For some of my clients, I meet with midlevel directors and managers or frontline supervisors and team leaders to assess what their concerns are, and what support they need to be successful. Way more often than you’d think — or maybe not — the employees tell me about processes that don’t work, turf battles, and other kinds of customer and employee problems. And much, much too often, when I ask if their senior leaders are aware of these conflicts or […]
This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com Plenty of leaders say they offer an “open door policy” to encourage employees to bring them problems or concerns. Many of these leaders also ask that employees voicing concerns come prepared with solutions in order to take responsibility for the problem rather than just “dump” or “vent.” But employees in those scenarios may get the idea that it’s unacceptable to raise problems in the business if they don’t know how to fix them. In […]
The other day, I gave a leader feedback about how to develop one of his team members, prepared for a coaching session with a different executive, and sat in on a leadership team meeting with a third. These three interactions, with three very different people, sounded a recurring theme: When we rely too much on our historical strengths and patterns, we sometimes avoid the new work we need to do and wind up impeding our continuing success. Even good, solid […]
When a new leader comes into your organization, many aspects of the relationship are effectively outside your control. You may have little-to-no input into specifying job requirements, screening for style or experience, or figuring out how the job now varies from what your old boss was doing. Nor can you control what senior leadership wants from the new executive. But you still have crucial perspectives on how to get the work done and how to function smoothly in your organization. […]
I picked up the phone the other morning and as soon as I heard my client speak, I realized that although she was calling at her regular time, she wasn’t using her “regular” voice. “How are you?” I asked her, with both curiosity and concern. “You won’t believe it!” she started off, but she sounded so distressed that I broke in to ask where she was, whether she was sitting or standing, and where in her body she was most […]
This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com. Many articles and books have been written about succession planning and how important it is for company longevity and shareholder protection. But most of the advice focuses on the selection of and transition between CEOs and assumes things like a fully functional board and a fairly robust organizational structure. In many privately owned and operated businesses, though, it’s tough just to predict what will happen next quarter, let alone years into the future, and when you’re the CEO, there may […]
“Conflict costs businesses a ton of money,” management guru Steve Caldwell observed while interviewing me recently. Caldwell is a team leadership coach, the author of Manager Mojo: Be the Leader that Others Want to Follow, and the creator of the podcast Manager Mojo, where he highlights commonsense solutions to management and leadership issues. These lightly edited excerpts from our conversation create a through-line from the reasons for conflict to tips for reducing the disruption and expense that conflict causes. How […]
Let’s say, you’ve been working hard, minding your own business, and suddenly you learn that you’re going to have a new boss. Maybe your old boss is leaving, or perhaps you’ve been reorganized. Whatever the reason for the change, you’re worried — which is both reasonable and practical — about how you and your new boss will get along, whether your work will be disrupted, and if your career will suffer or be supported. On top of your purely personal […]
No matter how high our hopes are for a newly promoted manager, things often go remarkably wrong. Sometimes it’s the new manager’s attitude or belief. For instance, I’ve worked with a previously responsible employee who viewed his promotion as justification to stop handling details, because they’re for “lower-level people.” Another newly promoted employee saw her promotion as validation of her work and herself as she was, and decided she no longer needed to learn new skills. Promotions can also bring […]