“All the time you’re taking with these regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings with your employees pays itself back with higher morale, more engaged employees, better relationships and more trust. So, a few in-depth conversations a week doesn’t seem like too much time to me.”

Running one-on-one meetings, without being hyperbolic, is probably the most important practice that a manager can take on. Don’t believe us? Tune into Ethan and Mike’s conversation and they’ll try to change your mind. In this episode, the boys discuss why running regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings with your employees is vital to your team’s success. Additionally, they get into the weeds about what questions you should (and shouldn’t) ask and how to ask them, how to keep a task-relationship balance in these meetings, why relationship building is different from friendship building, how to prepare for these meetings, how to make these meetings work if you have a ton of employees, and more nitty-gritties.

If you’d like a free e-book of great one-on-one questions to ask your employees, shoot us an email at [email protected] and we’ll send you one.

For more reading on running great, effective one-on-one meetings, check out this blog post.

Have topics you’d like for the Nash team to tackle? Drop us an email with your questions and they’ll take a stab at it! [email protected]

Text the word “LEADING” to 66866 to be added to Nash Consulting’s monthly newsletter. Just practical management skills and tips. And just once a month. Pinky swear.

For more information on Nash Consulting, visit their website at www.nashconsulting.com

“When you’re a leader, success is about helping other people grow. That’s really what we’re talking about here with these skills.”

Geekery is afoot as Mike and Ethan drop a few Lord of the Rings references while they help managers explore the skills they absolutely need to be practicing. The main message of part two of our series on the Top 15 Management Skills is that your job as a manager is to help your employees grow. As a manager, these 15 skills need to be on your radar if you expect to build and sustain morale, establish trust and respect with your employees, get s*** done and help create the workplaces we all want to be in.

Turn on, tune in and drop us a review if you have found any value in this show! Stitcher and Apple Podcasts is the best place to do that. (It helps other people find this show.)

The Top 15 Management Skills:

1.       Show caring & respect

2.       Advocate for your people

3.       Communicate, communicate, communicate

4.       Involve others in decision making…be collaborative

5.       Be consistent, fair & equitable

6.       Give autonomy and trust

7.       Ask for (and be open to) feedback

8.       Deal with issues…fix problems

9.       Be approachable

10.   Give recognition and thanks

11.   Hold employees accountable

12.   Be available and responsive

13.   Follow through and follow up

14.   Make your expectations clear

15.   Provide resources and training

Resources:

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently – Book by Marcus Buckingham and the Gallup Press

"Some of these other skills you can be challenged in and still be alright, but this one you just have to have if you're a manager."

If you’re following the plot, you’ll remember that in episode #2 Mike got up on his soap box and proclaimed, “skilled managers equal high morale, which equals all those cool things you can’t pay for and you can’t punish for.”

What the hell was he talking about?

Tune into this episode where the overly caffeinated Nash team gives a quick and dirty look at some of the top skills that, according to research, are the biggest bang for your buck in terms of managing people effectively.

The Top 15 Management Skills:

1.       Show caring & respect

2.       Advocate for your people

3.       Communicate, communicate, communicate

4.       Involve others in decision making…be collaborative

5.       Be consistent, fair & equitable

6.       Give autonomy and trust

7.       Ask for (and be open to) feedback

8.       Deal with issues…fix problems

9.       Be approachable

10.   Give recognition and thanks

11.   Hold employees accountable

12.   Be available and responsive

13.   Follow through and follow up

14.   Make your expectations clear

15.   Provide resources and training

Have topics you’d like for the Nash team to tackle? Drop us an email with your questions and they’ll take a stab at it! [email protected]

Text the word “LEADING” to 66866 to be added to Nash Consulting’s monthly newsletter. Just practical management skills and tips. And just once a month. Pinky swear.

For more information on Nash Consulting, visit their website at www.nashconsulting.com

Resources:

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently – Book by Marcus Buckingham and the Gallup Press

Robert Crosby – Founder of the Leadership Institute of Seattle (LIOS)

“Just saying ‘good job’ isn’t always enough – people need to really think about what they did right in order to create a road map for repeating the behavior in the future.”

The Nashes return to their regularly scheduled program in this third and final installment of the feedback series. This episode is all about the power of giving positive feedback! Giving positive feedback has nothing to do with warm-fuzzy feelings and kumbaya circles – it’s about human psychology. The bottom line is that your employees need to know when they’ve done good work and why their work is excellent, or they might not be your employees for much longer. But beware! Giving positive feedback isn’t as straightforward as it sounds: if used incorrectly, it can backfire on an unsuspecting manager. Mike and Ethan will teach you why positive feedback matters and how to use it correctly in order to build employee engagement, create a more productive workplace and get more s*** done.    

Have topics you’d like for the Nash team to tackle? Drop us an email with your questions and they’ll take a stab at it! [email protected]

Text the word “LEADING” to 66866 to be added to Nash Consulting’s monthly newsletter. Just practical management skills and tips. And just once a month. Pinky swear.

For more information on Nash Consulting, visit their website at www.nashconsulting.com

Resources:

The Feedback Fallacy – Harvard Business Review article by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall

The Puzzle of Motivation – TED Talk by Daniel Pink

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us - Book by Daniel Pink

“It’s important that you acknowledge that this relationship you have with your peers is going to change. It’s just part of the deal. And we need to be prepared for that.”      The Nashes take a break from the feedback series to discuss an issue they’ve been getting a lot of questions about: "I am friends with the people I work with, but now I’ve been promoted. How do I go from peer to my peers’ manager without making it awkward as hell for everyone?”  In this episode, Ethan and Mike discuss the pitfalls of failing to make adjustments in your relationships when you become a manager, the first steps to take as a new manager, how to build respect from the get-go, what to do if your former peers challenge your new authority, how to manage your relationship with a best friend that you now manage and other steps to take if you find yourself in this situation.   Have topics you’d like for the Nash team to tackle? Drop us an email with your questions, and they’ll take a stab at it! [email protected]   Text the word “LEADING” to 66866 to be added to Nash Consulting’s monthly newsletter. Just practical management skills and tips. And just once a month. Pinky swear.   For more information on Nash Consulting, visit their website at www.nashconsulting.com   Resources:   The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t – Book by Robert Sutton

“There is only one thing, and one thing only, that you are allowed to give feedback about.”

In the last episode, Mike and Ethan Nash broke down the basics of delivering feedback in a way that actually communicates your truth while still keeping you connected relationally to the other person. Now it’s time to crank it up a notch. Welcome to the graduate-level course of giving feedback. In part 2, the Nash team explains why you can only give feedback about one thing: behavior. Not attitudes, not intentions, only behavior. They break down the three elements of good feedback: behavior, the impact of that behavior and replacement behavior. Additionally, they touch on the pitfalls of giving feedback via email or notes…a big no-no.

For more information on Nash Consulting, visit their website at www.nashconsulting.com

Text the word “LEADING” to 66866 to be added to Nash Consulting’s monthly newsletter.

Resources:

The Power of Vulnerability – TED Talk by Dr. Brene Brown

CORRECTION: Please note that The Power of Vulnerability by Dr. Brene Brown was a TED Talk she gave, not a book as it was stated in this show.  Her 2010 TEDxHouston talk on the power of vulnerability is one of most watched talks on TED.com.

“The main principle here is that your tone and body language have to give the message that you’re in their corner.”

Ethan gives his dad some tough feedback as they discuss a seemingly trivial topic that many people receive bad advice on. This episode is on how to give feedback in a way that tells your truth while also keeping you connected relationally to the other person. In Nash Consulting’s 20+ years of working with all types of organizations, they often hear leaders proclaim that they “have a feedback rich culture.” Although this may be true, these feedback cultures are not always healthy ones. The father and son duo discuss the pitfalls of delivering poor feedback, why the feedback sandwich (AKA the s*** sandwich) can be problematic, and the fundamentals of successfully delivering tough feedback.

For more information on Nash Consulting, visit their website at www.nashconsulting.com

Text the word “LEADING” to 66866 to be added to Nash Consulting’s monthly newsletter mailing list.

“As a manager, as a spouse, as a partner, as a parent, as a friend – the message of openness and non-defensiveness is what makes you approachable, it’s what builds trust and respect, it’s what allows you to hear the truth, it’s what allows you to grow.”

Join father and son duo, Mike and Ethan Nash, as they attempt to hack the evolutionary tendency to get defensive. Defensiveness is a fear response, and all our fearless ancestors were eaten by saber-tooth tigers. This episode is all about how to receive feedback non-defensively, even if the feedback is untrue. They discuss why defensiveness is built into us, why it’s not as useful today, how to stay connected with your colleagues so you can hear the truth, and why you simply cannot be an effective manager unless your employees know it’s “safe” to give you feedback. By the way, if you have any feedback for us about this show, please email Ethan at [email protected]. (And we won’t be defensive, we promise.)

For more information on Nash Consulting, visit their website at www.nashconsulting.com

Text the word “LEADING” to 66866 to be added to Nash Consulting’s monthly newsletter.

Check out our YouTube page for management greatness: 

“This skill comes pretty naturally to about 30% of the population, and 90% of people think they’re within that 30%.”

In part 2 of adaptive skills, father and son duo, Mike and Ethan Nash, get down to the basics of how to grow and develop the most important skills for managerial (and personal) success. Adaptive skills are the skills that we brought with us from childhood, and they make or break our success as adults. You may be thinking, “Well, if I didn’t bring these skills with me from childhood, I guess I’m screwed.” Wrong! The Nash’s explain the formula for growing and developing skills and then dive into a specific adaptive skill that Mike is still working on (hint: it requires him to shut up every so often) to demonstrate the process.

NOTE: If you’ve already mastered every single adaptive skill known to humankind, feel free to skip this episode.

For more information on Nash Consulting, visit their website at www.nashconsulting.com

Text the word “LEADING” to 66866 to be added to Nash Consulting’s monthly newsletter.

“These are the skills that we brought with us from childhood, and they make or break our success as adults.”

Join father and son duo, Mike and Ethan Nash, as they sip on cheap wine and get vulnerable about their growth opportunities. In this episode, they explore one of Nash Consulting’s core principles: The importance of continually developing your adaptive skills. The elder and younger Nash dissect the three different types of skills, discuss the most vital type of skills for managerial and personal success, the relationship between adaptive skills and emotional IQ, and why we must always have one eye on growing and developing ourselves in order to be effective managers. Cheers!

For more information on Nash Consulting, visit their website at www.nashconsulting.com

Text the word “LEADING” to 66866 to be added to Nash Consulting’s monthly newsletter.