In today’s corporate environment, the merging of two or more departments or functional areas is commonplace.  Such consolidations can be extremely disruptive and can negatively impact the performance of the departments involved.  In this episode, we discuss ways to avoid many of the mistakes a manager can make during such a merger. 

In today’s corporate environment, the merging of two or more departments or functional areas is commonplace.  Such consolidations can be extremely disruptive and can negatively impact the performance of the departments involved.  In this episode, we discuss ways to avoid many of the mistakes a manager can make during such a merger. 

Who is in sales?  Every one of us in every function, in every company, in every industry.  Large company, or small, we all have “clients” and we are all “salespeople”.  By that, we mean we all need, at least from time to time, to convince that is, “sell” someone on an idea or get them to agree to do something for us. That “something” can range from actually buying your product, to giving you a promotion, to agreeing to help you on a project, or completing an assignment you’ve given out.  In this episode, we talk about how to be an outstanding sales person regardless of what you’re “selling”.

Every manager has clients – whether they are inside or outside of the company, the ability of a manager to forge and maintain positive relationships with those clients is central to their success or failure as a manager.  In this episode we will discuss ways to build successful relationships with your clients:

The circumstances for getting feedback from your boss, whether positive or negative, can range from a chance meeting in the hallway to a formal performance review.  In this week’s episode of Management Mastery, we discuss the range of ways you can get feedback from your boss and how you should respond to each.

This week on Management Mastery we discuss getting feedback from your clients. As we have said in previous episodes, you always have at least two bosses: Your immediate supervisor and your client or clients. And everyone has clients.  Being able to get honest feedback from your client is critical to your success as a manager.  In this episode we discuss the benefits of getting honest feedback from clients and how to build the kind of open and trusting relationship with a client that encourages that kind of feedback. We also talk about how to have a fruitful feedback conversation with a client and how to follow up such a meeting.  

Like it or not, it looks like remote working is here to stay.  What is currently known about this relatively new workplace reality, how widespread is it how do workers feel about it and what should managers who have staff working remotely – whether part-time or full time – be aware of in order to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives?  We’ll address some of these questions in this episode.

We have defined trust to be “when the manager believes their staff can be relied on to carry out their assignments and staff, in turn, believe that the manager knows what they are doing and will do what they say they will do.  Trust requires three characteristics:  competence, character, and caring. In this episode we discuss why “Caring” is critical in building and maintaining trust between manager and staff.

One of the most important elements of successful management is trust: The trust of the manager in their staff as well as the trust of the staff in their manager.  Along with Competence and Caring, Character is one of the three key elements needed to build and maintain trust. We discuss competence and caring in separate episodes.  In this episode, we explain what we mean by “character” and how it is manifested by a trusted manager.

We have spoken about the importance of building trust with team members in many of our episodes.  Trust, in business, is when the manager believes their staff  can be relied on to carry out their assignments and staff, in turn, believe that the manager knows what they are doing and will do what they say they will do.  What is required to build trust are three characteristics:  competence, character, and caring.  We will discuss competence first because  you can’t be effective without competence.-That’s the bedrock or the foundation.  We will cover character and caring in future episodes.