Jim Clifton, Jim Harter
ISBN: 1595622241

by Jim Clifton, Jim Harter

$22.49 on Amazon Read our full review

At a glance

Pages320

First published2019

AudienceAdult

ISBN1595622241

About the Author

Jim Clifton, Jim Harter

1 book reviewed

LuvemBooks Verdict

Best for

Organizational leaders, HR professionals, and practicing managers who want a research-backed, structured framework for rethinking how managers are selected, developed, and held accountable for employee engagement and retention.

Worth it if

You want a clear, data-grounded argument — drawn from decades of Gallup workplace research — for why the manager, above all other variables, determines whether a team thrives, and you're open to working within Gallup's own frameworks and tools.

Skip if

You're looking for perspectives drawn from multiple independent research traditions or peer-reviewed sources beyond Gallup's own ecosystem, or you need guidance tailored to the specific constraints of a highly specialized or resource-limited organization.

What readers & critics say

Peakcfocoo.com describes the book as "a great playbook on helping people move from 'boss to coach,'" praising its scientific grounding and accessibility. Mentoring-club.com highlights the book's central advocacy for a shift away from the authoritative boss mindset toward a coaching approach that empowers employees and drives organizational performance.

Sources: peakcfocoo.com, mentoring-club.com

4.6from 1,211 Amazon ratings— reader ratings, not a LuvemBooks score

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It's the Manager: Moving From Boss to Coach by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter makes a research-grounded case that the manager is the single most decisive variable in employee engagement, retention, and organizational performance — and that the traditional command-and-control model must give way to a coaching approach. Backed by Gallup's decades of workplace data spanning 40 offices across 30 countries and regions, and achieving #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller status, the book is a compelling resource for organizational leaders and HR professionals. The key caveat: the entire framework, data, and bundled tools are Gallup-sourced, so readers seeking independent corroboration will need to look beyond the book itself.

Is it worth reading?: For organizational leaders, HR professionals, and practicing managers wrestling with employee engagement and retention, It's the Manager offers a clear, research-backed framework that stands well above purely anecdotal management titles. The institutional authority of Gallup — with its decades of data across 40 offices in 30 countries and regions — gives the book's prescriptions genuine grounding. The main caveat is that Clifton and Harter are simultaneously the researchers and advocates for their own findings, so readers who prize multi-source or peer-reviewed literature may want to supplement the book with external perspectives.
Similar books: Readers drawn to It's the Manager will find strong common ground with several titles on management, team dynamics, and organizational health. Radical Candor by Kim Scott shares the coaching-over-commanding philosophy, focusing on how leaders can challenge and care for their teams simultaneously. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage, both by Patrick M. Lencioni, tackle team cohesion and organizational health from a complementary angle. Good to Great by Jim Collins brings rigorous research to the question of what separates high-performing organizations — much as Gallup's data underpins It's the Manager. Execution by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck rounds out the reading list with a grounded look at how organizational strategy gets translated into results at the management level.
Who should read this?: It's the Manager is squarely aimed at organizational leaders, HR professionals, and practicing managers grappling with employee engagement, retention, and the challenge of leading a workforce whose expectations have shifted — particularly toward deeper mission and purpose. It is also a strong choice for organizations looking to make an internal case for investing in manager development, given the book's Gallup provenance and bestseller credibility. Readers already embedded in Gallup's prior work — such as 12: The Elements of Great Managing — will encounter familiar territory but will find It's the Manager expanding the argument into the specific challenges of the contemporary workplace.
How credible is the research behind it?: The book's research foundation is Gallup's own workplace data, accumulated over decades across 40 offices in 30 countries and regions — one of the broadest longitudinal datasets in management literature. Co-author Jim Harter, Ph.D., is Gallup's Chief Scientist for Workplace and a co-author of 12: The Elements of Great Managing and Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, situating It's the Manager within a substantial body of ongoing scholarship. The credibility caveat is a real one: Clifton and Harter function simultaneously as the researchers and the advocates for their own findings, a dynamic that sets the book apart from peer-reviewed or multi-source management literature.
What does it mean to manage as a coach?: According to Clifton and Harter, the coaching model they advocate requires managers to inspire rather than direct, communicate frequently rather than episodically, and focus on developing each employee's individual strengths rather than enforcing uniform compliance. This is presented as a direct response to the expectations of today's workforce — particularly younger generations — who want their work to carry deep mission and purpose and who are far less willing than previous generations to tolerate managers who fail to develop or engage them. The manager, in this model, becomes the critical link between organizational strategy and individual employee fulfillment.
How does it compare to other Gallup books?: It's the Manager is best understood as an expansion of the foundational arguments in Gallup's earlier workplace titles. Jim Harter co-authored 12: The Elements of Great Managing — the book that established the Q12 engagement framework — and Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements; readers familiar with those works will recognize the conceptual architecture. What It's the Manager adds is a sharper focus on the manager's specific role as the pivotal organizational variable and a direct engagement with the contemporary workplace challenges posed by shifting generational expectations and the need for ongoing coaching rather than episodic oversight.

Summarize this book

Is it worth reading?

Who should read this?

How credible is the research behind it?

What does it mean to manage as a coach?

How does it compare to other Gallup books?

Summarize this book

It's the Manager argues that the quality of the manager — more than any other organizational variable — is what determines whether employees are engaged, productive, and retained. Co-authored by Gallup Chairman Jim Clifton and Chief Scientist Jim Harter, Ph.D., the book draws on decades of Gallup workplace research to make the case that the traditional command-and-control management model is no longer fit for purpose. In its place, Clifton and Harter advocate for a coaching model in which managers inspire rather than direct, communicate frequently, and develop each employee's individual strengths. The book is structured as a practical leadership guide and bundles a CliftonStrengths assessment code along with access to Gallup's online workplace platform.

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Age & Reading Level

Recommended age

Adult

Reading level

Adult

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Skip if you're looking for management guidance backed by independent, multi-source, or peer-reviewed research rather than a single organization's proprietary data.

Editorial Review

A #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller from Gallup's Chairman Jim Clifton and Chief Scientist Jim Harter, It's the Manager makes a research-grounded argument that the single most important factor in organizational performance is the quality of the manager — and that the manager's role must evolve from command-and-control boss to developmental coach.

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Books like It's the Manager

Curated picks for readers who enjoyed It's the Manager, with our reasoning for each match.

If you liked It's the Manager

In our catalogue

Good to Great

Jim Collins

Both use large-scale research to prove that leadership quality — not strategy or luck — separates elite organizations from the rest.

If you liked It's the Manager and want more data-driven leadership insight, Good to Great is the natural next read. Jim Collins and his research team studied 1,435 companies over 40 years to isolate what separates truly great organizations from merely good ones. Like Clifton and Harter, Collins found that people decisions — specifically who leads at every level — matter far more than market forces or grand strategy. His concept of 'Level 5 Leadership' echoes the book's coaching-over-command thesis: the best leaders are humble, people-first, and relentlessly focused on enabling their teams. Readers who search for 'books like It's the Manager backed by data' will find Collins's rigorous methodology and accessible case studies a seamless companion read for HR leaders, executives, and aspiring managers.

In our catalogue

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Patrick M. Lencioni

Lencioni's fable-driven model shows precisely how broken team dynamics trace back to poor manager behavior — a direct complement to Gallup's findings.

Readers asking 'what to read after It's the Manager' consistently land on The Five Dysfunctions of a Team as a perfect follow-up. Where Clifton and Harter make the macro case for the manager's role using Gallup survey data across 30 countries, Lencioni goes micro — dissecting the five specific ways a team falls apart when trust, accountability, and commitment erode from the top down. The fable format makes abstract leadership concepts immediately tangible, showing managers exactly how their daily behaviors either build psychological safety or destroy it. If you found It's the Manager persuasive on why coaching matters, Lencioni gives you a practical framework for how to do it. Essential for team leaders, HR professionals, and organizational development practitioners who want to move from diagnosis to action.

In our catalogue

Radical Candor

Kim Scott

Scott's manager-as-coach framework gives concrete conversation techniques to operationalize exactly the boss-to-coach shift Clifton and Harter argue for.

If you're searching for 'books like It's the Manager that show how to coach employees in practice,' Radical Candor is the hands-on companion you need. Kim Scott spent years managing teams at Google and Apple, and her central argument — that great managers care personally while challenging directly — maps precisely onto the coaching philosophy Clifton and Harter champion with Gallup's data. Where It's the Manager tells you the 'what' and 'why' of the coaching shift, Radical Candor tells you the 'how,' with specific techniques for giving feedback, running one-on-ones, and building trust without sacrificing honesty. It's especially valuable for mid-level managers who found the Gallup research compelling but wanted a more actionable, conversation-level playbook to bring back to their teams.

In our catalogue

The Advantage

Patrick M. Lencioni

Lencioni argues organizational health — not strategy or finances — is a company's ultimate competitive edge, reinforcing Gallup's engagement-first thesis at the whole-org level.

Readers who finished It's the Manager and want to zoom out from the individual manager to the entire organizational system will find The Advantage a compelling extension. Lencioni's core claim — that organizational health, meaning minimal politics, high clarity, and strong culture, matters more than any technical advantage — aligns closely with the Gallup research Clifton and Harter present. Both books challenge leaders to stop treating people issues as soft problems and start treating them as the primary driver of performance. The Advantage also provides a practical model for building cohesive leadership teams, which makes it especially relevant for senior executives and CHROs who want to scale the coaching culture It's the Manager recommends across an entire enterprise. A strong pick for anyone searching 'if you liked It's the Manager try this.'

In our catalogue

Execution

Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, Charles Burck

Bossidy and Charan show that strategy fails without the right people discipline — grounding It's the Manager's engagement argument in hard operational reality.

For readers who appreciated It's the Manager's research-grounded case for people-first leadership but want a view from the operational trenches, Execution is an ideal companion. Larry Bossidy, former CEO of Honeywell, and consultant Ram Charan argue that the gap between a company's goals and its results is almost always a people and process execution problem — not a strategy problem. This directly reinforces Gallup's finding that the manager is the decisive variable: you can have the best strategy in the world, but if managers aren't hiring, coaching, and holding people accountable effectively, performance suffers. Bossidy's real-world case studies from major corporations give the abstract engagement metrics in It's the Manager a vivid, consequence-driven context. A must-read for senior leaders and operations executives searching for 'books like It's the Manager for C-suite leaders.'

Not your thing?

In our catalogue

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman

If Gallup's survey-heavy framing felt repetitive, Kahneman's behavioral research is richer in surprising findings and applies directly to how managers make flawed people decisions.

Some readers bounce from It's the Manager feeling that the Gallup data, while impressive in scale, is presented in a way that feels more like a corporate report than a page-turner. If that was your experience, Thinking, Fast and Slow solves the problem. Daniel Kahneman — Nobel laureate in behavioral economics — draws on decades of psychological research to reveal the two systems that drive human judgment, and his findings have enormous implications for how managers hire, evaluate, and develop people. The book is intellectually richer and more surprising chapter-by-chapter, with experiments and counterintuitive conclusions that hold attention far more than survey statistics. It still gives you actionable insight into leadership and organizational behavior, but through the lens of cognitive science rather than engagement polling. Perfect for the analytically curious reader who wants research depth with more narrative pull.