Management Training

When there’s something you want at work—an assignment, a raise, acknowledgment—make better use of your time by asking yourself who has the power to help you accomplish your goals and how well you're managing those people. Apply our seven tips to leverage your skills and get what you want.

Issue: Maintaining personnel files is a chore, but it's the most important element in defending lawsuits and regulatory claims. Risk: Failing to organize your files correctly exposes you to civil ...

Working quickly is a virtue ... unless you’re proofreading. You’ll likely glide over grammar errors and speed past misspellings. Instead, slow down and follow these readers’ tips.

Imagine a company with 100 middle managers, all smart, all hard-working. Who will get the plum promotion? Who will eventually land in the corner office? There are five essentials that most CEOs share and look for in people they promote.

When dashing off your next memo, report or e-mail, cut right to the core points. HR directors from half of the 120 major American corporations polled in a recent study said they consider writing ability when making promotions. "You can't move up without writing skills," one HR director said.

Instead of reinventing the wheel every time you repeat a task, create a template and then reuse it. For years, Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, has used templates to improve his productivity ...

Designing letters, newsletters, brochures, fliers, ads, reports, posters and all the other printed material that a business needs might fall on your shoulders, even though it is not part of your job description! MS Word trainer Lori Fields shares these 4 useful tips on how to re-create the designs of professionals using Word:

Many of the mistakes people make when job hunting could be avoided, says Robin Ryan, a vocational counselor. “I divide my time between talking to hiring executives, HR folks and working with job search clients. This gives me a very broad view of what people do that works, and what trips them up—often without realizing it,” Ryan says. The top reasons job hunters fail:

With unemployment still running high, too many managers tell their employees—whether through their words or actions or both—that they should feel lucky to even have a job. “You need to nip that in the bud," says attorney Shanti Atkins.

As small businesses around the country plan for the rest of the year, many are focused on simply surviving. What’s lost is the big idea. During the research for my book, The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, I asked technology analyst Tim Bajarin about lessons entrepreneurs can learn from Jobs’ success.

Whether it’s a speedy way to create a bar chart or a trick for switching from one window to the next, keyboard shortcuts can help even the experienced admin knock out work faster. Here are a few of our readers’ faves:

Like Tom Cruise’s character in the movie “A Few Good Men,” you’ve got to demand the truth from team members. A first step for a leader is to say, “Above all else, I want the truth.” Once you get the truth, can you handle it?

Employers operate in an increasingly complex legal environment, made all the more difficult by the tough economy. Hiring has emerged as a particular trouble spot. Here are the key liability hot spots you must watch out for in the hiring process:

When West Point was founded in 1802, John Adams advocated an ambitious reading program. Today, among suggested reading for members of the U.S. armed services are quite a number of texts on leadership.

With some people, the problem isn't a matter of ability, it's a matter of attitude. This can manifest itself in everything from quiet disobedience to outright insubordination. How should you respond?

If you’ve ever been caught up in an employment lawsuit, chances are you couldn’t wait for it to be over. Yet every case presents a valuable opportunity to prevent future problems and improve HR effectiveness by conducting an “autopsy” of the claim. Jathan Janove tells you how.

What’s your reputation at work? Chances are, everyone in your office has a “rep.” The Chirpy One. The Sloppy Dresser. The Bad Breath Guy. Fairly or unfairly, we tend to label people in our minds—and those labels change the way we treat our co-workers.

Though big can be beautiful, the Kraft Foods behemoth was too weighed down by its centralized structure to be nimble or responsive. So in 2007, Chairman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld initiated a rewiring of the organization to put more power in the hands of business units. She managed to get the entire executive team — even those that did not fully support the idea — to own the team's decision. How did she get such solid alignment?

In sharp contrast to optimistic forecasts that technology would rid your company of the “paper monster,” computers seem to have exacerbated the problem. Now, you’re sending, receiving and storing information electronically and printing copies—lots of copies. You may be able to live with the mess, but what will happen someday if you need to get your hands on one of those documents?

You want to make every hour count, so you plan your day in 15-minute chunks and prioritize your tasks. That’s smart time management, but it doesn’t guarantee you’ll work productively.