If you’ve become a leader in the last year or two, you’ve begun your career in the weirdest, most complex circumstances imaginable. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the main challenges is the increase in hybrid teams. It’s enough of a challenge when all your people are in one location. When everyone is remote, there are similar but unique challenges. But when … [Read more...]
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Respond Assertively, Not Aggressively
The basic difference between being assertive and being aggressive is how our words and behavior affect the rights and well being of others. - Sharon Anthony Bower No matter how great a manager you are, bad things will happen at work. Not every day, but occasionally. It’s how you handle those incidents—the ones that fill you with frustration, anger and dread—that determine what … [Read more...]
New Leaders: Where to Find the Support You Need
Before you landed your supervisory position, you could seek advice from, vent to and share ideas with just about anyone. As long as you trusted the person and valued his or her insight, any colleague had sounding-board potential. Now your situation is more complicated. On the one hand, you have a lot more on your plate, meaning a lot more you want and need to talk about. On … [Read more...]
5 Tried-and-True Motivation Tactics
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...]
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...]