People management
Advice on how to manage reports/how to work with line managers.
Manager’s Playbook
Heuristics for effective management
New Managers: The Complete Guide
The most important thing to understand about your role is that it’s changing. It’s not a continuation of your role as independent worker, and it’s not “doing your current role but better”.
Being a manager is an entirely new job.
Workflows That Help Me Stay (and Feel) Productive as a Manager
In a couple of recent 1:1s I’ve had, the topic of staying productive came up and I offered to write up a couple of my systems. What I’m outlining below is an overview of the system I’m using (or have used) to structure the time that I don’t have directly alloted to meetings or interaction with my team, like 1:1s for example.
My Approach to 1-on-1s
This is an outline of how I approach having 1-on-1s with my direct reports. I think of 1-on-1s as my primary tools for connecting with an individual and working on their morale, engagement, productivity and growth.
The new manager 1:1: nurturing employee resiliency during disruption and change
This simple connection point between an employee and their manager has long been studied by our Workplace Analytics team, and in what academics call ‘leader-member exchange’ research in organization science. Research hasn’t considered the current work environment, though, and so we set out to answer questions about how 1:1 meetings between managers and their direct reports have evolved in our organization, and how these meetings have impacted employees. Our findings confirm the significant power of this very simple meeting in a manager’s toolkit and shed new light on how it can help stabilize an organization during disruption.
101 Questions to Ask in One on Ones
Do you come in prepared and ready to make the most of each one or do some go better than others as you wing it half the time? Are you too dependent on them bringing the agenda? Do you ask the same 3-5 questions every time?
Harassers are nice to me, and probably to you
Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves: are people talking to me about harassment or bullying they see or experience? And we have to understand that if they are not, that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Instead, it means you don’t know about something very vital that is almost certainly happening around you all the time. If you aren’t hearing about it, it’s time to take action to ensure that you do.
How to Manage Your Team in Times of Political Trauma
When we encourage our teams to “bring their whole selves to work” — remember that this includes acknowledging how their lives are impacted by forces outside the office.
Confronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit
Many organizations are drowning in a flood of corporate bullshit, and this is particularly true of organizations in trouble, whose managers tend to make up stuff on the fly and with little regard for future consequences. Bullshitting and lying are not synonymous. While the liar knows the truth and wittingly bends it to suit their purpose, the bullshitter simply does not care about the truth. Managers can actually do something about organizational bullshit, and this Executive Digest provides a sequential framework that enables them to do so. They can comprehend it, they can recognize it for what it is, they can act against it, and they can take steps to prevent it from happening in the future. While it is unlikely that any organization will ever be able to rid itself of bullshit entirely, this article argues that by taking these steps, astute managers can work toward stemming its flood.