The upsides, downsides, and everything in between, to consider around using OKRs to set goals as a manager. I remember the first time I heard the term, “OKR” about five or so years ago. My initial reaction was, “Er… Okay what?” Turns out “OKR” is an acronym for “Objectives and Key Results” – a framework…
The #1 piece of information you should be focused on as a leader is sharing company vision. Here’s exactly how to do it. “Company vision” might be the fluffiest business term I know. Thrown around by every nearly business book and article, “vision” is often used vaguely, without nuance or thoughtfulness. Yet despite it’s watered-down…
Based on input from 1,000+ managers in our Watercooler online leadership community, here’s what to consider if you’re thinking about doing performance reviews. “Should I do performance reviews?” A manager recently wrote this to me. We’d arrived at the middle of the year (already?!), and he was curious if he should kick-off bi-yearly performance reviews…
Here’s the #1 thing your team meeting should be focused on – and exactly how you should structure your team meeting agenda. “What should I put on our team meeting agenda?” I asked myself this question recently because – for the first time in our small team’s history – we’re starting to hold monthly team…
You’ve got your first one-on-one meeting with a new employee scheduled. Here are the 15 questions you should put on the one-on-one meeting agenda. The other week, I held a one-on-one meeting with a new employee – the first I’ve conducted in a while. (We don’t hire that often at Know Your Team, so it…
Recently I hired someone new here at Know Your Team. Here’s exactly what I wrote on Day 1 and the 23 questions I asked as a part of our employee onboarding process. Something new happened recently: We hired a new employee at Know Your Team – and it caused me to rethink our entire employee…
Being a great manager and English gardening have more in common than you might imagine. If you want to improve your leadership skills, there no shortage of analogies that have been made about great managers. A great manager is a “coach,” a “captain of a ship,” or even a “human shield.” However, I heard a…
If you’re looking for the best employee engagement survey questions, these 32 questions have the highest response rates in Know Your Team – and share four distinct characteristics. “How engaged are my employees, really?” We ask ourselves this, as leaders – and then write our employee engagement surveys questions, determined to find an answer. Yet…
Here are the 5 most telling signs of micromanagement – and what you can do instead. I won’t tell anyone: You think you might be a micromanager. Argh. If there were scarlet letters for a bad manager to wear, “m-i-c-r-o-m-a-n-a-g-e-r” would be among them. But, how do you know if you’re a micromanager, for sure? …
Six things to consider when managing managers instead of individual contributors. “What’s the biggest difference between managing managers versus managing individual contributors?” I recently was asked this question at a conference I spoke at in the United Kingdom. Then a few days later, funnily enough, this same question was the central topic at a panel…