Leaders & Managers

Many business leaders are clueless about how they come across to their employees. Your mistakes could be crushing morale, sinking productivity and increasing turnover. Accord­ing to a recent Wall Street Journal report, here are five key questions to ask yourself to see if your management skills need improving:

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University professor who died of cancer in 2008 at age 47, earned a devout following after delivering his “last lecture” in 2007. He later gave another lecture, this one specifically about time management.

You can’t force people to change how they feel about their work. What you can do is focus on specific behaviors that solve real problems and deliver real results. Bit by bit, people begin thinking differently. Take the case of Aetna, which achieved one of the most successful turnarounds in U.S. corporate history.

As lean-and-mean companies keep asking more of their beleaguered employees, you may find yourself goading your team members to take on work that falls outside their normal jobs. You don’t have to beg and plead. Instead, approach your workers as potential volunteers ...

Perhaps nothing strikes more fear in an HR manager’s heart than learning that employees have filed a class-action wage-and-hour lawsuit alleging they were improperly classified as exempt employees. Your best defense is to be proactive about pay issues. Conduct regular reviews to make sure positions throughout your organization are properly classified as hourly or salaried.

The latest green trend isn’t about being politically correct. It’s about saving money and gaining efficiencies. The key word has shifted from “eco” to “sustainable.” Administrative professionals can be linchpins for a company that wants to be more efficient and sustainable.

That’s the question Steve Cunningham hears often, as the head of a digital mar­­keting agency. His reply? The true power of social media is in doing things that are worth talking about. He mentions two companies known for creating buzz in social-media circles: Zappos and Apple.

Your organization has narrowed the field to two candidates for an administrative position. Both are experienced, both personable. How to choose? Nancy Brown has devised a way to make the right choice...

If Nina Zagat knows anything, it’s how to have a successful business dinner. The co-founder of the Zagat Survey restaurant guides says the main goal of any meal with business colleagues is to leave the meal knowing more about who she is as a person. Other rules for business meals:

Imagine the mistakes we could avoid if we would just admit what we didn’t know—or ask the necessary questions to understand it. Turn the following two tips into resolutions, suggests business management author Tom Peters: