5 Powerful but Simple End-of-year Questions to Ask Your Direct Reports It’s the end of the year and you’ve got a lot to do: end-of-period and end-of-year reporting, team reviews, customer follow-ups, virtual holiday gatherings to maintain key relationships, not to mention whatever you’ve got going on personally during this…

It’s often said that dealing with “people problems” can be one of the most challenging aspects to being a boss. Interacting with the complex system of thoughts, feelings energy and emotions that we human types are made of can bring with it unwelcome unpredictability to our daily work routine and…

I was reading an article recently by Jessica Wildfire on “15 Habits of Genuinely Intelligent People.” Why was I reading that, you ask? Well, let’s just say hope springs eternal. (Me: “Only 15 habits? Let’s go. I’ll be genuinely intelligent by tomorrow!”) As I read, I came upon a simple…

Your People Need You Now More Than Ever. 3 Tips to Help You Step Up. So, you get to lead your team — probably virtually — during the time of an international pandemic (score!). While it can seem incredibly daunting, and you likely have days when you’d like to just…

Anyone who has led a team knows that pit-of-your stomach feeling when one of your star employees emails or stops by your desk and says some version of the dreaded words, “Got a few minutes?” In my experience, it almost always means they’re leaving. When it’s an employee who is…

I am not an athlete. I don’t exercise as much as I should. I don’t jog, and I certainly don’t run races. I do, however, like to ride my bike. Not super aggressively, mind you. I’m not one of those folks you see out on the weekend barreling along at…

As a leader, you are in the spotlight 100% of the time. You might not always be aware of it, and its intensity likely varies day to day, but make no mistake — it is always on. You may not like this, but it is a fact of life as…

Do You Have to Like Every Person On a Team You Lead? “Robert” (definitely not his real name) was part of a team that I once led. He had worked for the organization long before I arrived and held a lot of undocumented institutional and team-level knowledge. He was smart…