Posts for tag: management

5 Steps to Better Meetings

 
Do you find that some meetings sap your energy, achieve little and leave you feeling frustrated? It shouldn’t be this way. It is estimated that up to 25% of all working time is wasted in unnecessary meetings, so how can you make sure that your meetings are oozing productivity?

Pros and Cons of One-on-Ones

Feedback is essential in flourishing teams. Yet the drain on our time and emotional reserves as managers can cause us to neglect our duty to regularly check in with individual team members.
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Questions You Should be Asking Your Team

As managers we have a huge influence over our team members’ wellbeing, mood and therefore performance. Whilst it is critical to set goals, coach, praise and correct where necessary, it is also vital to take an interest in the individual. Either during formal one on ones or whenever an opportunity for a private conversation occurs. Simply asking a question about how things are going (Present State), along with an enquiry into ambitions (Future Progress) demonstrates that you are on your team member’s side and want them to be the best they can be.
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If You Read One Management Book in 2017…

30 years ago I came across The One Minute Manager in a college library. An hour later I’d read it, understood it and was ready to implement the three core principles:…

Try the Bad Boss Test

No one wants to work for a bad boss, so try this test to measure your manager, or if you dare to quantify your own leadership qualities.

Score each of the following out of 5, from 1 low to 5 high.
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5 Ways to Predict When Talent Will Quit

As the work place becomes more collaborative, the cost of losing a good employee can be multiplied as teammates move with them.

It is more important than ever before to retain key staff. Some companies use sophisticated covert surveillance to assess whether their staff are spending more time than they should on LinkedIn or job sites.
Alternatively, here are some less big brotherish approaches every manager should be aware of:
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5 Unusual Employee Perks

It’s increasingly important to give staff more than just a pay cheque, not every business can afford health cover so here are some unique employee perks that needn’t break the bank.

1. Stand up desks
The revolution to get employees off their backsides and upright is well underway and those who have made a stand say there is no going back.
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4 Reasons Most Meetings Fail

Ever been to a meeting and not really known what it has achieved – or have you ever been to a meeting to talk about going to another meeting? These incidents are common and so what is it that makes a meeting a ‘fail’?

Grumbling about meetings for the sake of meetings is something of an art-form in business. Meetings are necessary though. As any manager will know – without a meeting all hell can break loose with miscommunications, undefined goals and missed deadlines. So why is it that so many meetings are seen as a complete waste of time by those who begrudgingly attend them?

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Why 80% of Managers are in the Wrong Job

For many ambitious employees the addition of the word manager to their job title is a proud moment.  It conveys success, status and power.  And rightly so. Line managers have more influence on employee productivity, engagement and retention than pay, work place conditions and even senior mangement.

Over 80% of managers are unsuitable

It’s therefore very concerning to discover that according to Gallup, 82% of those bearing the title aren’t up to the job!

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Fallen Leaders

This week much has been written examining the strengths and weaknesses of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership.  Prior to the announcement of her death, another group of once great leaders was being described as reckless.

Margaret Thatcher, 1925 - 2013.

One of those was the chairman of HBOS Lord Stevenson.  In the months prior to the banking crisis, when he was held in high regard, he gave a lecture on the subject of leadership to invited members of his business school’s alumni.  …