The Manager's Resource Handbook
Tools, Resources and Guides for Managers and Business Leaders. Real Advice from Real Bosses.
Activities, Conversations and Best-Practices For Getting Your New Employee Engaged Quickly You’ve just hired a new employee. Great! Now what? Hiring new employees is an exciting time – you’re expanding your team, your department’s capacity increases, and your staff gets to forge new relationships. When we bring on a new staffer, though, making a good impression is critical for creating
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Tracked Vs. Unlimited Vacation – The Pros and Cons As the year comes to a close, I find myself running a department that has been operating at about 50% capacity for the past few months. Just like you, as a result of the global health crisis we’ve all ensured, every employee in my department cancelled plans for vacations and holidays
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Developing Your Own Succession Plan Succession planning is a fundamental part of building a leadership path for talented employees. As leaders move up, move on, or move out of the business, a good succession plan at the organizational level identifies the pipeline of individuals who are ready to fill future open roles and vacancies. But what about developing your own
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9 Tips for Supervising Frustrated Employees in Tough Times Managing a team is tough business. Meeting deadlines, tracking budgets, developing your staff and managing employee performance are just some of the things we are responsible for. Outside factors and difficult customers add to the stress, but the role becomes infinitely more difficult when the team you’re managing is noticeably unhappy.
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The Corner Office: Interviewing Candidates for a Management Position Interviewing and evaluating a job applicant’s fit for your organization is no simple task. Organizations consume a tremendous amount of resources in the recruitment, on-boarding and training of talented workers. Then, after that, we as managers are left with only the hope that the new hire grows and flourishes in the
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67 Brilliant Principles That Will Make You a Better Manager Every now and then we stumble upon a series of words which hold such powerful meaning and contain such genius that they remain with us for the rest of our lives. Such profound ideas may have jumped out at us from the inner pages of a book, the title of
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Overcoming the Common Fears Of Being a New Manager Early in my career, like many fresh graduates with great aspirations, I was eager to see where my professional life would take me. It was not long before I realized that I was likely on a path towards management. I was good with people, I didn’t mind speaking up, and colleagues seemed to come to me
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Your First Staff Meeting: Topics to Cover and What to Discuss Nice work! You got the job, and now it’s time to hold your first staff meeting as the team’s new manager. You should be excited and proud of your accomplishment. And, it is ok to be nervous. Every new leader struggles at the beginning; it takes time to get the
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7 Tips for Telling a Candidate They Didn’t Get the Job Hiring new employees is always an enjoyable experience. For starters, you get the chance to increase your staff while bringing in new skills. Filling a vacancy also lets you increase your team’s capacity, enhancing your flexibility in terms of maneuvering work assignments around your department. But along with the good comes the
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16 Mistakes We Make When Interviewing a Job Candidate Ever feel like you are just asking random questions to a job candidate during an interview? Do you watch the clock just trying to fill the minutes with conversation? Interviewing job applicants to fill an open position on your team is no easy task, and conducting a meaningful interview is a skill
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Tips for Hiring and Retaining Employees in Developing Nations Whether you’re hiring in India, recruiting in China, or opening an office in the Philippines, the obstacles are often the same. Because of their rapid growth, hiring and staffing a team in an emerging economy will always present unique challenges in terms of language, skills and retention. But if you equip
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Humility. It’s the emotion you’ll feel the first time one of your employees resigns. You’ll likely ask yourself a few pointed questions: Did I do something wrong? Can I persuade them to change their mind? Are they just using this as leverage to get something they want? All good questions. When an employee gives their notice that they will be leaving,
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7 Steps to Building a Successful Team: People, Purpose, Performance The opportunity doesn’t come often for us, but getting the chance to build a brand new team from scratch is one of the most enjoyable experiences a manager will ever have. After all, building a successful organization requires planning, creativity, execution and oversight…all at once. For me, the first such opportunity
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Making Organizational Changes in Support of Your Future Success A college professor of mine once told me “There is no book on that. Sometimes you just need to get in and figure your way out.” Knowing when to restructure a business is one of those things. Though there are books on organizational theory and team dynamics, there is no textbook out there telling us exactly
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Questions for Building a Business Case Any manager who has hired new employees has dealt with challenges related to wages. Why else do recruiters ask for a candidates salary as part of the initial screening process? What they’re really asking is “can I afford you?” I actually had one hiring manager tell me “This guy is making more than I do, we could never
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The Art of Interviewing Job Candidates One of the most difficult and important decisions you will make as a manager of people is selecting who to hire and planning how to staff your team. Such decisions should not be taken likely – as the boss, you are responsible for the getting results. Additionally, hiring the wrong people is tremendously disruptive
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Remember when your Project Manager came in the conference room last month, his forehead pulsating, as if he were just itching for a fight of any kind? We’ve all had those people in our office, reminding us of the great scene from Monty Python – “The Argument Clinic.” Maybe there is pressure from higher up to get results, or perhaps it
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8 Workplace Remodel Tips for Managers Doing it Themselves A workplace is more than just the four walls that surround people. Rather, a modern workplace is an environment in which ideas are born, where breakthroughs are made, and where profit is generated. Impressive campuses likes those of Apple or the trendy refurbished factory that now houses a Brooklyn start up
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How to Be a Boss and a Friend A former mentor of mine once told me that there are two highly uncomfortable relationships that one inevitably encounters in his or her management career. The first of these relationships was the one you have when your former boss ends up working for you. That is, the person from whom you once
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Estimating the Cost of a New Hire Fighting for resources is a frustrating problem we’ve all dealt with as managers and business leaders. Every one of us has said it at one point or another: ‘Too much to do, not enough people to do it.’ Justifying more staff is certainly difficult, but it is possible when you create a
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