If you have good, human relationships with your people, you will have to work hard to screw up as a boss. The easiest and most common way to help relationships grow and thrive is through conversations. So, what’s a conversation?
Best-Practices Leadership
A leader in an organization can’t do everyone’s job. Instead of micromanaging, strong leaders use organizational leadership to coordinate, communicate, motivate and delegate among employees and team members. For comprehensive organizational effectiveness, each individual needs to be seen as a contributor, with the leader at the helm.
Most importantly, best-practices leadership involves keeping employees motivated throughout the process, adapting your scope or strategy as necessary, and developing an effective communication strategy.
Some people never make it to the other side because they’re more successful at being doers. This is a crucial point in determining if you’re going to move up the ranks.
Browse our articles, tools and advice on best-practices leadership.
Make any decision-making group more effective by limiting membership to seven. Once you have more than seven in the group, each additional member reduces decision effectiveness by 10%.
With employees still reeling from workplace budget cuts, now’s a great time for new team building ideas. No, you don’t need an expensive round of paintball to gain the benefits of team building exercises, but you do need to squeeze the most out of them. In this new FREE Special Report from Business Management Daily — 17 Team Building Ideas — we’ll show you how to do that.
In recent years, it’s become clear that companies are slow to adopt flexible workplace practices. Employees at award-winning workplaces continue to lament their lack of flexibility. While 80% of Americans say they want workplace flexibility, only a third report having it. There are big barriers to adopting and sustaining flexible workplace practices within an organization. We need to shift our focus from the “why” to the “how.”
Q: “Tom, a long-term employee, recently transferred into my unit. He has a reputation of being 'difficult.' On good days, he’s productive and upbeat. But on bad days, he’s critical and hostile. Unfortunately, the bad days outnumber the good days. I’ve tried to be supportive, but he’s exhausting me! What can I do?”
For Kevin Plank, founder and CEO of Under Armour, the journey to leadership began with a vexing problem he had personally experienced: As a walk-on player with the University of Maryland football team, he perspired a lot. So, after he finished playing with the team, he decided to find a solution to his sweat problem. His mission: to create a no-drip T-shirt.
You know the saying: One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. If you’re a manager, you may occasionally encounter a bad apple. So what does a leader do to stop “problem” employees from spreading their negative influence?
College presidents don’t like to admit it, but as cheerleaders in chief, they need charm to chat up everyone from teenagers to rich donors. Without charm, they’d be sunk.
Job descriptions are the cornerstone of communication between you and your staff. Job descriptions can also be useful tools in court. Make sure you have job descriptions for all employees’ positions. Then keep those descriptions updated whenever the duties change.
In 2008, Imperial Sugar Company experienced an explosion at its refinery in Port Wentworth, Ga., that killed 14 workers and injured dozens of others. Three years later, the company has transformed itself, largely due to the leadership of CEO John Sheptor. "A crisis is not a time to lead from the front office," he says.
