Is there a difference between leading and managing? A couple of great articles by Bob Sutton at Stanford and Thomas Davenport and Stephen Harding of Towers Watson, explore what it means to be an awesome boss. One common theme: process plays a role, but pay close attention to your people.
I hate performance reviews. I especially hate ratings. How do you tell someone they're a 3 out of 5 with a straight face or that they need to increase their competency in collaboration by 10%?
Bob Sutton: Webinar Recording Stanford Professor Robert Sutton discussed the main ideas in his new book Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to be the best… and survive the worst, which weaves together evidence and case studies to identify the mindset and actions of the most successful bosses. Professor Sutton emphasized that the best bosses are in [...]
A few weeks ago, I was coaching a sales manager, “Andy”. We were talking about one of his employees, “Lisa”, who is having the same performance issue that she had back in December. Essentially, Lisa is being an order taker with clients as opposed to being more of a partner/consultant. There seems to be no [...]
The behaviors organization accept are generally baked into their corporate culture. Accountability is no exception. The cues we get from the company leadership, our direct manager, and our peers formulate how we think about these behaviors. Although often quite subtle, these cues help us understand the importance of accountability in our own organizations. Follow along [...]
When I worked at Hewlett-Packard several years ago, I felt I could dial any number within the company, and whoever answered the phone would genuinely try to help me. When employees share information and work to support one another, they tend to take more responsibility for their roles, as well as feel better about the [...]
