Book Report: Don't Fire Tehm, Fire Them Up

In Frank Pacetta’s book, Don’t Fire Them, Fire Them, Up: Motivate Yourself and Your Team, Frank Pacetta presents his unique style of leadership principles which can be utilized in both a military and civilian work environments. While Pacetta identifies his leadership principles, he stresses that motivation is one of the most vital aspects of leadership and critical to success for any business or military organization. Our textbook states that motivation is “the process of stimulating an individual to take action that will accomplish a desired goal” (Montana, Charnov, 235). Every person is motivated to achieve some kind of goal. Students are motivated to do well in school and graduate, parents are motivated to have good jobs so they can provide for their children. The difficult task for leaders and managers is to establish an environment in which people are motivated as a team to achieve the goals set for them and the organization as a whole. I have been involved with organizations that failed to pay attention to the employee relations, communication, recognition, and involvement issues that are most important to people and it has an impact on how employees perform. Mr. Pacetta’s experience over the years has shown him over and over again that leaders and managers often focus nothing but mistakes that those employees who do succeed go unnoticed or are not given any kind of credit for their success. Pacetta’s theory includes making a point of emphasizing these positives, a leader or manager can encourage their employees to become aware of ways to improve their individual performance, which in-turn improves organizational performance. Again it’s about motivation. Praise doesn’t cost anything and it yields big dividends. (Pacetta, 25)

It is an absolute must for any business or military organization to have good leadership. The leadership must have a good feel for their people and know their strengths and exploit them and find ways to improve

References: Pacetta, Frank. Don’t Fire Them, Fire Them Up: Motivate Yourself and Your Team. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Montana, Patrick, Charnov, Bruce. Management. Hauppauge, New York, 2008.