The Manager Tools Podcast is a weekly audio podcast focused on helping managers become more effective. The show, hosted by Michael Auzenne and Mark Horstman, was awarded People's Choice Podcast from Podcast Awards

Podcast Awards

The People's Choice Podcast Awards, better known as the Podcast Awards, are an annual set of awards given to the best podcasts as voted by the people...

 in 2008., and won the Best Business Podcast award in three consecutive years 2006, 2007 and 2008. The podcast, together with the sister podcast Career Tools is unique through its combination of a series of simple steps to follow for effective practice, in combination with a good background on how these recommendations lead to the best results. Caricatured, each of the shows consists of "a hundred" simple steps, and contains half a dozen times where Mark gets on his soapbox to exclaim how badly and ineffectively some things are often done in normal practice.

Growth

The two hosts of the podcast had regular day jobs when they learned about the concept of podcasting in 2005. They decided that this could be a fantastic way to disseminate their knowledge about effective management. A while after starting with the weekly free podcasts, both hosts completely dedicated their work time, founded a company for Manager Tools, and started more related activities like selling transcripts of the podcasts on-line through membership and organizing public and in-company conferences to practice the Manager Tools. Manager Tools LLC employs 4 people full-time (in 2010).

International

Manager Tools, although slightly biased by US background, has listeners all over the world. Since 2009, some of the podcasts are also available in French translation, and since 2010 also in German. Those translations have been started by enthusiastic listeners of the cast that are willing to invest their time to make the content available to a larger audience.

Management adapted to the personality of the direct report

Manager Tools are often referring to the DISC assessment

DISC assessment

DISC is a group of psychological inventories developed by John Geier, and others, and based on the 1928 work of psychologist William Moulton Marston and the original behavioralist Walter V. Clarke and others.-History:...

when adapting management and communication styles to individual direct reports.

Horstman's Laws

Management principles that are repeatedly coming back as the ground rules on which the podcast's recommendations are based are called "Horstman's Laws."

2007