Practical notes on leading people well.
No fluff and no jargon. Just the ideas and frameworks we use with the leaders we coach, written down so you can use them too.
Decisions you should delegate, and ones you never should
Delegating the wrong decisions slows your team down. Hoarding the wrong ones burns you out. Here's how to tell them apart.
Performance reviews people don't dread
Most reviews are tense, vague, and full of surprises. A few changes turn them into the most useful conversation of the year.
Hiring for potential without getting burned
Hiring for potential can land you a future star or an expensive gamble. The difference is knowing what potential actually looks like.
The five conversations every new manager avoids (and how to have them)
The talks you're dreading are usually the ones your team most needs you to have. Here's a structure for each.
The first 30 days: onboarding a new leader onto your team
You hired a strong leader, then left them to figure it out alone. Here's how to onboard one so they succeed faster and stay longer.
Why feedback fails, and the three-part model that fixes it
Most feedback is too late, too vague, and too personal. A simple model fixes all three.
The career conversation your best people are waiting for
Your strongest performers rarely ask about their future out loud. The ones who leave are usually the ones nobody asked.
How to have the promotion conversation
Whether you're saying yes, not yet, or no, the promotion conversation is one most leaders fumble. Here's how to do it well.
Executive presence isn't charisma. It's these four habits.
Presence isn't something you're born with. It's a set of learnable behaviors. Here are the four that matter most.
Async leadership: writing as a management skill
On a distributed team, your writing is your leadership. Most managers treat it as an afterthought, and it shows.
Leading a team you never see in person
Remote leadership isn't in-person leadership over video. It's a different job, and the managers who admit that do it better.
How to build a coaching culture without hiring more coaches
You don't need a bigger coaching budget. You need managers who can coach. Here's where to start.
Manager as coach: the mindset shift that changes everything
Coaching isn't a set of techniques you bolt on. It's a different answer to one question: whose job is it to think?
The first 90 days: a playbook for newly promoted leaders
The promotion is the easy part. Here's how to use your first three months to set up everything that follows.
How to coach someone who just wants the answer
Asking questions backfires when someone came to you for a decision. Here's how to coach without frustrating them.
The GROW model, and when it actually works
GROW is the most taught coaching framework and the most misused. Here's how to run it so it helps instead of stalls.
When a high performer is hurting the team
The person hitting every number can quietly cost you more than they bring. Here's how to tell, and what to do about it.
How to build trust on a team that barely meets in person
Trust on a remote team is not built in the rare offsite, it is built in a hundred small signals between them.
Gravitas isn't volume: a quieter path to executive presence
Some of the most commanding leaders in the room are also the quietest, and that is not a coincidence.
How to be heard in a room full of louder people
Being heard is rarely about talking more, and the quiet people who command rooms know exactly why.
Saying no to your boss without torching the relationship
A good no protects your boss from a yes you can't deliver, and the trick is to make that obvious.
The conversation to have before you let someone go
If a termination is a surprise to the person, you skipped the one conversation that could have changed the outcome.
How to tell someone their work isn't good enough
The kind way to deliver hard feedback is also the clear way, and most managers get the order wrong.
What to do when your one-to-ones feel like status updates
If your weekly one-to-one sounds like a project report read aloud, you're wasting the most valuable half hour you have.
Twelve questions that make one-to-ones better
Better one-to-ones rarely come from a better agenda. They come from asking a sharper question and then being quiet.
Why you're still doing work you should have handed off
You know you should delegate the report, the deck, the standing call. Here's why you keep doing it yourself anyway.
The delegation ladder: how much rope to give
Delegation isn't on or off. It's a ladder, and most managers hand people the wrong rung.
Why your team doesn't tell you the truth (and how to fix it)
If nobody ever pushes back in your meetings, that's not agreement. It's a warning sign you've learned to ignore.
Giving feedback to someone more senior than you
Feedback up the chain is harder than feedback down it, but the moves that make it land are surprisingly small.
How to ask for feedback you'll actually act on
Asking 'do you have any feedback for me?' reliably produces nothing useful, and there's a better way.
The feedback sandwich is stale. Here's what to serve instead.
Burying criticism between two compliments fools no one and teaches your team to distrust your praise.
Managing people who used to be your peers
Getting promoted over your friends is one of the hardest transitions in work, and pretending nothing changed makes it worse.
What to do in your first week as a manager
Your first week as a manager is for listening and learning, not for proving you deserve the title.
How to stop being the bottleneck on your own team
If every decision routes through you, you didn't build a team, you built a queue with your name on it.
The manager's first one-to-one: a script for getting it right
Your first one-to-one sets the tone for every one that follows, so spend it on them, not on status updates.
Ideas are cheap. Practice is everything.
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