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Management
There is a bigger difference between management and leadership than most people realize. Not all leaders make good managers and vice versa. Whereas leadership is about providing clear direction through strategic thinking, decision making, and planning. It is about the macro. Management is about executing leadership initiatives through directing, organizing, coaching, and holding people tactically accountable. It is about the micro. A good manager knows his/her people well and is committed to their success individually and collectively.
Featured Management Posts
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Difficult Conversations Planner
Difficult conversations are part of leadership. Avoiding them usually doesn’t make the issue go away. It gives the issue more time to affect the individual, the team, the relationship, and…
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Building Your Own High-Performance Organization
“Building Your Own High-Performance Organization” lays out a practical path for leaders who want to turn strategy into…
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4 Styles of Coaching—and When to Use Them
4 Styles of Coaching—and When to Use Them Mastering the art of adaptive leadership to elevate every team…
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Research: Performance Reviews That Actually Motivate Employees
Forget the Dread — Performance Reviews Can Motivate. Here’s the Research to Prove It “People want feedback not…
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9 Management Styles Used by Leaders
Whether you’re a new manager learning the ropes, a seasoned executive reflecting on your approach, or an HR…
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Why You Feel Underappreciated at Work
Despite working hard and meeting our goals, sometimes it’s not clear why we aren’t getting ahead at work.…
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Your Team Members Aren’t Participating in Meetings. Here’s What to Do.
Traditional advice for leaders who want to increase meeting participation call for clarifying expectations, setting clear agendas, and…
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How to Talk to an Employee Who Isn’t Meeting Expectations
Approaching a conversation about improving an employee’s performance requires preparation, empathy, and a focus on collaboration. Even though…
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Are Your Individual Contributors Feeling Isolated?
The autonomy that many knowledge workers have in the workplace can come with the drawback of professional and…
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Off the clock: How our perception of time can affect productivity
Watching the clock drags performance down, and optimism about the future does the opposite. Managers who understand this…
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5 Ways Leaders Accidentally Stress Out Their Employees
Decades of scientific research show that stress and anxiety are prevalent problems at work, contributing to deficits in employee morale,…
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Middle Managers Should Drive Your Business Transformation
Successful transformations harness the collective wisdom of middle managers and teams. To increase your company’s chances, you need…
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4 Reasons Why Managers Fail
Gartner research has found that managers today are accountable for 51% more responsibilities than they can effectively manage…
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Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model
Motivating employees begins with recognizing that to do their best work, people must be in an environment that…
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The Challenges of Becoming a Less Hierarchical Company
More and more organizations are looking to create flatter, less hierarchical models to increase collaboration, agility, and employee…
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How to Talk to Your Team About a Decision You Disagree With
When you’re part of a company’s management structure, there will be moments when you’ll have to represent a…
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Overcoming Your Fear of Giving Tough Feedback
A lack of constructive feedback is detrimental to your team, depriving them of mentorship and growth opportunities. And…
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Investing in middle managers pays off—literally
In a new analysis, we found that strong middle managers aren’t just nice to have for all the…
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28 Questions to Ask Your Boss in Your One-on-Ones
Good one-on-one meetings between managers and their direct reports address the practical and personal needs of the employee,…
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What is an effective meeting?
As the pandemic rewrote the rule book for coworking and office culture, new processes and untested systems allowed inefficiencies…
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How “Perspective Swaps” Can Unlock Organizational Change
In the Harvard Business Review article “How ‘Perspective Swaps’ Can Unlock Organizational Change,” author Rebecca Hinds introduces the…
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What Is Psychological Safety?
What exactly is psychological safety? It’s a term that’s used a lot but is often misunderstood. In this…
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Five Ways to Make Your One-on-One Meetings More Effective
Failing to use time with direct reports in a meaningful way — or, worse, skipping these meetings altogether…
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How to Help High Achievers Overcome Imposter Syndrome
Managers can help employees turn fears into fleeting thoughts as opposed to permanent restraints. Many high-achieving people we…
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46 of the best productivity tools for work and life
There are a ton of different productivity tools out there. How do you know which ones to choose?…
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How to Fix Collaboration Overload
Employees are drowning in excessive or misaligned goals set by too many external stakeholders with competing needs and…
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How to Respond When an Employee Shares a Mental Health Challenge
What should you do if your employee comes to you with a mental health challenge? While you will…
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The Emotional Labor of Being a Leader
While leaders have always performed emotional labor, this demand has increased dramatically over the last few years. Organizations…
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Meeting Overload Is a Fixable Problem
The authors of this piece have been studying how organizations can make the right things easier and the…
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Monitoring Individual Employees Isn’t the Way to Boost Productivity
Ever since workers moved from offices to work-from-home setups, companies have worried about how they’re spending their time.…
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The Costs of Being a Perfectionist Manager
Being a perfectionist does not mean that you are doomed as a manager. Organizational research on perfectionism is…
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