One of the most important but vastly overlooked aspects of good management is telling employees how they’re doing. Many workers operate in the dark, wondering...
Q. I work for a manager who comes in
at 7:45 and leaves at 4:30 sharp whenever he is here (which is not
often), and he takes an hour lunch. He hogs the credit for our...
Q. I’m an administrative assistant at a fast-growing firm. Our office
could benefit by hiring a junior marketer to help our one overworked
salesman. I’m...
Only the most disciplined, enlightened managers can resist the urge to argue when greeted with a nonstop complainer. But trying to convince someone that he’s wrong...
Q. I attended a “lunch and learn” session with our CEO. During the
Q&A, I proposed an idea for increasing our market share. The CEO
seemed pleased and said...
When U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and some senior executives died in a plane crash a few years ago, I remember thinking, “Those CEOs better have good...
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...
Warning: The way you respond to your employees’ excuses may actually encourage them to feed you more excuses. If you readily accept their reasons for being late,...
Q. I recently got some feedback that alarmed me from a client. He said
I was too laid back, that I didn’t seem enthusiastic enough about
working on his account....
You can persuade, delegate and lead people more successfully if you understand what they’re thinking. But most people won’t tell you what’s on their...
You know you’ve got a great team when employees act selflessly to make
others look good. If they spread credit around and coach each other to
improve, then...
Q. I supervise an employee whose
hygiene is so poor that fellow employees complain to me and, frankly,
gag from the smell. Our HR director has twice asked him to do...
