The Manager's Resource Handbook
Tools, Resources and Guides for Managers and Business Leaders. Real Advice from Real Bosses.
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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Writing Employee Performance Reviews Doesn’t Need to Be a Drag Writing performance reviews of your employees can be extremely aggravating. As managers, we are busy. We correct behavior we don’t like when we see it, so taking precious time away from customers and emails can seem like a waste of our time. But performance appraisals are actually one of the
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A happy employee is a productive employee. A happy team is a productive team. This may be a simple way to describe how an organization benefits from employee engagement, but creating job satisfaction for one’s staff can frustrate even the most experienced of managers. And yet, employee engagement can be the difference maker between seeing your business flourish, and watching only disappointing results trickle in. Additionally, a disengaged staff can lead
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Learning How a Simple Game Makes for Better Business Have you ever played that children’s game of sliding tiles contained within a frame? Most of you probably have. But for those who have not, the objective of the game is to place the pieces in a specific order, perhaps arranged by color or number. What most people don’t know is
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Managing Your Team After Someone Was Fired Think about the last time someone was let go in the office. It may have been your peer, maybe a superior, or maybe you had to terminate the employee. Aside from obvious misconduct like starting a fight in the office, berating a coworker or some other form of glaringly punishable offense in the workplace,
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How to Embrace the Diversity of Your Workplace I often overhear business travelers at the airport talking on the phone, characterizing their imminent journey as “I’m headed to Asia” or “I’ll be in the Middle East next week.” I know I’ve done it as well because let’s face it, it’s just easier to mention a region rather than say something
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5 Easy Tips for Making a Killer Presentation Whether during an average day at the office, via web meeting, or while attending a major conference, we have all sat through someone else’s presentation. Some presentations were mind-blowing and memorable, others were mediocre; and I’m willing to bet there are still others that you’ve witnessed that were downright awful, and you walked away confused at the
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Today’s business environment is competitive, fast paced and full of organizational congestion. We have specialists, technicians, analysts, controllers, planners, schedulers and researchers. There are functional teams in finance, programs, sales, engineering, manufacturing, quality assurance and human resources. The management challenge in this climate, though, is how to get all these groups – all these people – to work
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Knowing How to Develop Your Staff Developing employees is one of the most important aspects of managing people. After all, the modern worker wants more than a job – they want a career that is fulfilling, and their personal growth is component of that. Moreover, employee growth can be directly linked to things like succession planning and team performance, as well as employee
» Read more 10 Changes For New Bosses So you finally got that promotion at work. Congratulations! After all those long hours, extra effort, and volunteering to take on more work, you finally got your first management gig. In the heat of the energy and excitement of opening a new chapter in your career, though, like many other first time managers, you may
» Read more Everyday, our employees make commitments and take actions to complete various job-related tasks. Sometimes this is in response to the responsibilities that we, their managers, assign. However, in many cases the actions they take are simply the result of their own duties: talking with customers, meeting with colleagues, or in support of a given project. Regardless of the
» Read more How to Improve Communication in Your Business It was a game I played as a youngster; we called it ‘telephone.’ It was the game where students sat around in a circle whispering a message into the ear of the person beside them. When the last person got the message, he or she would say the message out loud. Naturally, after 30
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Managing Employees Who Are Older Than You I first began managing other people in my mid 20’s. I worked at a Fortune 500 company with over 150,000 employees and was given a small team to lead. Of the five team members, most were close to me in age, and whom I had few concerns as their supervisor. Then there was
» Read more Does Admitting Your Mistakes Make You a Bad Manager? A hot-tempered conference call had just ended. I stepped out of my office to get some fresh air. At the water cooler I ran into a peer, a fellow manager, who had also been on the conference call. “Wow, that was intense” she said. “Yeah. I don’t get why he just won’t let it
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How to Manage Change in Business Everyday, our industry and market changes. Our staff will change. And leaders of our organizations move on, and new ones take their place. All of this forces us as business leaders to constantly keep tabs on our organization to make sure things run smoothly. Unfortunately, with such dynamics many businesses
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Settling In as a First-Time Boss For some new managers, the idea of giving performance reviews and being responsible for others can be intimidating. For others, there are questions concerning how they manage people older than them, or fears of being accepted by their new team. Though I’ve been managing teams for nearly two decades, I too, had these fears. Bottom
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Every year, companies establish goals and objectives for their business. Some firms may plan further out – as far as 5 years – in order to obtain a certain sales targets and other corporate metrics. Unfortunately, many businesses stop there and lack a strategy for how they will actually achieve the goals. As a result, the lofty numbers on the
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Basic Lessons in Customer Service When it comes to working with customers, there are numerous ways to make a lasting impression that will bring them back to you time and time again. Sometimes a friendly tone of voice over the phone is all it takes to win a customer over. Perhaps your quick response time is all the customer needs
» Read more I recently sat through a regional meeting for a large corporation, during which a series of presentations were made. At the conclusion of the meeting, the regional manager got up to share a short set of slides that were presented at the annual corporate summit she had recently attended. The company has been undergoing a series of transformations
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How to Manage in Chaos It was late on a Friday when an employee came by my office to check in before he left for the weekend. The office was mostly empty by this point, and he was one of the last to leave. It had been a busy week and we had hardly crossed paths over the previous five days. This employee was one
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