Looking for new ways to keep your employees motivated? Don’t trust your team’s motivation to quick fixes that promise to boost morale. Instead, depend on these good old-fashioned management strategies: Make sure workloads are reasonable. The current mantra is “do more with less.” Be extra diligent in ensuring that employees’ workloads are realistic. How do you know if … [Read more...]
About Bud to Boss Editors
Our Gift to You: Words of Advice for 2021
Happy Holidays from the Bud to Boss team! 2020 was a challenging year, to say the least, but soon we will be turning the calendar to a new year, full of new opportunities and goals. So as we say farewell to 2020 and prepare to welcome the New Year, we’d like to offer you these words of advice. May they serve you well next year. Quit sweating the small stuff If the last year … [Read more...]
Manage “Everything is Urgent” Behavior
We all know one person who thinks every to-do is urgent. Everything the person asks of you needs to be done right now. Maybe, as the leader, you are that person, expecting your employees to drop everything to focus on your requests, no matter how insignificant. Right now, when people are already feeling stressed, overwhelmed and distracted, that kind of attitude can have a … [Read more...]
Mitigate Stress to Show Employees’ Appreciation
Saying "thank you" is more important than ever, says Deb Boelkes, author of Heartfelt Leadership: How to Capture the Top Spot and Keep on Soaring. “[Employees] may be working long hours. They may worry that their health is at risk. Maybe they’re coping with a home life that’s been disrupted in some way. In other words, stress is at an all-time high. You may not be able to … [Read more...]
Should You Already Be Grooming a Successor?
Imagine this interesting scenario: You just began your new supervisory role and your boss announces that it’s time for you to find your replacement. No, you haven’t done anything wrong and you’re not getting fired. Your boss believes in preparing for the future by succession planning, which means you train your replacement in conjunction with doing your job. Surprisingly, this … [Read more...]
Ensuring a Well-Run Meeting Starts With One Critical Step
We’ve all walked out of a meeting and thought “Wow, that was a waste of time.” Perhaps the meeting had no clear purpose, the participants strayed off topic or the issues weren’t adequately resolved. Regardless, you left the meeting feeling frustrated. This time-wasting experience could have been avoided if the person preparing for the meeting knew how to write an agenda that … [Read more...]
Helping Grief-Stricken Employees
Death is an incredibly tough subject to discuss, and one we are confronted with daily these days, but it's also been an issue that managers and leaders have dealt with for a long time. How should you act when an employee loses a loved one? What should you say? How do you respond without coming across as invasive? When one of your employees suffers the loss of a loved one, … [Read more...]
5 Ways to Recognize Remote Employees
It's not groundbreaking news that employees want to be recognized for their hard work. Nor is it surprising that employees' performance, attitude and job loyalty tend to improve when they feel valued at work. Be honest: How well are you performing at recognizing your employees' efforts in recent weeks? Most of our lives have been turned, at least a little, upside down … [Read more...]
Resources: Managing Negativity Now and Later
Most people right now are feeling the full weight of the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re anxious or scared. They may be feeling frustrated with the stay at home measures. Some are experiencing financial problems. Some may have even lost a loved one to the virus. Most of us are dealing with emotional highs and lows, and that can affect even the most positive people’s attitudes. To … [Read more...]
Managing Online Meetings for the First Time? Follow This Advice.
This is a guest post by Wayne Turmel from the Remote Leadership Institute. Join him for a free four-part video course, Demystifying Remote Leadership: How to create solid working relationships in a virtual team with more confidence and less stress! Sign up now. The most common complaint about online meetings is that they are a colossal waste of time. The problem is, right … [Read more...]