Dear Micromanager:
Owners of thoroughbreds never stop their horses mid-race, every ten seconds, to remind the horse and jockey how to run, where the finish line is, or that it’d be good to finish first. Why? It would slow them down. Only an idiot would do this.
If you’re a manager, you must assume you have thoroughbreds working for you. Your job is to give them what they need to win their respective races, agreeing with them on goals and rewards, but then getting the hell out of the way. Until they start jumping fences or attacking other horses, you must let them run their race.
Even if you are 30% better at a task than someone who works for you, the time it takes for you to check on them every few hours, and demand approvals over trivial decisions, costs more in lost morale, passion for work, and destruction of self-respect among your staff than the 30% you think you’re adding. No one works well if they feel they are being treated like an idiot child. Having two people involved in work that should only require one wastes everyone’s time. Continue reading
You have been invited to attend an interview. You have been waiting a long time for this one. This could be the perfect job. The company has a great brand and future and the vacancy sounds great as well. Good pay, great prospects, great perks. This is the job to die for. You can see yourself in the job and your career finally taking off.
You have all the answers ready with all the examples, you look great, are well groomed and your clothes are sharp (that recent shopping trip will be worth it). You are feeling confident and fully prepared. But are you?
The relationship between managers and direct reports is the number one factor in morale, productivity and retention of high performers. One thing which causes high stress in individuals at work is the management style of their boss. You get use to the pay, the perks and the prospects, but they become very insignificant if your boss is a bad manager. Continue reading
A. Junior high students to illustrate the importance of setting goals and being held accountable. It’s on a chalkboard, kinda cute, and there are bright colors. Yay!
B. High school students in a business class, chalkboards are fun.
C. College students learning about business development and marketing.
D. MBA graduates with masters in business development.
E. CEOs and other executive level leaders.
Answer: E. Or at least that’s what one CEO level employer thinks.
Actual Correct Answer: A.
It’s hard to follow a leader when peer-to-peer intelligence levels are misaligned. While the graphic is appropriate for a kid, sharing “cutting edge” design of perty chalkboards and acronyms make you look, well, erh, argh, can we say “special”? Thank you to our reader for submitting this graphic your boss often passed out to his best and brightest people at strategy meetings. We got a good laugh, keep up the good work.
When employees don’t trust leadership, organizations pay the price in low engagement, high turnover, and lost creativity and innovation.
Still, according to a recent survey by BlessingWhite, slightly more than half (52 percent) of employees say that they trust their company’s top leaders.
After studying issues of trust in the workplace for some 20 years, we are certain of one thing: Most leaders think a breach of trust must be severe or even scandalous—consider Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.—to (NWS) take a costly toll on the business. To those leaders we say: “Think again.” Continue reading
