October 2011

Oct 11 2011

Three Tips for Managing Superstars

If you’re really lucky, you have at least one top tier, high performer on your team. And in case you forget how fantastic they are, they’ll often remind you.  As a manager, I had more than one superstar tell me I should make less than them because they really drove my success.  These high maintenance people are often much harder to deal with than your poor performers.  So how do you manage these confident, highly skilled superstars?  Here are three tips that should help:

 

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Oct 06 2011

Aha Moments From Cindy and Laura

In today's podcast Cindy and Laura discuss some of the things they learned when they became managers for the first time in an excerpt from the Manage Fearlessly Survival Guide: Your First 90 Days As A Manager.

 

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Oct 04 2011

I Don’t Have Time to Coach Everyone!

No doubt you've said this before, if only to yourself. Every manager is or should be expected to spend time coaching their employees- even the really good ones. But let’s be real, between putting our fires, strategic planning, mediating disputes, and responding to unhappy customers, coaching is not always at the top of your To Do list.  I’m not suggesting that you delegate all of your coaching responsibilities; it ‘s too important a job, but finding mentors can help.

In a study by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson in the Harvard Business Review, they found that coaching your “tails”, the highest and lowest performers does little. While their study was focused on sales reps, I think the results are applicable across many disciplines. If you have a limited amount of time to coach, focus on the middle 60%, your core performers. So what do you do with the other 40%?

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