The Manager's Resource Handbook
Tools, Resources and Guides for Managers and Business Leaders. Real Advice from Real Bosses.
Make Staff Meetings More Engaging and Valuable Using These 8 Easy Steps Every one of us has attended a staff meeting – either as a participant or as the host. Some managers treat them as afterthoughts and hold them out of obligation, while others treat them as sacred and essential team huddles, regardless of what’s happening. For new managers, the
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5 Free Ways to Motivate Your Staff in Challenging Times Motivating employees is not easy. When times are tough, motivating your staff becomes even harder. For the past two years, our business has been undergoing a significant amount of corporate restructuring, downsizing, and changes in management, all of which have understandably left my employees concerned about the future. To make matters worse,
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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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The Right Way to Give Performance Feedback to an Employee To my friends, I described it as ‘an out of body experience.’ I made the comment in reference to the annual performance review given to me by my boss a few years back. It was an hour and a half that left me dazed and confused. The reason for my harsh critique was quite
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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
» Read more A Detailed Account of Downsizing a Team By One Manager at a Fortune 500 EDITOR’S NOTE: The following comments chronicle a layoff event that occurred at a Fortune 500 Company, as recorded by a manager in the organization. This is the second part in a 3-part series. Click HERE for Part 1, HERE for Part 2 or HERE for Part 3. Key details
» Read more A Detailed Account of Downsizing a Team By One Manager at a Fortune 500 EDITOR’S NOTE: The following comments chronicle a layoff event that occurred at a Fortune 500 Company, as recorded by a manager in the organization. This is the second part in a 3-part series. Click HERE for Part 1, and HERE for Part 2. Key details are omitted to
» Read more A Detailed Account of Downsizing a Team By One Manager at a Fortune 500 EDITOR’S NOTE: The following comments chronicle a layoff event that occurred at a Fortune 500 Company, as recorded by a manager in the organization. This is the second part in a 4-part series. Click HERE for Part 1, and HERE for Part 3. Key details are omitted to
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Regardless of whether its your first management gig, or just a new team for you to lead, every manager has a their first meeting with a new team. And while your new employees are likely to be generally cordial and kind, they’re still getting to know you, just as you’re getting to know them. You want to get past this period
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What it Takes to Become a Great Boss and a Great Leader It goes without saying that managing a team and leading people comes with a lot of responsibility. And while many managers are successful and have great careers, there are other managers who simply knock it out of the park. They get results, meet their budget and seemingly don’t break
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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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How to Create an Executive Summary Raise your hand if you have ever sat through a presentation and walked away not understanding its core message. Now, raise your hand if you’ve ever asked an employee to give you a project briefing, only for them to bury you in data, facts and graphics. Finally, raise your hand if you’ve ever picked
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Managing Crisis in the Workplace None of us had any idea that it was the first day of what would become a 10 month, $25 Million investigation. It was late in the afternoon on a cool fall day when the Quality Assurance Manager and the Operations Manager came to my office with a concern over a product defect that had
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9 Ways You’re Hurting Morale… And Don’t Even Know It Every manager among us is busy. We have a job vacancy to fill, we have expense reports to approve, we have a staff meeting to run…and after all that, we have our own work to do. So, where in all of that do we keep employees motivated, performing at a
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Overcoming the Legacy of Your Predecessor Maybe they retired. Perhaps there was some restructuring. Maybe they left the firm, or simply got promoted. In any case, the old boss left, and you were hired to take over. Even for experienced managers, the transition into a new management role is tough and may feel like an uphill battle to win over
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Finding Your Way in Business When The Odds are Against You Nothing is going your way. Cash is drying up. You’re not sure what to do next. No one else seems to have answers, either. All you get are more questions. A business turnaround is one of the most complex and challenging experiences a manager or business leader will ever go through
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8 Questions To Help You Delegate Many managers take on too much because they don’t know to delegate work effectively. They are told they should delegate more, but still struggle to do it. I was definitely in this category when I first became a manager, and always struggled to ask for help. Often times, you’ll hear employees say something like this:
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Here is What You Need To Do When the Sky Is Falling If you have not yet experienced it in your career, you will at some point. Managing a crisis at work is difficult for even the most skilled of leaders. Every time I think of such situations, I imagine that scene in the movie Apollo 13, when NASA controllers place
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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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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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