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Are You a
Great People
Manager™?

A Leadership Handbook for Early Managers

Most managers are promoted for performance — not for their ability to lead people. This book gives first-time and early managers the practical framework they were never given.

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Are You a Great People Manager? — Book Cover
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◆CDI Framework
◆10 Chapters
◆Real workplace dilemmas
◆Reflection exercises
◆~40,000 words
◆CDI Framework
◆10 Chapters
◆Real workplace dilemmas
◆Reflection exercises
◆~40,000 words
Why This Book Exists

The gap nobody talks about in management

Organizations invest heavily in leadership — but the most critical role shaping employee experience gets the least preparation.

01

Managers are promoted for technical performance, not people leadership readiness

02

There's no structured playbook for early managers.

03

New managers struggle to balance being liked with being genuinely effective

04

Feedback conversations fail because no one ever taught how to have them

05

Great employees leave because their manager couldn’t connect, develop, or inspire them

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The Framework Inside the Book

The CDI Blueprint for great managers

Every chapter maps to one of three capabilities that separate great people managers from everyone else.

Connect

Build psychological safety, earn genuine trust, and create environments where people feel safe to speak, contribute, and raise concerns. The high trust foundation everything rests on

Part II of the Book

Develop

Diagnose what your people actually need to grow. Give feedback that resonates and changes behavior. Become a developer of talent — not just a supervisor of work.

Part III of the Book

Inspire

Foster accountability and ownership without burning people out. Understand the difference between recognizing performance outcomes and appreciating the human effort behind them.

Part IV of the Book
A Look Inside

10 chapters. Real dilemmas. Practical tools.

Each chapter opens with a workplace scenario you'll immediately recognize — then unpacks the research, insight, and exact practices to handle it well.

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about_3_1 2 1
about_3_2 2 1
10+
Years of
Field Research
The Authors

Dr. Deepika Dabke
& Prasenjit Bhattacharya

Co-Authors

Dr. Deepika Dabke is a leadership practitioner, researcher, and author of Inclusive Leadership Blueprint: Through Her Eyes. Her work sits at the intersection of human behavior and managerial effectiveness - focusing on what truly makes people stay, grow, and perform in teams. Through her work in leadership development and organizational research, she translates complex leadership ideas into practical actions for managers navigating the realities of leading people today.

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Prasenjit Bhattacharya, with close to three decades of experience across global and Indian organizations such as HSBC, Siemens, and Crompton Greaves, has been at the forefront of shaping workplace culture, leadership development, and organizational transformation.

He was instrumental in building and scaling Great Place to Work® India, where he led the organization for several years and helped establish it as a benchmark for workplace culture in the country.

As the Founder & CEO of Great Manager Institute®, he now focuses on a deeper, more specific problem—building effective people managers at scale. His work combines research-backed insights, large-scale data from organizations, and practical interventions to help companies translate leadership into measurable business outcomes.

Prasenjit’s approach is rooted in one belief: great managers are the strongest drivers of performance, culture, and long-term business success—and building them requires more than intent; it requires precision, data, and continuous development.

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Who Is This For?

This book is written for you if you are—

First-Time Managers

You've just been promoted and the realization hits — managing people is a completely different skill from doing the work yourself. This is your structured starting point.

Early-Stage Team Leads

You're navigating the gap between being a strong individual contributor and a genuine people leader. This book gives you the framework to close that gap.

HR & L&D Leaders

Building a manager development program? This is the handbook your early managers need — structured, research-backed, and immediately actionable.

Why should you join our waitlist?

01

Early access to our pre-launch offer.

02

An opportunity to meet the authors and have an interactive reading session with them ahead of the launch.

03

Exclusive access to the launch event, where you can be part of an exciting moment.

Pre-Launch Waitlist — Now Open

The book every new manager deserves to read.

Join the waitlist for early access, chapter previews, and first look before the public launch.

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