Managers should be helping their employees manage their stress; they should not be causing it. As much as your team should be trying to make your job easier, you should also be trying to make their jobs easier. This entails being consistent, reliable, calm under pressure, open to feedback, and helpf...
We all know that not everyone learns in the same way, but what we might not realize is that there are varying levels of information retention based on the approach you take when learning something new. There is passive learning, which is what most people rely on, and then there is active learning, w...
Whenever you notice a behavior or attitude that needs modification, it’s important to know how to effectively address that with your employees and when it's appropriate. As a leader, your role is crucial in guiding the team to success, and you do that by setting clear expectations, providing support...
Even once you have reached a leadership position, you are not done developing yourself. Leaders are lifelong learners. Continuously investing in and developing one’s leadership skills will yield positive results for the leader, those that follow them, and the organization itself.
When you demonstra...
Management is very different from leadership, but there are benefits to developing skills in both areas. When I think of managing others, I think of monitoring, measuring, and sometimes correcting employee performance. On the other hand, when I think of leading others, I think of inspiring greatness...
Many managers believe that micromanaging their employees is how to keep them on track for success when in fact, it often discourages them from taking any risks or giving extra discretionary effort. They feel as though their manager does not trust them to do the thing that they were hired to do, so t...
When someone tells you that they need something done “ASAP” or “by yesterday,” what does that mean to you? Is that a clear timeline for you to follow, or does it leave you guessing and panicking about how you will get the task done in time for when your boss/leader wants it?
When you are delegating...
One of the struggles employees are facing in today’s market is that of having a target to shoot for in success. We bring on new employees, take them through the paperwork, teach them to do a job, and then hope for the best. It has been my experience that hope is a pretty lousy strategy. We have to h...
Performance reviews have undergone significant evolution in American companies over the past few decades. Initially, performance evaluations were focused primarily on individual job performance, with little emphasis on employee development or goal setting. Even within that evaluative focus, the revi...
3 Key changes are coming in 2023 for leaders. I was working with several of my clients in this last quarter and really digging in to analyze what is and isn’t working for them. One particular client, we’ll call them Awesome Company A, or ACA for short, had tremendous success pre-Covid but has faced ...
In a 2022 study by Flexjobs, looking at the reasons over 2000 individuals quit their jobs, they found that toxic company culture was at the head of the list. A company’s culture is simply the collective personality and value structures of the leaders represented in the workplace. We talk about cultu...
One of the challenges employees faces is in understanding what their supervisors are asking of them. I have yet to meet a person that wants to fail in life. Of the thousands of people I have worked with, every single one of them wanted to succeed. It’s just that many of them weren’t sure what that m...