The Manager's Resource Handbook
Tools, Resources and Guides for Managers and Business Leaders. Real Advice from Real Bosses.
MRH Mailbag: Advice from Our Experts When I first began leading and managing a team, I was caught off guard by the number of unique and unusual challenges I faced on a daily basis. In the span of a given week, I found myself addressing everything from budget issues, to personnel matters, to customer inquiries. No two days were alike.
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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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How to Supervise People Who Struggle to Meet Dates Whether they report to you directly or they are assigned to your program, employees who won’t say ‘no’ and overcommit themselves will eventually miss a critical deadline. In extreme cases, this employee behavior can even threaten the success of an entire project. As competent and dedicated as they may be, staff
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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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Holding one on one meetings with your staff is an essential component of the manager-employee relationship. These discussions serve as a vehicle for providing coaching, giving performance feedback, and sharing general career insight. To get a real assessment of what’s going on, though, you need the employee to do the talking. Easier said than done! Despite the list of topics managers should discuss,
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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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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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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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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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Horrible Bosses … in Real Life If you’ve ever seen the movie Horrible Bosses, you probably reacted the way most of us did: some of the amazingly inappropriate behavior in the film registered a little close to home. We’ve all had some sort of run in with a really bad boss in our career, and while the movie makes a
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Should I Let Employees Work From Home? Compared to just 15 years ago, the widespread availability of Wi-Fi, tablets, video conferences and smart phones have made the world our office. Many jobs no longer require employees to be housed within the same four walls since they can connect virtually, just as if they were sitting at a desk in a high-rise office
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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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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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Congratulations! You have a New Employee!…And it Just Happens to Be Your Boss. The idea of it sounds ludicrous. You have a large staff, countless projects and relentless customers to take care of throughout your day. And then you realize you have to add one more load on top of it: managing your own boss. Sad but true, if you
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How to Be a Boss and a Friend A former mentor of mine once told me that there are two highly uncomfortable relationships that one inevitably encounters in his or her management career. The first of these relationships was the one you have when your former boss ends up working for you. That is, the person from whom you once
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Promoting Skill Development of Your Human Resources Employee development is a hot topic in today’s human resource and executive management circles, and rightly so. Companies are investing more and more time and energy into building organizational strength through the capabilities of their employees. It’s been said for some time that a company’s greatest asset is its people. And now, firms have
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Writing Employee Performance Reviews Doesn’t Need to Be a Drag Writing performance reviews of your employees can be extremely aggravating. As managers, we are busy. We correct behavior we don’t like when we see it, so taking precious time away from customers and emails can seem like a waste of our time. But performance appraisals are actually one of the
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Knowing How to Develop Your Staff Developing employees is one of the most important aspects of managing people. After all, the modern worker wants more than a job – they want a career that is fulfilling, and their personal growth is component of that. Moreover, employee growth can be directly linked to things like succession planning and team performance, as well as employee
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