The Manager's Resource Handbook
Tools, Resources and Guides for Managers and Business Leaders. Real Advice from Real Bosses.
Even Bad Managers Can Teach Us How to Be Good Leaders Over the span of a career, most people will accumulate dozens of bosses and supervisors. During this time, everyone inevitably gets to work for some great leaders and will have the misfortune of working for some really bad bosses. I used to think that one only learned from the
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A Playbook for Skip-Level Meetings: Questions to Ask and How to Get Engagement Skip-level meetings are an important component of managing a healthy organization. Alongside things like town hall discussions and employee surveys, regular skip-level meetings are an integral part of the standard feedback loop that helps leaders understand internal challenges and identify areas for improvement. In particular, the skip-level meeting
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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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11 Tips for Managing Quiet Employees As the old saying goes, sometimes it’s like pulling teeth. You have an employee who hardly speaks – barely utters a word – and you never quite feel like you’re connected. You know the one I’m talking about. Managing quiet employees can be extremely difficult if not flat out frustrating. These employees often prefer
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9 Expert Tips For Holding People Accountable…. And Micromanaging is Not One of Them From a manager’s perspective, accountability is a cornerstone of an effective organization. After all, when accountability is a core value of a business, people do what they say, they meet their commitments, and staffers are willing to fess up when they’ve made a mistake –
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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10 Essential Project Management Resources If you think about the best project manager you know, chances are he or she shares some common traits. For starters, successful project leaders are typically very well organized. Additionally, they are often great communicators, and they can remain calm under pressure. Despite these great talents, though, even the best project managers need help to bring about
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How To Create and Implement Organizational Vision Last week, my friend Charlie was telling me about his job. He described how he felt directionless and was not sure how he fit into the big picture. High up in his organization, Charlie has been a tremendous asset to his organization over the years. I found it strange: how can someone with
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Manager’s Guide to Better Email Writing Even in the age of Facebook, Twitter and text messaging, email is still at the core of modern business communication. We use email to communicate to our customers, our suppliers, our employees and our superiors. We use it to send mass-communication to our entire organization, and we use email to contact a single recipient. Moreover, according
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A friend of mine recently changed jobs. He was a 19-year veteran of the company he left, during which time he worked on a number of successful projects and had worked in several departments. And yet, after nearly two decades with the firm, he was informed that no exit interview would be held as the company saw no value for the
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Every manager has that first day on the job. And no matter how many years of work experience he or she may have, most first-time managers quickly realize they have a lot to take in. (We’ve all been there!) As we learn, we are bound to have our screw ups, it’s normal. The good news is that we can always
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12 Key Ingredients to High Performing Teams in the Workplace It’s well understood that good teams get the best results. Sports provide a great analogy for this: we are all familiar with those underdog teams that pull together when it matters most and make a championship run. Everyone on the team does his or her part and they motivate each
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9 Ways to Evaluate Your Leadership Style There’s a trendy phrase out there in the management world: ‘leadership style.’ But what is leadership style? Well, for starters, your leadership style is the collective approach you take when looking across all aspects of being a manager of people. Further, your style is your style; and it’s part personality, part skill set, part
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Working Hard or Hardly Working? It’s a question we all ask ourselves. Telecommuting is no longer a “new” thing. For many companies, large and small, more and more employees work from home, either occasionally, or on a regular basis. All you need is an internet connection. But supervising these remote employees presents challenges to you as a manager because, well,
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10 Real Quotes from Bad Bosses As managers, if it seems like our employees are watching our every move and closely listening to our every word, it’s because they are. In particular, the words that managers and business leaders say are very important. It’s not about being politically correct or about being nice, but it is about how a manager’s words and statements are interpreted by their
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15 Ways I Manage My Time As a Boss It’s just about that time of year when things are at their busiest. With the end of the year closing in, the pressure is on to meet our numbers. We’re busy planning our projects and budgets for next year. People are starting to use up their vacation, making their availability limited.
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