Tag Archives: leadership
What Is High-Structure, High-Substance Dialogue?
Our research shows that when things are going wrong in a management relationship, almost always, the common denominator is unstructured, low substance, hit-or-miss communication. With the added complications of managing some combination of remote, hybrid, and in-person employees, managers are more prone to low-structure communication than ever. The key is to replace the unstructured, low…
Break Free from the Vicious Cycle of Undermanagement
Managers who are convinced they don’t have time to manage almost always spend lots of time managing people anyway. That’s because whenever a manager avoids spending time up front making sure things go right, then things almost always go wrong. Small problems pile up and grow until they become so big that they cannot be…
Managing People Is Getting Harder
Undermanagement can be difficult to identify. After all, everyone at work is surrounded by metrics and meetings all the time. It may seem like management is ever-present. But what is missing in most workplaces is the human element of management: managers providing direct reports with the guidance, direction, support and coaching that they need to…
Supporting Employees Means Customizing Your Management Approach
All your employees come to work with different levels of ability and skill: different backgrounds, personalities, styles, ways of communicating, work habits, and motivations. Some of them need more guidance than others. One employee needs the details spelled out, while another has the details memorized. One responds best if you ask questions, while another prefers…
The Fundamentals Are All You Need
Managers today are under a lot of pressure. The bar keeps being raised. They are responsible for more and more employees. More of the people they manage are working in areas of expertise that the manager doesn’t know much about, or maybe knows almost nothing about. Managing people is getting harder, and it can be…
Help! I’m Responsible for an Entirely New Team
It’s difficult enough being the new manager. But it’s twice as hard when everybody is new to you and to each other. You haven’t met each other yet. You may not have had any say in who was chosen for the team. As far as you know, nobody on the team has ever worked together…
Are You Ready for Gen Z?
by Alexandra Levit Millennials have captured the global workforce’s imagination. And Millennials are important, of course, as they are our current and rising leaders. But what about Generation Z, born 1996-2012? This year, the oldest Gen Zers will enter the professional workforce, and they are very different than what we’ve come to expect from the…
The Human Element is Key: What Our Research is Teaching Us about Gen Z
When we brought in four young interns this summer at RainmakerThinking we realized we had a great opportunity to have Gen Zers interview their peers. We’ve been studying young employees since our founding in 1993, when Gen X was the focus of our generational research. Since then, we have kept our finger on the pulse…
The Basics of Coaching-Style Management
Many managers tell me, “I’m not a natural leader. I’m a _____.” You fill in the blank: accountant, engineer, doctor. They say, “I don’t really enjoy managing. It involves a lot of difficult conversations.” What these managers are really saying is that they don’t know how to talk to their employees about the work in…