Managers, listen up: micromanagement kills your team's efficiency and will slowly drive you insane. I've prepared a simple four-step plan to help you stop micromanaging and thereby preserve your employees' productivity. 1. Reset expectations. Many managers micromanage because they don't trust their employees to do the job right. What training...
I've deliberately waited to weigh in on the Yahoo work-from-home ban; others have covered the story more than capably. What I am interested in, though, is why Yahoo doesn't just hire better managers. Let me back up a bit. Kara Swisher posted the full internal memo sent to Yahoo employees...
Even managers who focus on culture and motivation are sometimes unable to retain high-performance team members. Here are three warning signs that indicate a top employee is getting ready to quit. * Asking for more opportunities or development. This behavior is the workplace equivalent of a cry for help. Ignore the...
Matthew Swyers wrote an excellent piece for Inc. today about why ultimatums don't work in employer-employee relationships, but all I could think about was how proactive management would eliminate the need for an ultimatum in the first place. Proactive management requires that leaders clearly express expectations -- of an employee's...
We know that bad management can hinder employee morale and job performance, but new research indicates that poor leaders can even mess with their subordinates' overall well-being. A study published in the Journal of Business and Psychology asked 1,100 employees to rate statements like "my supervisor tries to motivate...
In my last newsletter, I shared tips to manage millennials for maximum productivity, but there's one management mistake that will throttle Gen-Y workers' efficiency every time: disengaged management, otherwise known as "not caring." As I wrote in my column for Lifehack.org this week, millennials thrive on mentorship and continuous...
