Maneuvering Your Career

20 Strategies to Prepare You for Voluntary or Involuntary Career Transition

Non-Fiction - Business/Finance
319 Pages
Reviewed on 05/14/2015
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Author Biography

James K. Lehman is an Author, Speaker, Workshop Leader, and a Life & Career Transition Coach. After starting his career as a CPA, he transitioned into consulting, and then HR focusing on HR Transformation, system selection and implementation. He is a SPHR, a Certified Professional Coach, and Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner. He is the author of "Maneuvering Your Career - 20 Strategies to Prepare You for Voluntary (or Involuntary) Career Transition."

    Book Review

Reviewed by Rich Follett for Readers' Favorite

Maneuvering Your Career by James K. Lehman is a succinctly written, brilliantly conceived, impeccably organized, and eminently practical guide for coming out ahead in planned or unplanned career transitions. In twenty brief, easy-to-digest chapters linked by the umbrella metaphor (from Lehman’s childhood) of guiding a canoe safely through ever-changing waters, Maneuvering Your Career offers an utterly practical and easily manageable step-by-step workbook-style strategy for developing a personal set of goals, and a specific 90-day plan for positive career change. Each concise chapter is specifically focused, begins with an encouraging quote to set the tone, includes one or more of a series of relevant and entertaining personal anecdotes from Lehman’s own experience, features an exercise segment where readers can list objectives and plans and record personal thoughts and reflections, and concludes with a useful summary to help tie key ideas together. It would be hard to imagine a more informative and user-friendly tool for those trying to advance in the professional workplace or those trying to cope with and regroup from unplanned change.

Although James K. Lehman offers a great deal of valuable wisdom, insight and advice in Maneuvering Your Career, he is also refreshingly candid about his own missteps and failures, the result being that the reader feels as if a life coach is on the job, cheering from the sidelines. The positive “can do" attitude woven through the text inspires confidence in the reader, who has little choice but to entertain grander possibilities in the face of so much positive encouragement. This blanket of positivity is nicely balanced by cautionary tales from real-world experience. Maneuvering Your Career by James K. Lehman is a book that might make a real and lasting positive difference for people with real questions, seeking real answers. In this world of hype and glam, Maneuvering Your Career by James K. Lehman offers a down-to-earth and refreshingly no-nonsense approach to achieving job satisfaction and personal growth. I can see wide applications for this fine work.

Faridah Nassozi

As you try to build your career, there will be factors you can control and others that are beyond your control. With the right skill and guidance, you will learn to manipulate the controllable factors to your advantage so you stay in charge of your professional future, irrespective of the endless challenges in your industry of choice. In his book Maneuvering Your Career: 20 Strategies to Prepare You for Voluntary or Involuntary Career Transition, James K. Lehman gives detailed guidance on how to plan for a successful career. The book gives practical tips on how to plan your professional life and ensure that you get what you want out of your professional life.

Maneuvering Your Career: 20 Strategies to Prepare You for Voluntary or Involuntary Career Transition, by James K. Lehman, is an insightful and practical book on how to effectively plan and execute your next career move so as to stay ahead of the challenges in the job market and achieve your professional goals. James K. Lehman writes from his 30 years of professional experience and this clearly comes out throughout the different chapters, making the book very practical and relevant to the current challenges in the professional world. By following James K. Lehman's advice, you can accomplish your professional goals and achieve perfect work-life balance. Whether you want to proactively plan for your career or get back on your feet after a bad professional break, this book is the right place to start - you will find in here all the tips you need to get ready to move your career in the right direction. The writing style makes the book easy to read with numerous exercises to help you reflect on every single topic, internalise the advice, and see how applicable it is to your real life situation.

Charity Tober

Maneuvering Your Career: 20 Strategies to Prepare You for Voluntary (or Involuntary) Career Transition by author James K. Lehman is an insightful and practical read for those looking for career guidance. The book is broken up into three main sections: Taking Control, Owning Your Job and Taking Care of Yourself. Lehman states in the introduction: “I will show you how to focus on what you value and how to live your life in freedom and control.” The book explains to readers what to do when you are laid off, how to identify what you want out of your career and how to prepare for job transitions. The author goes into the importance of networking, having an engaging resume, interview protocols, improving your job skills, as well as having a 5-year plan in place. Lehman gives an added bonus to readers by providing an engaging “Exercise” portion throughout the book, asking readers to answer questions (related to themselves) based on the chapter’s materials.

I found Maneuvering Your Career: 20 Strategies to Prepare You for Voluntary (or Involuntary) Career Transition to be an informative and introspective book. The information was presented in a concise and easy-to-understand format. I really liked how the author included the question and answer sections, giving readers a chance to apply the material to their own lives/career choices. The book is extremely thorough, covering not only career changes but understanding hot markets, desired skills sets, and what to do to make yourself stand out and succeed in your career choices. This would be a great book for college students to read to give them advance career knowledge at the start of their vocational journey.

James Lehman

Wow - Thanks for the book review. My hope is that this book will be a help to those that are stuck in their careers - and give some encouragement to go out there and achieve your dreams.