The Manager's Resource Handbook
Tools, Resources and Guides for Managers and Business Leaders. Real Advice from Real Bosses.
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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7 Steps to Building a Successful Team: People, Purpose, Performance The opportunity doesn’t come often for us, but getting the chance to build a brand new team from scratch is one of the most enjoyable experiences a manager will ever have. After all, building a successful organization requires planning, creativity, execution and oversight…all at once. For me, the first such opportunity
» 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
» 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 first in a 4-part series. Key details are omitted to keep it anonymous, however the timing, details and commentary are factual.
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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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The Most Inspiring Question I’ve Ever Heard from a Job Candidate Times were tough. We were working around the clock in response to a major product recall. My team was exhausted. Our customers were furious. We had been at it for months. Even though it was December, many of us knew we would have to work through the Christmas holidays
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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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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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A Manager’s Guide to Promoting Staff and Knowing When It’s Time Promoting your employees entails a lot more than just giving them more pay. Promotions are about developing your staff, rewarding performance, building a succession plan for your business, and managing the overall advancement of your workforce. Further, these days, employees seek advancement – whether inside or outside your company – so
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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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Is Your Training Plan Being Cut Year After Year? Read On… It’s a battle out there, folks. Between a fragile economy, steep competition, and the rising costs of business, it seems like we as managers spend as much time cutting costs as we do planning our budgets in the first place. The first step in trimming a budget, of course, is to limit what
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How to Deal with Negative Employees in the Workplace His name was Mark. I was 34. Mark, my employee, was 54. It was not my first management rodeo, but I’m pretty sure he likened me more to one of his three teenagers at home than he saw me as his boss. Dealing with negative employees in the workplace is fairly common for managers, but Mark
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A happy employee is a productive employee. A happy team is a productive team. This may be a simple way to describe how an organization benefits from employee engagement, but creating job satisfaction for one’s staff can frustrate even the most experienced of managers. And yet, employee engagement can be the difference maker between seeing your business flourish, and watching only disappointing results trickle in. Additionally, a disengaged staff can lead
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Organizational Health: 5 Things Your Employees May Be Telling You Have you ever really paid attention to what your employees are telling you? After all, employee behavior is often a sign of organizational health. Sometimes they may ask unusual questions that make you scratch your forehead. Other times, their non-verbal behavior in the workplace can say a lot about a business or
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Today’s business environment is competitive, fast paced and full of organizational congestion. We have specialists, technicians, analysts, controllers, planners, schedulers and researchers. There are functional teams in finance, programs, sales, engineering, manufacturing, quality assurance and human resources. The management challenge in this climate, though, is how to get all these groups – all these people – to work
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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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