Leaders & Managers
From the nitty gritty of daily management to addressing your aspirations of leadership, this section for leaders & managers tells you how to make strong leadership decisions, build effective teams, delegate and stay above the everyday management muddle.
Get tips, strategies, tool and advice on: performance reviews, preventing workplace violence, best-practices leadership, team building, leadership skills, people management and management training.
Before you try to persuade people, you want them to respect you. Establishing rapport helps.
If you and an employee disagree about his work quality, strip away
judgments and focus on measurable results. Arguing over subjective
factors won’t solve anything. You’ll both insist you’re right, and that
will spark antagonism and defensiveness.
Beware of a probe recently launched by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
You may work in a lean, mean organization. That’s fine, as long as it’s not too mean.
Some employees don’t buy into teams, but that doesn’t necessarily make them bad. You can turn these independent- minded staffers into valuable contributors by letting them produce results on their own terms.
Q. I’m fed up with waiting six months for a great performance review, only to get a measly little raise. This has gone on for four years. What can I do to break this cycle?
Q. Almost two years ago, I was forced
by my boss to take a transfer employee from another department who I
knew was trouble. This person likes to pit employees against each other
by bad-mouthing them. She has managed to foster several allies among my
staff.
Michael Kinsley, the editor of Slate, an online magazine published by Microsoft Corp., has a formidable résumé. He joined Microsoft in January 1996 after serving as editor of The New Republic and co-host of CNN’s Crossfire. He’s also a contributing writer at Time and has written for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Reader’s Digest. Based in Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., Kinsley manages people nationwide.
Like Teflon, some bosses never have anything bad stick to them. Despite abortive projects and unmet commitments, they survive.
Most management experts warn against meddling in your employees’ every decision. That advice isn’t always right. While controlling supervisors can turn their bold innovators into pliant order-takers, there are times when micromanaging makes sense.
