One friend recently told me about his new manager. He said that he was so bad that no one could take him seriously. “His management is a joke. You can’t imagine it. He absolutely does not understand what is going on.” My friend was so unhappy that he even considered leaving his job. People say that employees leave their managers, not their jobs.

We discussed this manager’s behaviour in more detail. As a result, we identified the following management failures. So, let’s not repeat them in our management practice.

1. You don’t know your team

Problem: The manager does not know the team but acts as…

Finally, the year is slowly rushing to its end. Yet before you exchange your office chair for a comfortable sofa, there is one question to be answered — how was your year at work? Or rather, did you achieve your goals and targets?

Your answer will be most likely — yes. If you have twenty more minutes, you sweat down a few achievements or a list of activities. Okay, sent! You are relieved this administrative formality is over.

As a manager, I usually spend much more time on performance evaluation than my team members themselves. You can argue that this…

Everyone can write. Everyone can read. Many say you don’t need any special talent for writing. There is one important thing you can’t get away with. It is time. There are plenty of articles about how to be efficient in writing and how to write 1000 words in one hour. Yet, you still need that one hour.

If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. So, these pieces of advice would be redundant. For now, they are not. I am not going to give tips on how to write faster, but I am going to tell you how…

Regular income is a good ground under your feet. Every month there is a fresh batch for spending. It is great for planning expenses and some security. The regular salary costs you 40h a week and 25 days of holidays a year. Standard deal. That’s how your parents worked and how you are going to work. Or aren’t you?

Do you dream about flexible work and no boss? I do too. The way out of the corporate circle is to go self-employed or to go on neverending maternity leave. However, that is scary. One thing, which we didn’t learn at…

How do you know you are ready for a management position? Management jobs are often presented as a reward for loyalty. If you stay with us for x-years, you can then become a manager. Another case is when you have a feeling you could be a better manager than yours. You like working with people, but you have no other management experience. When are you ready?

Management readiness

A friend of mine recently asked me if he should have applied for a management job. He was a nice chap who truly cared about his team. Yet, he had low confidence and believed…

I passed the interview and discovered I loved it!

How many times have you applied for a job you didn’t believe you would get? You don’t care if you have less experience or appropriate education. In 99.5% of cases, there are negative responses or no responses at all. So, we are left with a 0.5% chance to rock. That’s why we have sometimes trouble seeing other options. When there are some, we have a problem committing to them. What are we left with then?

Challenge of seeing the next steps

I often think about how a person recognizes that he’s ready for the next challenge. How…

The average response is positive. The average is 3. The general opinion is neutral towards this topic. On average, women agree more than men. You read and hear such statements all the time. What kind of information is it?

The average can be multiple things. It is a typical value in a set of data (as Oxford Languages defines). Using statistical words, the average can be:

1. Mode is a number that occurs the most often in a data set, meaning an option that is picked the most.
2. Median divides your data set in the middle when you sort your values…

“How do you know that you are a good manager?” That is a question I got from one of my managers. Management requires a lot of soft skills. But how to measure them? It is subjective and never accurate. Does it matter? Your team is a reflection of your skills. Their feedback, their feelings, and their job performance matter. So, understand your team, and you will know how to lead them.

1. Turn theory into practice

The management theory is useful. It helps you to understand your team and solve interpersonal puzzles. You need to get familiar with basic concepts from psychology — Maslow’s hierarchy…