The 27 Challenges Managers Face

Take a look at the list below. How many of these 27 management challenges are you facing right now? And, how many do you believe you'll face during the rest of this year?

Going from peer to leader
Coming from the outside to take over leadership of an existing team
Bringing together an entirely new team
Welcoming a new member to your existing team
Helping an employee who has a hard time managing time
Assisting an employee who needs help with interpersonal communication
Getting an employee more organized
Helping an employee who needs to get better at problem solving
Working with an employee who needs to increase productivity
Helping an employee who needs to improve quality
Managing an employee who knows more about the work than you do
Showing an employee how to start "going the extra mile"
Working with an employee who does "creative work"
Helping an employee make an attitude adjustment
Managing conflict between and among individuals on your team
Dealing with an employee who has personal issues at home
Keeping a superstar engaged
Retaining a superstar
Losing a superstar in the best way possible
Developing a superstar into a new leader role
Managing in an environment of constant change and uncertainty
Managing under resource constraints
Working through interdependency
Working around logistical hurdles
Managing across differences in language and culture
Renewing your management relationship with a disengaged employee
Renewing your own commitment to being a strong, highly engaged manager

If you selected one or more of these challenges, then Bruce Tulgan's book, The 27 Challenges Managers Face, is the book to add to your "to read" list.

Because, Tulgan provides step-by-step solutions and practical advice for handling all 27 challenges listed above -- the 27 most common challenges identified by Tulgan during 20 years of workplace research.

Tulgan is also the founder and CEO of RainmakerThinking, Inc., a management research and training firm.

Tulgan is the author of, It's Okay to Be the Boss and Managing Generation X.

Comments

What Business Leaders Need To Know About AI

Mastering AI by Jeremy Kahn is absolutely a must-read for every business leader who wants to better understand the history and evolution of AI (Artificial Intelligence), and more important, the promise and perils of AI for businesses and society. Even if you think you have a basic understanding of AI, this book is an essential resource for you. That is because Kahn delivers not only a timely, thorough and thought-provoking examination of AI’s benefits to humanity as well as its potentially chilling dangers, but also and vitally, a declaration for how we should proceed as AI evolves. Reading Mastering AI reminded me of the popular The Popcorn Report by Faith Popcorn – where in 1992 she identified and forecasted trends to chart the future's impact on our businesses, our lives, and our world. Similarly, Fortune magazine journalist, Kahn, draws on his expertise and extensive contacts among the companies and scientists at the...

Great Business Quote

Here's a great quote from author and speaker Harvey Mackay : "When a person with money meets a person with experience, the person with the experience ends up with the money, and the person with the money ends up with the experience."

How To Unleash Your Full Potential

To accomplish something great, author Matt Higgins says you need to toss your Plan B overboard and burn the boats . “You have to give yourself no escape route, no chance to ever turn back. You throw away your backup plans and your push forward, no longer bogged down by the infinite ways in which we hedge our own successes.” You’ll learn plenty more about what it means to burn the boats, how to unleash your full potential, and how to tear down your barriers to achieving success in Higgins’ new book, Burn The Boats – a business-advice and self-help book. Five of the most powerful takeaways are these according to Higgins: Trust your instincts and reject conventional wisdom : We are the only ones who know the full extent of our gifts, and the paths we are meant to follow. Proprietary insights are the keys to game-changing businesses : you don’t need a unique project to start an empire, just an intuition all your own. Your deepest flaws can be fuel for your g...

Use A Board Of Advisors

David Burkus often provides valuable comments to my various Blog postings, and he's a person who effectively uses a board of advisors, instead of mentors, to help him achieve success. "I've found that in my life, it was easier and more effective to set up a board of advisors," said Burkus, the editor of LeaderLab . "This is a group of people, three to five, that have rotated into my life at various times and that speak into it and help me grow. I benefit from the variety of experience these people have." LeaderLab is an online community of resources dedicated to promoting the practice of leadership theory. Its contributors include consultants and professors who present leadership theory in a practitioner-friendly format that provides easy-to-follow explanations on how to apply the best of leadership theory. Community users can download a variety of research reports and presentations about leadership and leadership versus management. For example, a pr...

How To Improve Your Internal Communication Skills

Here is this week's book recommendation. It's a quick read, yet power-packed with useful tips for communicating effectively -- tips you can start to use tomorrow. And, the eBook is free! As author David Grossman says, "good internal communication gets the message out, but great internal communication helps employees connect the dots between overarching business strategy and their role. When it’s good, it informs; when it’s great, it engages employees and moves them to action. Quite simply, it helps people and organizations be even better." I really found this book useful.

Top Five Factors That Drive Employee Loyalty

A 2010 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management shows that job security is what matters most to employees. And, having that job security helps to keep employees loyal. Okay, that's really not too surprising during these times of high unemployment. Next on the list is benefits . The unstable economy, coupled with rising health care costs, make employer offered benefits more important than ever. Third on the top five list is an employee's opportunity to use his/her skills . When employees feel good about their jobs and their abilities, and clearly know they are contributing to their organization they remain engaged and loyal. In fourth place is an organization's financial stability . Compensation came in fifth on the top five list. Employee pay often is not the most important driver for employee retention. Despite study after study that shows pay is not the top reason employees stay with a company, research results like these often surpris...

5 Tips For Generating Ideas From Employees

Your employees have lots of ideas. So, be sure you provide the forums and mechanisms for your employees to share their ideas with you. Hold at least a few brainstorming sessions each year, as well. And, when you are brainstorming with your employees, try these five tips: Encourage ALL ideas. Don't evaluate or criticize ideas when they are first suggested. Ask for wild ideas. Often, the craziest ideas end up being the most useful. Shoot for quantity not quality during brainstorming. Encourage everyone to offer new combinations and improvements of old ideas.

5 Reasons To Do An Employee Survey

Business leaders who wonder whether they should conduct an employee survey should think about these five good reasons for conducting surveys, as recommended by John Kador and Katherine J. Armstrong in their book, Perfect Phrases for Writing Employee Surveys : 1. To discover what employees are thinking and doing – in a nonthreatening survey environment. You will learn what motivates employees and what is important to them. 2. To prioritize the organization’s actions based on objective results – rather than relying on subjective information or your best guesses. 3. To provide a benchmark – or a snapshot of your employees and their attitudes at a certain point of time that you can then compare to future surveys to spot trends. 4. To communicate the importance of key topics to employees – by communicating with employees the survey results that shows your organization is listening to employees. 5. To collect the combined brainpower and ideas of the wor...

Give Positive Feedback. Don't Praise.

There is an important difference between giving your employees positive feedback and giving them praise . Positive feedback focuses on the specifics of job performance. Praise, often one-or two-sentence statements, such as “Keep up the good work,” without positive feedback leaves employees with empty feelings. Worse yet, without positive feedback, employees feel no sense that they are appreciated as individual talents with specific desires to learn and grow on the job and in their careers, reports Nicholas Nigro, author of, The Everything Coaching and Mentoring Book . So, skip the praise and give positive feedback that is more uplifting to your employees because it goes to the heart of their job performance and what they actually do. An example of positive feedback is : “Bob, your communications skills have dramatically improved over the past couple of months. The report that you just prepared for me was thorough and concise. I appreciate all the work you’ve put into it, as...

Critical Questions To Ask New Hires

In Paul Falcone ’s book, 75 Ways For Managers To Hire, Develop And Keep Great Employees , he recommends asking new employees the following questions 30, 60 and 90 days after they were hired: 30-Day One-on-One Follow-Up Questions Why do you think we selected you as an employee? What do you like about the job and the organization so far? What’s been going well? What are the highlights of your experiences so far? Why? Tell me what you don’t understand about your job and about our organization now that you’ve had a month to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Have you faced any unforeseen surprises since joining us that you weren’t expecting? 60-Day One-on-One Follow-Up Questions Do you have enough, too much or too little time to do your work? Do you have access to the appropriate tools and resources? Do you feel you have been sufficiently trained in all aspects of your job to perform at a high level? How do you see your job relating to the organization’...

Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Search This Blog