Handling a Direct Report Who Goes Over Your Head
A direct report bypassing you to your own manager stings, and how you respond matters more than the incident itself. Here’s how to handle it well.
Management Skills
Management Skills
Management Skills
Managing Someone Who’s Better at the Job Than You Are at Managing Them
Managing someone whose technical skill exceeds your own is genuinely uncomfortable, and it’s also common. Here’s how to do it well without pretending otherwise.
Management Skills
The One-on-One Meeting: What Most Managers Get Wrong
The weekly one-on-one is one of the highest-leverage tools a manager has, and most managers quietly waste it on status updates. Here’s how to actually use it well.
Management Skills
Succession Planning for a Role You’re Not Ready to Leave
Succession planning feels like planning your own exit, and that’s exactly why most people avoid it until it’s too late. Here’s why it matters even when you’re staying.
Leadership, Management Skills
Leading Through Ambiguity When There’s No Clear Answer
Some situations don’t have a clear right answer, no matter how much information you gather. Here’s how to lead well anyway, without pretending otherwise.
Leadership, Management Skills
Managing a Team Member Who’s Overqualified for Their Role
An overqualified team member is a genuine retention risk hiding in plain sight. Here’s how to manage them well before boredom turns into departure.
Management Skills, Teamwork
Cross-Training Your Team Without Micromanaging
Cross-training protects a team from single points of failure, and done badly, it feels like surveillance. Here’s how to build it without micromanaging.
Management Skills, Workplace Culture
Recognition Programs: Why Most Fail and What Works Instead
Most formal recognition programs quietly become checkbox exercises within a year. Here’s why, and what genuinely motivating recognition looks like instead.
Management Skills, Workplace Wellbeing
The Right to Disconnect: Boundaries With After-Hours Work
The right to disconnect isn’t just a legal concept in some countries. Here’s what it actually means to set genuine boundaries with after-hours work.
Management Skills, Workplace Culture
Managing a Team During a Hiring Freeze
A hiring freeze changes what’s actually possible for a team, and how it’s managed determines whether the team holds together or quietly frays.
Management Skills, Productivity
The Planning Fallacy: Why Your Estimates Are Always Wrong
Almost every project runs longer than planned, and it isn’t bad luck. Here’s the well-documented bias behind it, and how to estimate more realistically.
Leadership, Management Skills
The Leadership Shadow: How Your Small Behaviours Get Copied
A team absorbs a leader’s small, unconscious habits far more than their stated values. Here’s what the leadership shadow actually is, and how to manage it.
Leadership, Management Skills
Setting Clear Expectations From Day One
Most performance problems trace back to unclear expectations set at the very start. Here’s how to get this genuinely right from day one.
Management Skills, Teamwork
Managing a Hybrid Team: Neither Fully Remote Nor Fully in the Room
Hybrid teams face a genuine risk fully remote and fully in-office teams don’t: a quiet split between people in the room and people on the screen.
Management Skills, Teamwork
Running a Retrospective That Actually Changes the Next Project
Most retrospectives produce a list of good intentions nobody follows up on. Here’s how to run one that genuinely changes what happens next time.