The Manager's Resource Handbook
Tools, Resources and Guides for Managers and Business Leaders. Real Advice from Real Bosses.
Developing Your Own Succession Plan Succession planning is a fundamental part of building a leadership path for talented employees. As leaders move up, move on, or move out of the business, a good succession plan at the organizational level identifies the pipeline of individuals who are ready to fill future open roles and vacancies. But what about developing your own
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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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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
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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.
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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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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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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
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How to Retain Good Employees There are two things that unite every manager and business leader, in every industry, and in every country. First, they want the best talent working in their organization. And second, they want their talented workers to stay. But this is no longer the working environment of the past generations when people remained with the same
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Managing and Mentoring The Leaders that Work For You We recently posted an article about the art of mentoring, which primarily centered on coaching junior staff who are just beginning their careers. We wanted to go further into the topic of mentoring, but focus on a different group. As your career advances, your organization gets larger. Eventually, you get to
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8 Tips For Becoming a Great Mentor To Your Staff Last week I met with a new staffer on my team, who joined the firm just a couple of months ago. He was eager and prepared, bringing a number of questions to the meeting; it was a very productive conversation overall. While we did talk about his specific tasks, much of
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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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Helping Employees Make Career Choices As managers, our job is to get results, plan resources, and develop our employees. In terms of effective employee development, the time we take to coach our staff members is critical to helping each one become a growing force within the organization. Further, sometimes, we need to mentor them on more than just the day-to-day skills
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18 Things To Do As a First Time Supervisor Great job! You’ve moved up, and now you have entered the world of management! Your first 6 months as a new boss can be eye-opening, to say the least. There’s a lot to learn, a lot to do, and you need to set the tone for your new organization early on. And what about all
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What to Consider When Downsizing Your Team It might be the most delicate and sensitive topic that you as a manager will face in your career: selecting the names of those people to let go or make redundant. The context here is reducing the size of the organization to maintain profitability, or improve efficiency, not firing someone due to misconduct. From
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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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5 Things You Need to Do to Create Your Own Skills Matrix Imagine: a critical assignment comes in, and you need to figure out who to give it to in order to get it done. You only have one shot to get it right in order to secure that new contract. Who do you give it to? Who is the most capable?
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