Does your team trust you? Is there such a thing as a positive relationship without trust? We trust our friends and take their advice. People listen when leaders earn trust their through words and actions. Establishing trust between a leader and direct reports can build a long-term partnership. How important is building trust in a [...]
So, what's holding you back. Do you finger-point? It's easy to do and often seems justified, but even so, what's gained? Regardless of how "real" the blame is, blaming will not improve the results; it could worsen things. Without training for improvement, how does attaching blame help? If someone dropped the ball, didn't follow through, [...]
It's essential to your leadership development that you encourage employees to review you. In my post Employee Reviews Should Be an Ongoing Process I outlined why reviews should be a yearlong process not once per year. The other day a manager asked me to review questions she had prepared for her staff to answer before [...]
We all hope our employees believe in our company values and follow and abide by company policies and procedures. We want to believe our teammates share the values outlined in mission statements and vision manifestos but do we know they share our company values? Not unless we ask. Do Your People Believe Your Company Values [...]
Do you know what makes a leader worth following? You've been promoted to manager. It’s your first real management position and you don’t want to mess it up. You've had bosses who helped the team be more productive, others who interfered with productivity, and some who hindered performance. You don't want to be one of [...]
A college professor sent me this book report covering The New Manger's Workbook from one of the profs students. This isn't the first time I've heard from secondary educators who use my book as a text or offer it as collateral material. The New Manager’s Workbook A Crash Course in Effective Management Randy Clark – [...]
Do you know what's important to your employees? Last week, I asked a management team how they could make their workplace better for their employees. A short discussion ended with the conclusion that the best answer to this question was to ask the employees. They're currently conducting an employee survey. The team has reviewed about [...]
If you're not currently working with or directly managing younger people in the workplace, you soon will be. Interacting with people outside your generation comes with a whole host of challenges. But there's one serious problem, in particular, to keep in mind when working with younger team members that you absolutely must hold at the [...]
So, who's training the trainer? Good question. Have you ever managed managers? I have. And for a time I wasn't very competent. I expected my managers to know it all and do it on their own. Because, I mean—they were managers, weren't they? I remember discovering several of my managers weren't properly training their direct [...]
This post about the workforce of 2024 was written in 2014. I pulled it up with the idea of updating and rewriting it and then thought, what the heck, it's kind of fun looking back. So, where do you think I nailed it and where do you think I missed the mark? Over the next [...]
