According to a study by the International Association of Administrative Professionals and OfficeTeam, managers rank promotions and cash bonuses as the most effective ways of recognizing employee accomplishments. But administrative pros put two other appreciation tactics at the top of their list:

High-performance leaders revolutionize their roles by changing the dynamic between leader and follower: Not only do they hold team members accountable for results, but they themselves expect to be held accountable by team members. Being held accountable requires a thick skin and brave employees willing to offer honest feedback.

Baseball manager Joe Torre has led far more diverse and ego-driven teams than most managers ever will—including star-studded Dodgers and Yankees teams. Yet, his teams have won repeatedly, thanks to these four “rules of straight communication” that he has developed over the years. See if they might apply to your team.

Employees are often the best sources of ideas because they are closest to the daily details of the organization. But too often, employees are sitting on great cost-saving, business-generating ideas because they’ve never been specifically asked. Here are five strategies to help encourage input from employees.

You might think that recognition is about the rewards you give employees for long years of service or for retiring after a notable career. It’s really not. Recognition is about employee engagement. And employee engagement starts with employer engagement. How you treat people today is going to determine whether your valued employees stay with you when the financial crisis is over.

Have you avoided Access, Microsoft’s database management application, in favor of Excel? Do you find yourself entering the same data again and again – just so you can use it for multiple purposes? There’s an easier way to manage all this data. This is your golden opportunity to put the power of Access to work for you.

Goals are the heart of any pay-for-performance system. They set the standard against which employees’ progress is measured—and on which bonuses and raises are based. But goal setting can be a tightrope act. To establish goals that improve organizational performance, ask these eight questions, developed by the Harvard Business School:

Here’s a problem you might not see coming. Let’s say you have an employee who belongs to a protected class, and whose skills you believe will help when relating to others of the same protected class. Before you decide to assign work to the employee based on those skills, consider whether doing so is, in effect, unspoken segregation.

Time to debunk five common myths about motivating employees. For example: Motivating with money—recognition and status work better. And giving nonwork rewards (breaks and free toys) says and does nothing about the quality of employees' efforts ...

Here are a few interviewing tips from Bob Edwards, who hosts a show on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio: Prepare well. Make your subjects feel comfortable. Listen closely. Stop and reroute the interview if the person keeps saying the same thing. Let the candidate do the talking ...

I need help putting a muzzle on one of our workers who is an awful gossip. Recently, one of our best salespeople got help with paperwork duties so she could concentrate on meeting sales goals. An employee overheard two managers discussing the change and immediately ran to co-workers and said the salesperson was being relieved of assignments because she wasn’t making her numbers. That’s not the case at all. Now everyone thinks this good salesperson is being punished. Needless to say, this is embarrassing and has caused a lot of tension. I need to set the record straight—and I would really like to discipline the gossiping employee, who has done this kind of thing before. What should I do?—Stacy, NY

At the Michigan offices of Johnson Controls, one of the most coveted employee benefits is a visit from the boss. Executives of the Wisconsin-based automotive supplies manufacturer devote about a quarter of their time to visiting with the 1,800 employees who work in their Michigan facilities—most often by walking around and chatting with whomever they run into.

Resistance to change is one of the hardest things to face, and follow-through one of the hardest things to do. It’s easy to become defensive about changes—you risk running off track, rolling over skeptics, losing goodwill or ignoring red flags. To manage resistance, follow these steps:

Effective HR pros often have to balance sensitivity and compassion with hard-nosed business realities. Never will that dichotomy be more severely tested than when an employee attempts suicide. Then you'll have to consider the employee's situation, ADA and FMLA rules ... and your obligation to maintain an environment that's safe for other workers.

Major problems can erupt when supervisors have to manage people they just don't get along with. Smart managers defuse that tension by focusing on tasks, projects and results—not personalities. Feel free to use this 'Memo to Managers' article to educate your supervisors. Paste the content into an e-mail, company newsletter or other communication.

Not every employee who earns a promotion will be successful at the new job. While you certainly want to do everything possible to allow the employee to thrive in the new assignment, you’ve also got to be practical. When you conduct those initial performance reviews, consider the possibility that the employee will ultimately fail. Here’s how to encourage success, but plan for potential failure:

Legendary football coach Bill Walsh remembers that quarterbacks Joe Montana and Steve Young came to the San Francisco 49ers with supremely high expectations of themselves. Walsh let them know he thought they could do more than anything. The best way to do that with your own team, he says, is to use the four most powerful words:

Employees who want a promotion sometimes get upset when they aren’t selected, especially if the job winds up going to someone they perceive as less skilled or talented. But if the spurned employee’s extra skills or training weren’t necessary, they aren’t particularly relevant.

The recession has caused the rise of a new class of “hypersensitive consumers.” Here's how to turn those disgruntled clients into your biggest champions. Hint: Employee training plays a big role.

Think your next generation of managers will come from your rank-and-file workers? Don’t be so sure. Surprisingly, 49% of employees with the experience to become managers say they don’t want any part of a managerial role. Why?

Imagine if baseball GMs, ignoring batting statistics, took potential players out for a beer at Applebee’s to test their culture fit. That’s what leaders do by using interviews to pluck out the best candidates. But interviews are less predictive of job performance than work samples, job-knowledge tests and peer ratings of past job performance.

With EFCA on the march in Congress and unions staging a big push to add new members, it's up to enlightened managers to show employees they don't need organized labor. These 14 steps will get bosses talking to employees ... and keep unions from gaining a toehold in your company.

Suggestion boxes seem like such a good idea! They’re an easy way to solicit employee input. They send the message that management cares. They get workers involved! What could go wrong?

The Washington Redskins’ hiring of an “offensive consultant” looked to some like a pure play to undermine the head coach. The Redskins owner rationalized that his hired hand was “another pair of eyes.” That only works, though, if the coach wants another set of eyes. Since that wasn’t the case, the owner appeared to be perpetuating infighting and chaos. Result? A case of “toxic management.”

Do you "play favorites” with certain employees? Most managers would probably say “no,” but people often harbor unconscious perceptions that can influence day-to-day decision-making and job reviews of the employees they manage. Several factors unrelated to employee performance can impact evaluations conducted by managers.