The Management Tip of the Day

  In the best sponsorship relationships, sponsees adopt a proactive stance, taking initiative and making clear what they need from their career sponsor. Here are some steps you can take to be more direct with a senior colleague who’s invested in your growth. Start by developing a personal impact statement. This is a short document in which you outline your role, highlight your strengths, quantify your accomplishments, note distinctive character traits, and describe your purpose and proudest moments. Putting this information on paper will help your sponsor better understand your value and advocate for you. Then point to specific ways they can support you. You might even construct your own dream development plan—listing any new skills you want to learn, projects you want to take on, or people you’d like to meet in the organization—and bring it to your sponsor for feedback. Finally, work with your sponsor to expand your comfort zone. Name your big-picture goals, even if they seem unre...

  More people than ever are experiencing issues such as anxiety and depression at work. If an employee comes to you showing signs of emotional distress, here are some steps you can take to manage the conversation.  Acknowledge.  Simply recognize your employee’s distress. Your acknowledgment of how they’re feeling will validate their emotions and increase their own awareness of their mood. Then, ask them to reflect on their emotional, physical, mental, and behavioral states at work, emphasizing that this reflection can happen privately and doesn’t need to be shared with you.  Respond.  Your job isn’t to provide therapy or counseling. But you can learn to apply therapeutic relationship skills. The most important of these is empathy, which can help a person in distress feel less alone, more understood, and unjudged.  Present strategies.  One tool that can help change behavior is  cognitive reframing , a process that can help replace unhelpful thought...

  Leaders who don’t trust their employees are often more anxious, hesitant to delegate, and prone to micromanaging. A lack of trust can also diminish innovation, morale, and team performance. Here are five steps to take if you’re in the uncomfortable position of not trusting one of your employees. First, separate facts from assumptions and focus on specific problematic behaviors. What exactly did this person do or not do that has led to your distrust? Next, make a list of the areas in which you do trust your employee, and consider how you might incrementally build on these areas in low-risk ways. Focus on clear and frequent communication—checking in regularly one-on-one—as you delegate and add to their responsibilities. It’s crucial to provide feedback on the behaviors that are leading to your distrust. Be specific; is it their competency, consistency, or character that’s degrading your trust? Ask for their feedback too, and honestly reflect on what you might be doing (or not doing...

  It takes more than hard work to grow in your role and build credibility—the impacts of your efforts also need to be visible to others. Here are some ways to boost your visibility at work.  Consistently deliver quality work.  It may seem obvious, but be visible for the right reason: Doing good work. When people can count on quality work from you, you’ll earn a reputation as a reliable, trustworthy, needed member of the team, all of which leads to more visibility.  Know what’s top of mind for key stakeholders.  When you demonstrate that you have a skillset that aligns with what the organization values most, leaders and decision-makers will be more likely to pay attention to you and your work.  Speak up in meetings.  Remember, humility doesn’t equal silence. If you’re normally someone who doesn’t talk in meetings, start speaking up or following up immediately afterward with the meeting host. Claim the space you deserve.  Be kind and pleasant to wor...

  Even if you don’t have “marketing” or “sales” in your job title, to be an effective communicator, you need to know how to pitch your ideas, concepts, and perspectives. Here’s a four-step template to help you craft a concise, relevant, and persuasive pitch—without using any strong-arm tactics or gimmicks.  “What if you could…”  Paint a picture of what your product, service, or idea makes possible.  “So that…”  Connect your vision to a goal that’s meaningful and relevant to the listener.  “For example…”  Elaborate on your vision, making things concrete and illustrating use cases.  “And that’s not all…”  Demonstrate the potential of the idea by describing how it could grow and develop in the future.

  It’s natural for people to feel distracted and lose their drive amid cost-cutting, layoffs, and general uncertainty. And while eliminating every ounce of your team’s anxiety is unrealistic, you can foster an engaging and supportive environment that keeps your team on track when times are tough. Here’s how.  Show you can talk about hard things.  There’s value in working through hard things together. Hold honest conversations about difficult topics to help build trust, especially during hard times.  Get creative about motivating people.  If promotions and raises are off the table, it can be hard to keep people engaged and incentivized to give their full effort. Ask your employees directly: What would motivate you over the next year? And how can I support you?  Help your team stay focused.  Devote more attention to one-on-one check-ins. Making more time for your people on a weekly and even daily basis will help them feel more connected.  Watch out ...

  When employees at every level speak up, they circulate knowledge, expand creativity, and prevent collective tunnel vision. Here are three steps you can take to empower your employees to use their voice.  Prioritize unconditional inclusion.  If you want your employees to feel confident to speak up, they must first feel a sense of acceptance based on their fixed, intrinsic worth. In other words, make it clear that everyone’s voice matters, regardless of their seniority or direct impact on the organization’s bottom line.  Give people permission to disagree.  Groupthink can undermine your team’s ability to come up with truly innovative ideas. Encourage people at every level to speak up if they disagree with a consensus, rather than simply falling in line.  Commend employees who speak up—even if you don’t adopt their ideas.  As a leader, you can’t say yes to every idea your employees raise. But you can make it clear that you hear them and are grateful for...

  One of your biggest responsibilities as a leader is to advocate for your team when they need more resources, whether that’s additional personnel, tools, or budget. To make the case, start by demonstrating to decision-makers that what you’re asking for isn’t a nice-to-have, but a strategic investment that will yield tangible benefits for the organization. Put together a data-driven proposal that quantifies the investment’s impact, then connect the dots between that impact and the organization’s strategic vision. This shows your commitment to the big picture and reinforces that you’re a strategic thinker. Make sure your request is specific (for example, “We need more staff to handle our workload” could be reframed as “We could hire two junior stylists at starting salaries and develop them over time”). And if you’ve had success with similar requests in the past, emphasize those. Finally, highlight the cost of inaction. Underscoring what’s at stake will help your leaders understand t...

  To be a truly impactful leader, you need to master the art of spontaneous speaking. This means not just delivering your carefully crafted keynote, but nailing the Q&A and small talk afterward, or making memorable off-the-cuff toasts and speeches. And contrary to popular assumptions, you don’t need to be an inherently charming extrovert to communicate effectively when put on the spot. Here’s how to build the muscle. First, avoid predictable default responses, which prevent you from connecting with others in more genuine, appropriate, creative, and productive ways. Instead, invoke analogies or shared references that can help you engage your listeners. For example, when you’re asked to make a public introduction, don’t just list the roles on the person’s résumé—tell a story about how they added value to the team. To take some pressure off yourself, remember that you don’t need to be the star of the show. Listeners are more apt to trust and approve of you when you speak like a hu...

  Some people enter the workforce thinking their manager is responsible for their career development, but that strategy is rarely successful. Instead of waiting for your boss to bring it up, take your career-development conversation into your own hands. Start with self-reflection. Develop a clear understanding of where you are right now, where you want to be in a few years, and what long-term success ultimately means to you. Once you’ve reflected on your trajectory, request a meeting with your manager (and be sure not to fold this conversation into your routine check-in). During the meeting, talk about your self-reflection, ask for their feedback, and express your desire to discuss your career development. Finally, after the meeting, draft a forward-looking plan that outlines next steps, including new skills you’d like to acquire, projects you’ve agreed to take on, and stakeholders you’d like to begin building relationships with. Once you’ve outlined your goals and milestones, set ...

  Making requests of other people—the kinds that elicit real responses, not noncommittal ones like “sounds good” or “that should work”—doesn’t come naturally to most of us. Maybe you need something from a junior colleague in another department, or perhaps you need to ask a direct report to do some work that’s slightly outside of their job description. How can you make your ask in a way that ensures follow-through? Break down your request into four elements.  What do you want, and what would success look like?  Be detailed about your expectations and spell out exactly what would constitute a “good job.”  Who do you want it from?  Choose a specific person. When you make a request to a team or a group of people, it’s possible that each person will assume someone else will do the work.  When do you need it done by?  Attach a timeline to your request. Specificity will set crystal-clear expectations with your colleague, which will in turn save time and energ...

  Radically flexible work is about making work fit people, not the other way around. To achieve true flexibility on your team, you first need to recognize that it can’t be a temporary fix or a privilege reserved for a select few. Instead, you need to engrain the principles of flexibility into your team’s culture. This requires two types of alignment. Aligning what people do with their strengths.  When people do what they’re best at, they’re more creative and innovative. An analysis of multiple studies indicates that job satisfaction, engagement, well-being, and performance are all correlated to working with one’s strengths. As a leader, it’s your job to provide people with equal access to tools and opportunities that match their unique abilities. Aligning how people work (including where and at what hours) with their needs.  Data from around the world indicates that flexible work benefits work-life balance, productivity, and organizational outcomes—a true “win-win.” To ac...

  Working in a toxic environment can rapidly erode your feelings about your job—and deciding whether to speak up about it can be downright intimidating. When is it time to go to HR? And how can you prepare yourself for the conversation? Here are three questions to ask yourself before officially reporting an issue.  Have I documented what happened?  If you plan to report an incident to HR, you’ll need detailed records to clearly outline your claims. Be sure to document the following: what was said or done, the date and time of the incident, and whether there were any witnesses.  What’s my objective?  Define a specific goal before communicating with HR. For example, your colleague might need professional development training to address their behavior. Or, if there’s an ongoing performance issue, HR may work with their manager to create a performance improvement plan (PIP).  Is what I’m experiencing illegal?  HR departments have a responsibility to ensure...

  If you have a colleague who seems set on undermining you—or worse, sabotaging you—it can be difficult to know how to ask your manager for support. Here’s how to advocate for yourself. First, make the business impact clear to your boss. It will help if you can tie the problems with your coworker to concrete business results. Articulate how they’re damaging the team’s performance in a way that your boss will care about and provide plenty of evidence to back up your claims. But do your best not to complain. Make clear that you’re not acting out of jealousy or vindictiveness, but in an effort to create a good working relationship with your colleague—not to throw them under the bus. Instead, propose solutions. For example, if one of the main issues is that your coworker is stealing credit for your ideas, you might propose to your boss that the three of you agree ahead of time on how credit will be allocated. If your manager is unwilling to get involved or give direct feedback to the d...

  Direct communication is an important work skill—especially for a manager. Being clear about what you want and need from people (and why) makes everything more efficient. But if you’re too harsh, you can end up doing more harm than good. Here’s how to toe the line between being direct and veering into rudeness.  When delivering feedback, focus on facts.  Remove your emotions from the conversation, and instead give the person honest, concrete evidence about their performance. Your goal is to help them grow, not to vent.  When expressing an opinion, use “I” statements.  Avoid making accusations or casting blame, which will put your employee on the defensive. Instead of calling them out and pointing fingers, call them in by expressing your experience of their behavior.  Turn a hard “no” into a soft “no.”  As a direct person, your instinct may be to unambiguously reject an inessential work request that comes in when you just don’t have the bandwidth to ta...

  If you’re considering making a move to a different role or industry later on in your career, here are some ways to set yourself apart from your more junior competition. Start by highlighting skills that require years of work to master. These are the personal skills (like dependability, punctuality, and commitment), interpersonal skills (like collaboration and leadership), and soft skills (like independence and alignment with company values) that have contributed to your career achievements and progress. Then explain how you’ll bring value to the company. Make connections between your past responsibilities and the job you’re applying for. Demonstrating the versatility of your skill set and experience will help set you apart. Next, explain how you’ve grown your skills and knowledge in specific ways that are relevant to your new career. Finally, tap your vast network. Maybe you’ve worked with people who are now executives, board members, or managers. Leverage those relationships to ...

  If you’re not careful, hybrid work can change the dynamics between your employees, create an imbalance between in-person and remote workers, reduce cohesion and trust, and make it harder for everyone to resolve issues. To keep hybrid work from turning toxic, start by educating your employees. Have an open conversation as a team, defining a toxic workplace as one in which employees feel disrespected, abused, or excluded—and discuss how this could happen in a hybrid context. The goal isn’t to identify specific issues or point fingers, but rather to increase employees’ overall awareness and vigilance. Then focus on promoting a culture of empathy and psychological safety, both of which help ensure employees feel comfortable speaking up about the behaviors they perceive as toxic. Check in periodically to keep tabs on how everyone is feeling. Finally, be prepared to intervene quickly when an issue comes up by helping all parties engage in a dialogue to reach a mutually acceptable solut...

  Outsourcing labor to full-time, third-party contractors has become increasingly common. While some want the flexibility a contract role can provide, research shows that these workers—who are more likely to be Black, Indigenous, Latinx, women, and nonbinary—often do the same work as their directly employed peers while making less money, receiving fewer benefits, and experiencing significant job precarity. As a leader, you can pursue the following strategies to reduce harm and mitigate company liability when it comes to contract work.  Fair pay.  To ensure your contract workers receive family-sustaining pay, be explicit about how much you expect staffing agencies to pay them. Make sure you’re paying them the same rates as full-time employees who do similar jobs. Workplace safety protocols and worker voice.  Create clear channels for contract workers to report problems, and include them in company-wide communication streams. This will boost morale and your organizatio...

  To become an excellent presenter, you need to master the art of grabbing your audience’s attention—and holding it. Here are three techniques you can use to engage any audience like a pro. Physical.  Whether you’re giving an in-person presentation or conducting a virtual meeting, think about how you can get your audience moving. A simple invitation to “Turn to the person next to you and greet them” or “Raise your hand if X, Y, or Z” can get them involved. Your goal is to turn your audience into participants, not just observers.  Mental.  Fight back against your audience’s tendency to zone out or multitask by fostering cognitive engagement. You can do this by asking direct questions, incorporating provocative statements or data, and introducing smart, surprising analogies.  Linguistic.  Use language to invite your audience in. Mention participants’ names when you can, and use phrases like “As you know…” or “Today, you will learn…” to directly address the cr...

  You have great ideas—but they’re just not landing with your colleagues. What can you do to communicate your thoughts more effectively? Here are three strategies to ensure your ideas resonate with any audience. Think small.  Ask yourself: “What’s one idea I can sell to my audience (peer, client, boss, or team) in our next meeting?” You may feel eager to present several options at once, but resist the temptation. Choose your best idea and aim for a small, simple win. It will carry you forward, helping you build momentum and credibility until you’re ready to share the next idea…and then the next.  Keep it brief.  Think 10 minutes or less. It’s safe to assume that your audience’s bandwidth is limited. Cut down your presentation into one big headline and two or three supporting points.  Remember that it’s not about you.  Pitching great ideas isn’t about advancing your own interests—it’s about advancing the team. Put your ego and ambition aside, consider what t...

  Studies find that being exposed to nature at work boosts people’s productivity, helpfulness, and creativity—with no evidence of negative side effects. How can you build little moments of nature into your team’s workplace (without breaking the budget)? Here are some strategies that can help. First, give employees opportunities to access the real thing: indoor fountains, natural sounds from the outdoors, and windows with views of gardens, trees, or landscapes. But keep in mind that people benefit from even artificial experiences of nature. Murals, photographs, paintings, noise machines that simulate nature, and artificial plants will give your team a little boost throughout the day. Next, think beyond the office. Encourage employees to spend some time outdoors each day at lunch, after work, or in the morning (if the climate allows). Finally, find unused spaces and put them to use. For instance, you might add some flowers to the office kitchen, or on a larger scale, you might consid...

  Your employee has shown flashes of competence in the past, but they aren’t taking initiative to do more with their talents. Instead of getting frustrated, guide them to reach their potential. First, consider whether a personal issue is at play. People often fail to reach their potential because they’re totally unaware of it in the first place. If this is the case, hold up a (metaphorical) mirror, communicating your belief in your employee’s abilities and explaining what an excellent performance really looks like. If it turns out a lack of motivation is the issue, have an honest conversation to get to the bottom of it—and be prepared to provide the support they might need. Next, see if an interpersonal issue is standing in their way. If your employee is dealing with tricky team dynamics, have an honest discussion with them. By talking through the issue, you can identify opportunities to reframe or mediate the conflict—and, if necessary, move them to a new role where they’ll be mor...

  Consider this paradox: As you grow in your career, your brain develops in ways that undermine your ability to excel as a leader. Here are three essential leadership behaviors you need to commit to and protect as you develop professionally. Being future-focused.  The higher up the ladder you climb, the farther out you need to think. Resist the urge to value the immediate and short-term future over the long term. Rather than just ensuring the quality of today’s work, you must constantly scan for what’s next—and ensure your team is prepared.  Being good with people.  As you accrue responsibility, it’s easy to give too much attention to high-level strategy and not enough to your relationships. Becoming a truly transcendent leader means finding a balance between technical and social skills and between goals and people.  Being able to drive realistic results.  More power tends to make leaders more optimistic about what’s achievable. Make an effort to stay groun...