Tools, Resources and Guides for Managers and Business Leaders. Real Advice from Real Bosses.
When Your Customer Makes You Cringe: Dealing With Unprofessional Clients During a recent meeting with a client, my patience grew to its thinnest level yet in our working relationship. They were unhappy with schedule, but they were the cause for the delays. They were dissatisfied with our solution to their problem, but it was driven by their written guidelines. They
» Read more
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
» Read more
21 Expert Tips for Increasing Workplace Productivity If boosting your department’s throughput were as easy as flipping a switch, every boss’s job would be infinitely simpler. Unfortunately, that’s far from reality. Further, as an old colleague of mine used to say, “Asking people to work harder is not a solution.” In the proven strategies that follow, we will illustrate how
» Read more
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
» Read more
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
» Read more
How to Prevent Employee Burnout From time to time we hear stories about people who have done the same thing for years, even decades. But, frankly, that’s quite rare these days. Today, few workers stay in their positions for more than a handful of years because they desire career growth or just get bored and want change. As managers, we are accustomed to talking about
» Read more
I’m Glad I Got an MBA, But it Couldn’t Have Taught Me This For years I wanted to go back to school to pursue my MBA. It seemed like the next logical step in my career, but I put it off for one thing or another. Travel. Family. Cost. Time. Eventually, though, I did get my MBA and I’m very grateful for it.
» Read more
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
» Read more
Can we be honest? No one really enjoys writing employee performance reviews. Not many managers take pleasure in tracking employee goals. And yet, everyone likes to see their organization and company flourish. For small businesses, the idea of introducing a framework for managing performance may seem like a waste of precious energy and time. I can see why that is the case.
» Read more
How To Create Your Management New Year’s Resolutions Welcome to a New Year! The beginning of a new year offers the closest thing we ever get to a fresh start as a manager, allowing us to recalibrate expectations of ourselves and our employees. It also marks a great time for business leaders to set the next 12 months off on the
» Read more
Teaching Employees How to Communicate Using the What? So What? Now What? Model How often does an employee give you a mountain of data that simply left asking yourself the question ‘So…what should I do with this information?’ Whether they come into your office to talk to you or they just send you an email, teaching employees to be better communicators is
» Read more
When I first started managing people, I used to think the idea of setting performance goals was, well, rather silly. I just thought that employees were responsible for doing the work assigned to them and completing tasks in their queue. That was how my own bosses had approached employee performance, so I just thought that was normal. Fortunately, it did not take
» Read more
15 Minutes That Fuel Productivity Meetings are perhaps the most effective form of communication in any workplace. They give everyone a chance to communicate in real-time, they prevent important messages from getting lost in an inbox, and they offer managers a chance to get some valuable face time with their employees. But not every meeting is intended to be a lengthy conversation or
» Read more
How to Negotiate and Manage Customer Requirements Seven years ago, my company was on the losing end of a $4 Million settlement. I could write a lengthy explanation as to how things got there, but it came down to one very simple thing: we gave our customer what we thought they wanted, not what they said they wanted. It was
» Read more
When to Outsource? 8 Questions To Ask Yourself if You Are Thinking About Outsourcing To many business leaders, outsourcing may seem like a great solution to just about any problem. Indeed, leveraging outside resources and expertise can certainly enable you to fix issues and to keep your business thriving. However, outsourcing and offshoring typically require a lot of up-front planning, coordination and analysis on your part to
» Read more
A Formula for Giving Performance Feedback to Our Most Talented Workers When I first became a manager of other people, I was deathly afraid of having to deal with performance issues and difficult employees. And while it took a little time to figure out how to manage those individuals, it was not until I sat down with my best employee for the
» Read more
Learning from the Mistakes We Make as a Managers of People Giving feedback to our employees is just one of the many responsibilities of being a manager. It is part of the job, as is receiving constructive criticism from our own boss. Whether you are an entry-level employee, or the CEO of a Fortune 200 company, feedback is a gift. No matter
» Read more
Before the RFP: Key Messages That Position You for Success Winning a contract comes down to finding mutual value between you and the client. The concept of value goes beyond the financial numbers, though, and is really a combination of price, product, services and trust. When you receive a Request for Proposal (RFP) from a client, how do you demonstrate the value you can
» Read more
What Does It Mean to Be a Leader? Great leaders are special people. I was only a couple of years into my career when I began to notice the term leadership used around the office. Being in my early twenties, I did not think much of it back then and was just glad to have a job in a down economy. In
» Read more
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
» Read more