What are your leadership blind spots?
All leaders—and we do mean all leaders—can improve how they interact with their employees and lead their teams.
When an employee goes over your head–to her mother
Q: “The mother of one of my employees recently called my boss to complain that her daughter, ’Sarah,’ was being overworked. Sarah was upset because some required training made it difficult for her to complete her regular duties, so I quickly resolved the problem by changing her training schedule. However, I was completely shocked that Sarah had been afraid to talk to me directly and that her mother felt a need to contact my manager. As Sarah’s supervisor, I feel I should have been given more respect. What should I do?” Bypassed
1-Minute Strategies: March ’16
Strategies for better communication in the workplace.
The corrective talk was kind and gentle–but taken personally anyway
Q: “I’m having a communication problem with a co-worker, ‘Angie,’ whose father owns our company. Angie repeatedly oversteps her bounds and tries to do my job. I had a direct talk with her in a kind and gentle tone, but this made her angry. When I tried to smooth over her feelings, she refused to speak and has avoided me ever since. I don’t see any way to fix our relationship as long as Angie is acting like a sulky child. The fact that her dad is the owner doesn’t help. We were great co-workers until this one little incident. What should I do?” Shut Out
Quit doubting your decisions
When people second-guess their decisions they hold up progress and make others question their leadership abilities, writes Carolyn O’Hara for Harvard Business Review. Here are four tips to avoid doubt in your decisions.
What’s the best time management tip you’ve ever heard?
Question: “Our admin team is compiling one list each month of 10 tips to get better at a certain skill. We simply post these on our walls at work to always keep us in learning mode. This month’s list is about time management. For the first time, we’re not filling up a list very quickly—we keep rejecting ideas because so many of them haven’t really helped us that much in the past. Does anyone have any gems they can share?” – Samantha, Customer Service Dispatcher
Is your office supply cabinet emptying out at a suspicious rate?
The truth is, some employees grab items for home use (read: they pilfer) and some employees just get careless (I can’t find the pen I grabbed yesterday, so I’ll just go get a new one today). A solution: Keep a sign-out sheet near the supply cache and instruct employees that they must jot down the […]
10 FBI tricks for effective persuasion
What can managers, executives and leaders learn from the FBI’s techniques?
Are you getting on the boss’s bad side?
So you think your workplace performance speaks for itself and that everything you do is amazing. Guess who might not see it that way.
Find your voice for better presentations
Grabbing your audience’s attention is critical to delivering the information you’ve worked so hard to put together, writes Stephanie Scotti for SmartBlog on Leadership. Here are some tips to help you give your best presentation.