If you’re not working on the right projects, heading in right directions and marshaling your best resources in the right places, a great career filled with growth and all the things that make you feel personally fulfilled is not going to happen. But it’s largely up to you, and not your boss or the organization, to change that.
It may seem like there’s no good way to deliver bad news to the boss. But when you deliver bad news in a way that increases the boss’ feeling of confidence in your competence to handle the bad news and that gives the boss a sense of control, you can actually deepen your working relationship with the boss.
Employees whose bosses recognize their accomplishments with praise are 63% more inspired to give their best effort at work. Simple, right? Just pay attention to your employees’ accomplishments and when you notice great things happening, praise the employees responsible. And that free activity can create huge increases in employee effort and engagement. So why don’t we do it?
Today’s managers talk a lot about wanting employees to be more accountable and to act on their own initiative. And yet, those same managers turn around and say to employees: “I have to give you assignments; I have to give you feedback; I have to hold you accountable.” 
When I asked 5,000 plus employees from a wide spread of industries “Who teaches you more about the dos and don’ts on the job, the boss or your fellow employees?” The results were pretty shocking. 67% said they learn more by watching fellow employees. Now, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion, especially if you have a lot of high performers on your team, that this is a good thing.
If you’re like most people, you get interrupted way too much at work. Over the past two months, more than 6,000 people have taken the online quiz “How Do Your Time Management Skills Stack Up?” As I’ve been analyzing the results, one of the most striking findings has been just how many people suffer from interruptions throughout their workday.
One thing you need to watch out for when you’re giving motivational speeches, whether you’re in front of a formal, seated audience, or in a more informal setting like with a group of your employees (this even applies when talking to your customers), is violating the narcissism ratio. And the narcissism ratio, very simply, is the ratio of the number of times you say “I” and “me” versus the number of times you talk about “them.”
Being a boss is no easy job, and it’s pretty common to wonder, “How am I really doing?” Unfortunately, traditional business metrics don’t really offer much guidance. A great P&L, for example, might be the result of leadership brilliance, but it could also be the result of the market popping up, and chances are that one leader didn’t single-handedly drive the dial up.
While many of the traits that define a good manager vary depending on the organization, the team and the manager, through my studies I have identified a set of six personality traits universally found in the most successful leaders of remote teams. You may find you already naturally possess some of these characteristics while others you will have to work to develop.
By now, I’m guessing everyone’s read the New York Times piece about Amazon. And you’ve no doubt tuned in to at least some of the debate about the comprehensiveness of that article. But what no one is directly talking about, and what we should be talking about, is leadership styles. How you lead is what’s really at the heart of all the buzz around this article.
