You can be the smartest person in the room and even the most experienced, but if you're not a good person, there's little chance you'll succeed as a manager.

That's one of the big takeaways from The Good Manager, which is based on Dean Gualco's decades of experience as a leader and manager. To be good person, he says, you must live a decent and honorable life, be kindhearted, control destructive human emotions, tell the truth, do what's right, and always look for the good.

In this guidebook to honing your leadership and management skills, you'll learn how to understand how the view of managers has evolved over time, appreciate the most rewarding aspects of management, cultivate the ability to plan, delegate, and manage time, and make work fun for yourself and others.

Being a good person-as well as learning the necessary skills to excel as a manager-are rarely taught at conferences or lectures or on the job. But if you want to move along the intellectual/moral spectrum from self-interest to human interest, negativity to positivity, darkness to enlightenment, and hate to friendship, then you need to learn the lessons in The Good Manager.