The Manager's Resource Handbook
Tools, Resources and Guides for Managers and Business Leaders. Real Advice from Real Bosses.
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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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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One of our most popular articles here at MRH discusses a basic strategy that we’ve used to justify an increase in staff. And it’s no surprise: based on our research, 50% of managers say the biggest challenge they face is the size of their staff. We’ve said it many times, but will mention it again. Between salaries, benefits, insurance and other
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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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Evaluating A Job Candidate’s Interview Performance Whether you’re on a hiring spree for your startup or trying to fill a key role in your organization, interviewing job applicants reveals a lot about your candidates. We recently filled a critical role within our company, and while all three final candidates were internal to our business and knew the organization well,
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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 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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In 1972, American Bobby Fischer won the World Chess Championship by beating Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union. It was a match publicized worldwide as the battle between two superpowers. While both nations had massive nuclear arsenals, this particular battle was fought with figurines on a game board. Now, while I know who Bobby Fischer was, I admit that I
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Managing people is a complex business. There are personality differences, business pressures and customers to face on a daily basis. Tip #6 discussed how good leaders need to show their human side. As a leader of people, it’s important to tap into the human element of curiosity. Plenty of literature exists supporting the notion that a learning organization is the best model for
» Read more An article I read today by Rosabeth Moss Kanter over @HarvardBiz summed up what I believe to be the epitome of good management. In the article, Kanter states the following: “Good management is a series of well thought-through actions including phases, communications, checkpoints, customer-impact-testing, metrics, contingencies, and feedback loops, designed to produce specified results on time and on budget, based
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All things being equal, a manager who maintains a positive attitude, even in times of adversity, will get more out of their team than the manager who casts a shadow of negativity. In Tip #5, integrity was discussed as the standard to which good managers hold themselves. The next tip is often a byproduct of integrity – a positive, can-do attitude.
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Earlier in the Management Success Series, we talked about integrity and the importance of being honest and open with your team. But as we discussed, we as managers cannot always fulfill promises no matter how hard we try. And while integrity can remain constant, the business environment can be difficult to navigate. We as managers can make mistakes, and that’s what makes
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Tip #1 of the Management Success Series described influence as a key ingredient in good managers. You have to be able to maneuver and pull various levers to make things happen, while simultaneously pulling your team along with you. Influence, like trust, is something that is built over time but easily lost. A good means of establishing your influence and building trust is
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