“Tara,” you ask, “if they haven’t sent the requisitions back yet, and you need them, why don’t you just go up and get them?” “That woman is a witch,” she replied. “I don’t want to deal with Shirley even if it would make my job easier” …
Whether tragedy strikes one person or a whole community, managers and their teams need to be prepared to deal with grief in the workplace. Test yourself with this true-or-false quiz:
Managers are often maddened when employees blame co-workers when things go awry. Here’s the strategy one manager used to deal with an employee’s buck-passing:
It didn’t take a psychic to figure out that Aura and Viktor were attracted to each other. They have the same interests, mutual friends, similar goals. So you, their manager, were not surprised to learn they were dating …
It’s hard to find anyone who’ll admit to being a “micromanager” — or who’ll say anything positive about that breed of manager. But sometimes, we all fit the bill, even when we think we’re just being “hands-on” or “engaged” with our teams and their work.
No matter how responsible your employees are, if the team as a whole picks up bad work habits, it’s hard for you as a manager to break them one person at a time.
Even though you’re Alain’s supervisor, you and he have basically worked as equal partners for some time. But his ambition to move up is fairly transparent. And he’s a firm believer that it’s who you know, not what you know, that gets you ahead …
