People Management

There’s a huge difference between mastering a specific task and managing employees. Supervision requires a different skill set that, for many rookie managers, doesn’t come as easy as doing the work. Here are 10 tips to help new managers transition into their roles.

Two leadership qualities: the ability to recognize potential and to have courage, even during adversity. How to use those same qualities with the people you lead: Spend time with a struggling em­­ployee who has potential. Ask, “How can I help you be successful?” Champion them to the naysayers.

To get Swedish commuters to take the stairs instead of the escalator at a metro stop, they turned the staircase into a giant keyboard, complete with sound. How can you use the same ap­­proach to change people’s behavior at work?

Gen. George Washington never hesitated to use young talent. Example: Henry Knox, who grew up poor and uneducated, became recognized as a military authority. In 1775, Washington saw that Knox had supervised construction of impressive ramparts north of Boston, made him a colonel and gave him a seemingly impossible task—moving heavy artillery 300 miles, which Knox achieved.

Is having birthday cake in the break room becoming a bit stale? Break out of the rut when it comes to celebrating staffers' birthdays with these ideas:

New to the organization, an executive set out from the start to show that he was open to ideas from his team. Deep down, he suspected the group had some knowledge that it hadn’t shared. So he knew the first step was to create an open culture where employees felt safe enough to speak up.

What makes an employee productive? Unproductive? “The key factor you can use to make employees miserable on the job is to simply keep them from making progress in meaningful work,” say researchers Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer.

As Facebook writes its own rulebook, part of its culture is healthy dissent, especially when it comes with proof.

Americans simply don’t know how to take a vacation. Only 57% of U.S. workers use all the vacation days they’re allotted, compared with 89% of workers in France, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found. How to turn it around? Try an “unlimited time off” policy.

Less-experienced individuals learn and grow faster under the tutelage of more seasoned professionals, who as mentors gain renewed enthusiasm for their careers. This adds up to improved recruitment, retention and promotion—and the bottom line—for your organization.