Basic Management Skills

Great Communication Starts With Listening

What is the key to great communication?

As managers and supervisors we often think that communicating means that we need to be giving other people information. This is one aspect of communicating but the truth is that it is a smaller part than most realize.

Great communication begins with effective listening. In order to listen we have to do less talking. This is something that is difficult for…

Email Essentials For New Managers and Supervisors

Email Essentials

  New managers and supervisors often do not consider how crucial it is to write good email. Often, they see email communication as a quick, informal communication tool. This is not true.

  Thus, email communications offer insight into the professionalism of the person sending the message. Poorly written messages do not achieve the desired communication results and delay or…

Effective Email Communication: Common Mistakes and Solutions

My Email Struggle

  Email communication is an essential component of every business communication system. This subject is near and dear to my heart as it is one of the areas I struggled most with when I first became a supervisor.

  The Struggle

  When I started out in supervision I was a night shift supervisor working the graveyard shift. I was expected to make decisions with no support from key…

Safety in the Workplace

Safety is Number 1

There should be nothing more important to a manager than the safety of their people. Face it the most important asset any company has are the people who get the work accomplished. Without them, you wouldn’t have a business.

Nothing happens in the workplace if the employees don’t feel safe and secure in their persons. Also, not taking care of your people can be an expensive way…

Harassment in the Workplace

Harassment in the workplace is an insidious and destructive practice. If allowed to continue it can have negative consequences on the team and legal consequences for the manager and the organization.

  In this article, I want to discuss what harassment is and things that new managers and supervisors should do to address it. This article does not offer legal advice. If you suspect someone of…

How to Demotivate – “Nice Job, but…”

How To Demotivate

Want to demotivate someone. Then try saying this – “nice job but…”. How would this comment make you feel? I am guessing you wouldn’t feel motivated.

Why do some managers think this is a good tactic? Telling somebody something positive only to follow it up with a criticism is a sure-fire way to de-motivate.

Know When to Employ Positive Reinforcement

There is a time and place for…

Good Communication – 8 Tips for Giving and Receiving

Who is Responsible for Communication?

Communication is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. It can be a subject that makes a lot of managers and supervisors cringe.

As leaders, we face a lot of heat for not communicating well enough. This is sometimes an honest assessment. But what about our employees? What responsibility do they play in good communication in an organization? And what…

Priorities – The Key to Time Management

Priorities are your key to effective time management

Setting and know what your priorities are is the key to true time management. I spent the past two posts discussing organizational tools to help you manage time. I started there first to focus on the tools that make time management easier. But sitting down and determining what your priorities are is at the heart of effective time management.

How…

Keys to an Effective Calendar

To begin with, it doesn’t matter what calendar program you use whether Outlook, Google Calendar, or some other app. What matters is that you make the most of the technology available.

Use whatever program you like and are comfortable with to manage your time. The key is to establishing ownership of your time by setting reminders to maintain focus, and performing…

What is 5S?

5S is a component of Six Sigma or Lean Manufacturing. The main goal is to make the work area organized to optimize performance. It requires all unneeded items to be removed from the work area and everything else to be organized in the most efficient manner. Once the work area is properly organized it must be sustained to ensure top performance is maintained.

While it was…

The Big Problem of Time-Management One of the biggest issues all manager’s face and something I get frequent questions about is time-management. How do we gain control of our time and stop allowing people and problems to control us? In this post, I will look at 3 basics that will help you build a foundation for taking control of your time. In the next couple of weeks, we will delve deeper into…

Lose the Battles But Win the War

Fighting All Battles

When I was a young supervisor I wanted to fight battles. Every problem that needed to be solved I saw as a battle to win. Being focused on winning these little battles that it made me short-sighted. I did not see the long game and because of it, I damaged relationships and my reputations.

A lot of new supervisors and managers run into this problem. And if truth be told, I…

Playing Favorites – And Why Sometimes It’s Alright

Do you play favorites with your employees?

Playing favorites might not be as bad a thing as you think. Often, we get told that we need to treat all employees the same. And on the surface, that seems like the right and sensible thing to do. But that is not always the case.

Let’s take two different scenarios

Scenario One:

You have two employees. Employee A is always picking up extra hours, stays…

Face-Time: The Best Way to Get the Best Out of Your Team

Face-time is what most of our employees want. You may not believe it but if we aren’t present to our employees it shows a lack of concern. Our employees want to know that we care. They want us to be available to offer support for the problems they face.

When you hide out in your office you aren’t involved with their problems and concerns. On the other hand, being visible and present shows that…

Not My Fault, It’s Somebody Elses

But It’s Not My Fault Because…

Do you have an employee who never accepts fault for anything? Does that person always try to change the conversation with the purpose of putting the focus on the faults of others? These employees try to use deflection to ensure the conversation doesn’t focus on their actions.

This is one of the more maddening problems that a manager or supervisor can face. We are…

What is Accountability – Podcast Episode 2

What is accountability?

In this podcast, we flesh out in greater detail what accountability is and how to maintain it in a way that positively engages your team. Check out my blog post on accountability that is a companion piece to this podcast.

In my blog post and podcast, I dispel the myth that accountability is the same as discipline. Further, I assert that discipline is not the first step in…

Accountability is About Correction not Discipline

Accountability No Blame

Accountability is at the heart of leading and managing people. It is about holding people to a standard and then ensuring that they are maintaining that standard. What it should not be about is blaming people and punishing them.

Holding people accountable for their work and addressing underlying issues that are the cause of performance deficiencies should be the goal of a…