HBR Manager's Handbook by Harvard Business Review

• As a manager, you'll measure success differently--through the achievements of your team rather than your individual accomplishments.
• Your job is to get results through the creativity, expertise, and energy of others.
• To become an effective manager and a strong leader, you need to solve practical problems every day.
• Management represents a major departure from what you've done in the past, and what made you successful so far won't necessarily help you advance now.
• At its most basic level, your role as a manager is to set direction for your team and coordinate resources to meet your organization's goals.
• Your purpose has shifted from doing tasks to developing and directing people.
• This is where your real power lies: not in your job description but inside relationships, in the reciprocal interactions of ordinary office dynamics and politics.
• The most successful managers in today's challenging business environment leverage both management and leadership competencies selectively to benefit the organization.
• While your company determines when and how you transition to management, opportunities for leadership can present themselves at any time in your career. That's because leadership doesn't always require formal authority, but rather an array of intellectual and interpersonal skills.
• Just the act of naming the emotion--"I'm feeling anxiety right now"--can help you moderate your response.
• There are four common sources of stress for new and developing managers: role strain, problem-solving fatigue, isolation, and imposer syndrome.
• Create quiet, regular periods during your day for uninterrupted work. Pick tasks on which you can make good headway and protect this time from interruption.
• Acknowledge your deficients. You can't be an expert on everything, so find people you can depend on to do the things you can't.
• Admit your mistakes. Honesty isn't a weakness: it makes you more approachable and credible.
• Cutting yourself off from a support network triggers a nasty feedback loop of emotional stress and poor performance.
• Chronic sleep deprivation impairs your thinking and puts you at higher risk for a host of medical problems, from heart attacks to depression.
• Your role as a manager is to set direction for your team and coordinate resources to meet your organization’s goals. Your employees and your boss may have different expectations fro what you should accomplish as a manager.
• The nature of your work changes when you go from an individual contributor to a manager, from doing tasks to developing and directing people.
• As you adapt to this new way of working, don't rely too heavily on your positional authority to compel action from your direct reports. Instead, focus on developing personal influence.
• Management and leadership are different, but complementary, practices. As you grow into this role, you'll strive to be both a manager and a leader in your organization.
• Leadership is a learn able skill set, and there's no single template for it, though there are common skills you can learn. Developing your leadership abilities can be a lifelong journey, but you can exhibit leadership at any point in your career.
• One of your first tasks as a manager and leader is to gain the trust of your team. But your employees won't grant that trust automatically.
• Your character is about your values.
• being consistent means that your actions align with the values you profess.
• Keep your promises and model ethical behavior from day one, even if it means making an unpopular decision.
• Be behavior consistently, you teach people that they can interpret your actions in a straightforward way, without worrying about your intentions.
• Good questions demonstrate your own knowledge and values, and by listening attentively, you show people that you're interested in who they are ans what they can do.
• Ultimately, people are going to judge you by your results. So produce some good ones--fast.
• Be explicit about the motivations and values that drive you and lay out your decisions-making process. Don't worry about over-justifying your actions; instead, focus on communication your expertise and sense of the larger organizational context.
• Ask for clarification when you need it and listen more than you talk.
• You demonstrate confidence by engaging others openly to expand your knowledge.
• Making a deliberate effort to gain other's trust may feel awkward at first, or even manipulative. But remember, the goal isn't to convince people that you're somebody you're not; instead, you're trying to show them who you really are.
• Extrinsic motivations are the external outcomes you seek: recognition, status, wealth, and so on. Intrinsic motivations are rewards internal to the self: personal growth, for example, or the satisfaction of helping others.
• To become a leader, you must, to some extent, shape and create a new identity for yourself. Give yourself permission to experiment with novel ways of working and of managing, even if they feel uncomfortable.
• Avoid being to candid about the insecurities you may feel as you face new management problems or try out new leadership styles.
• Assume responsibility for the tough calls.
• You ultimately need to have your own compass for ethical issues. The fact that someone in your company tells you something is ethical doesn't make it so; even the fact that something is legal doesn't make it ethical.
• Trust is the single most powerful tool you have to get work done.
• One of your first tasks as a manager and leader is to gain the trust of your team.
• You gain trust by consistently demonstrating character and competence.
• To demonstrate character, show that you value the team by giving team members a voice, recognizing them for their achievements, regulating your emotions toward them, and showing respect.
• To demonstrate competence, achieve quick wins but also underscore the credibility of your plans and ideas by citing your research and reasoning, and also by being frank about what you don't know.
• Authenticity helps make you trustworthy to the team that you lead. But beware of using authenticity as an excuse not to try new leadership approaches, even if they don't feel comfortable at first.
• Demonstrating ethical behavior is important to establishing your team's trust in your character, in addition to being a vital part of your role as a manager.
• Self-awareness means being observant and honest about your actions, feelings, and behaviors and how they affect those around you.
• Cultivating self-awareness is hard, because we often mask what's toughest for us to handle with emotions that feel safer.
• Don't just focus on your problems; your successes have just as much to teach you.
• In today's business environment, the ability to keep a level head through rapid upheavals or long periods of uncertainty will serve you well.
• You need to be able to moderate your impulses so you can say no to ethical temptations that might harm your career or your organization. Impulsive actions don't need to be illegal to compromise your leadership.
• Street in particular can bring out the worst in all of us in the workplace. Self-control in highly stressed situations is invaluable.
• Just as good managers regulate their own emotions, they also monitor and react to the emotional states of the individuals on their teams. While you can't control how they feel or even how they choose to act, you can steer them in a more productive path.
• Call out unacceptable actions, especially if other people are involved. The rest of your group needs to know that you take the rules you've all agreed on seriously, and that you have their back.
• Focus on what you can control; focus on problem solving, not blaming.
• Emotional intelligence is a more powerful determinant of strong leadership than technical competence, IQ, or vision.
• Emotional intelligence as Daniel Goleman originally defined it is a combination of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.
• While you can't gauge your own emotional intelligence objectively, you can begin to get a sense for your perceived strengths and weaknesses through self-reflection and by getting feedback from trusted friends and family members.
• Your mood as a manager is literally contagious. Our bodies communicate stress, hope, and the like with others at a physiological level.
• Keep your cool in hot-button situations by acknowledging your triggers and then using though exercises or physical cues to pull yourself out of the emotional whirlwind.
• Spot string emotional reactions on your team before they bubble over. Help your employees articulate their reactions in productive ways by practicing active listening and re-framing what you hear in language that will help all of you move on to normal conflict-resolution techniques.
• Promote positive emotions by defining team norms, offering an apology or sympathy when it' appropriate, and helping your employees save face after embarrassing outbursts.
•  As a manager, you need to think critically about your relationship to your organization's overall strategy and the opportunities you and your team stand to take advantage of.
• As part of managing your team, you need to understand how you fit into the bigger picture.
• Now that you're a leader, your bosses expect you to be a strategic thinker, and that means learning to evaluate the risks and opportunities that you personally must navigate.
• The real power comes from aligning your goals with the highest purpose of the organization; ideally, every person you supervise will understand their individual goal, the goal of the unit, and how the unit's activities contribute to the organization's strategic objective.
• As you transition from individual contributor to manager, you'll view problems and measure successes in new ways.
• You also need to understand how you and your team fit into the bigger picture of your organization and its objectives.
• By analyzing the risks that may threaten your achievement of these objectives, you can better position yourself for success.
• Define concrete plans about how you will achieve your objectives by considering the metrics you'll use, the groups you'll work with, and the processes and capabilities your team needs.
• Influence, as we'll use the term, represents your ability to persuade others and have a positive impact on your organization's decisions, plans, and results. Success in your role as a leader means trying new approaches and strategies.
• Influence is a combination of two kinds of power. Your role as a manager automatically gives you positional power in your organization--power that comes from your job description and title, like the ability to hire and fire people or approve a budget.
• As a manager, you need to work through other people--your direct reports, who can execute your vision; your peers, who can support it laterally; and your management team, who can make or break it from above.
• To exercise influence up and down the chain of command, you need to also draw effectively on your personal power bu cultivating social capital. Relationships, reputation, reciprocity, institutional knowledge, and informal know-how--social capital represents all of the trust, value, and goodwill you've created in your organization.
• Find and solve real problems for the organization, and for your direct reports, peers, and supervisors. Identify opportunities to become better, smarter, and faster.
• Embrace change and try to deliver the best possible results, even if the decisions isn't one you'd choose. Work hard when no one's watching.
• Develop a deep, comprehensive understanding of your business and of your company's power structure. Listen as much as you talk. Provide constructive input when you have an opinion.
• Whether you're asking for a raise, securing more resources for your team, or developing a new strategy for your group, you need to garner influence with your managers in particular.
• Understanding what your boss is incentivized to accomplish can help you make sure your ideas are generally aligned with their needs.
• To become a person of influence with your manager, you need to know what they expect from you and how you will work together, and what you can do to make sure those interactions work smoothly.
• You’ll be better positioned to influence your boss on the important points when you make your daily interactions as frictionless as possible. Tailor your work style to theirs.
• Be proactive in making whatever accommodations you can.
• If you don't engage the organization and exercise influence effectively, if you hold yourself above the political push-and-pull you will limit your effectiveness as a manager.
• If you believe you can't afford to invest the time to build your network, consider this: you can't afford not to invest the time.
• If you make a promise of future support, find a tangible action you can take now to make good on that commitment.
• The most successful and upwardly mobile leaders have strong, collaborative, respectful relationships with their peers.
• Be willing to acknowledge other people of influence in the organization and join forces.
• Avoid using positional power in these situations unless absolutely necessary. Personal power can be much more influential in terms of securing interest and collaboration from others.
• You'll be most persuasive if you tailor your case as narrowly as you can to your audience by making a calculation about whether logic or emotions is going to be most effective.
•  Your argument needs a "hook"--an opening idea that goes right to the heart of what your listeners care about.
• If your listeners are resisting change because they're afraid of trying something new, validate that emotion and then disarm it.
• Stories bring your ideas alive. They grab your audience's attention with riveting plots and characters that individual listeners can relate to, evoking powerful emotions. They also simplify complexity ideas.
• Good stories stay in our minds because they focus us to draw out the meaning for ourselves.
• Metaphors represent overarching world-views that shape people's everyday perceptions and actions, such as "Business is war". Analogies are comparisons that include the words "like" or "as".
• A good metaphor or analogy strikes like lightening, illuminating your point of view without over-explaining or belaboring your point.
• Data visuals can be very powerful with wide audiences--slides, flip charts, video clips, or product samples.
• Questions stimulate your listener's attention and invite them to contribute--in a controlled way--to the point you're making. Disturbing questions focus their attention on their most pressing problems, while leading questions influence how your listeners interpret facts and what they remember. And rhetorical questions press the listener to accept a proposition that you've formulated.
• Much of your ability to influence others is driven by your understanding of their different perspectives and your willingness to reach out to them.
• Influence is a combination of two kinds of power, positional (having to do with your title) and personal (having to do with your social capital).
• You need to manager up because your boss is a key figure in your professional life. They can open opportunities and advocate for you, but without their support, you will be frustrated.
• To become a person of influence with your peers around the organization, foster a network that can help you obtain information, share expertise, and form coalitions.
• Working with colleagues across silos can be particularly challenging because their cultures and priorities may be different from yours.
• To promote a specific idea to others, consider their point of view.
• To succeed as a manager in today's frenetic business environment, you need to be able to capture and keep people's attention.
• Becoming a masterful communicator is possible for anyone who learns the set of behaviors researchers identified:
• Animated voice
• Facial expressions
• Gestures
• Expressions of moral conviction or shared sentiment
• Contrasts
• Three-part lists
• Make eye contact, and let listeners see as well as hear your passion.
• Before you begin writing, you need to know what you're trying to say.
• If there's a painful part of writing, ti's doing the first draft. When you shorten the duration it's not as painful.
• Aim for unfussy language that's easy to read:
• Keep your sentences short.
• Watch for language that's overly formal.
• Use the simpler word.
• Avoid repetition.
• Create strong patterns.
• Proofread for grammar and usage errors.
• Contrary to popular belief, complex word choices don't make you appear smarter.
• To create a powerful presentation, you need to distinguish the slide deck itself from your presentation as a whole. Too often we elevate the deck itself as the main event, but your voice should never play second fiddle to a screen.
• Slides can be a powerful ally in your ability to communicate with an audience. They can also undermine your presentation by giving people something besides you to focus on, so use them selectively.
• When you do use slides, create them after you've prepared your key message.
• Fundamentally, presentations are a kind of storytelling.
• An effective presentation, like a good story, has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
• Toggling between your current reality and a better, alternative future creates excitement and tension.
• Make a hard sell at the end of your presentation.
• Either summarize key points for a compelling appeal to the minds of your audience or, instead, speak directly to their hearts.
• People should be able to understand a slide in three seconds, which means you need to streamline the content aggressively.
• People can only process a single stream of information at once.
• Storyboard on sticky notes. Their small size will force you to simplify your content, and it's easy to play around with the order.
• It's better to pick a slightly weird metaphor or image than something tired and forgettable.
• Don't memorize your talk word for word; it will sound tiff and boring. But know the material well enough that the environment, technology, and audience won't throw you off your game.
• Include the minimum you need to make your point.
• Show the eye where to go.
• Leave plenty of white space.
• One of the biggest ways you can show respect for your audience is by starting and ending on time.
• Presentations are a performance with a live audience. You'll have to think on your feet and adapt the material you prepared to your listeners.
• Step back and ask yourself what you want the meeting you're planning to accomplish.
• A general rule of thumb is to invite fewer people if you're meeting to make a decision and more if you're brainstorming or sharing updates.
• Start on time and begin by explaining the group's goals and introducing each person's role--for example, the facilitator or timekeeper. Then establish some ground rules for how you'll conduct the conversation--whether you expect people to put away their phones and laptops, how those participating virtually should jump into the conversation, who is the decision maker, and so forth.
• When you're ready to close, repeat the key points of the conversation, including decisions, next steps, and personal assignments, and check for understanding.
• Finding your voice as a leader involves learning a set of rhetorical tactics and behaviors and incorporating them into your authentic way of speaking.
• All types of written communications benefit from taking a moment to preparer and review, so you're presenting your thoughts in the most compelling and professional light.
• When creating a presentation, consider the slide deck and the meat of your presentation separately.
• For a meeting to be effective, you need to prepare th agenda and invitation list carefully, and elicit all participant's viewpoint during the meeting itself.
• Your time is valuable. Time management is a deliberate practice that helps ensure you're using all the time available to you in the best way possible.
• Minimize the amount of time you are spending on low-priority items; this can free up time for more important work.
• Finding your focus is about learning how to tune out all of this mental noise so you can concentrate on the work at hand. That concentration can be powerful.
• Flow boosts both performance and motivation. You do your best work in this state, and you feel good about yourself, too. But to achieve it, you need to eliminate the behaviors and environmental cues that send your brain off-task.
• Interruptions often take you away from the task at hand for much longer than you had planned. Diving back in is hard: according to research at the University of California-Irvine, getting back on track after being interrupted can take more than twenty minutes.
• If your workspace is really a mess, set aside a block of time to clean it up.
• If you don't have time to go through all your old messages, don't. Put them all in a separate archive folder and start fresh with a new inbox.
• Stress and lock of focus are actually two parts of a vicious cycle. You can't focus, so you don't get work done. When you don't get work done, you become too stressed to focus. And repeat.
• There is some good stress, of course. Stress is a natural, even useful reaction that can motivate you and help you focus under pressure.
• To better manager your reactions, establish routines that will regulate your general stress levels and adopt practices to relive high tensions in the moment. The more effectively you monitor yourself, the more you'll be able to help your team members menage their stress, too.
• The more consciously you connect your work to a larger sense of purpose--whether that's changing the world or securing your own financial stability--the better you'll be able to weather each day's ups and downs.
• The value of sleep cannot be overstated.
• You have a limited amount of mental energy, so don't spend it on low-impact decisions.
• People do better with difficult tasks when they're fresh off something simpler, like an easy rote task.
• Avoid surfing the Internet us a break strategy, as it tends to deplete your motivation; focus instead of replenishing it. Even staring our your window is better.
• In addition to whatever family time you set aside, be sure you also get some "me" time.
• Sometimes work will take over everything else.
• Authentic leaders ground themselves in a clear understanding of who they are and what they value, which is borne out in human experiences outside the office as well as in it.
• Learning how to manager your time, focus, and stress frees you up to think about the bigger picture and get the most out of each day.
• Managing your time is a deliberate practice that will help ensure you are using all the time available in the best way possible, matching up the time you have available with your goals and priorities.
• As important as finding time to do your work is finding focus in order to do it well.
• Stress is a physiological response to change, and it comes in good and bad flavors. Embrace positive stress and develop patterns to mitigates unhealthy stress.
• To minimize your stress, invest time to care for your body and your brain.
• Work-life "balance" may be a misnomer; aim for positive work-life integration.
• For your career to be fulfilling, it's important to actively manager your own growth.
• You are the best advocate for your own interests.
• While many organizations support career growth through training and other programs, a lot of the work of self-development will depend on what you make happen through your own choices and actions.
• The first step in your self-development is articulating your career purpose.
• Your purpose may shift over time, so reviewing it periodically and adapting it to your current thinking is very powerful.
• Once you're clear on you career purpose, begin to look for opportunities to grow toward those goals.
• Relatively few people are willing to relocated for their job, yet companies are hungry for workers who have experience across multiple markets.
• A personal introduction and note of recommendation can distinguish you as someone an organization should interview.
• Receiving feedback can be inherently stressful, setting off your insecurity, fear, and anxiety. This information is important to hear, but its emotional impact can be overpowering.
• To learn from your immediate coworkers, you'll need to practice hearing and using criticism in positive ways. And you must also learn to spend as much time considering your strengths as your weaknesses.
• One of the best ways to receive genuine, real-time feedback is to ask for it.
• Criticism is easier to receive when you're aware and in  control of your own emotional reactions.
• We become extremely sensitive to status during these conversations, and it's tempting to project a lot of negative motivations onto the other person.
• Building around your strengths and mitigating or improving in areas of weakness will allow you to develop into a stronger leader.
• In order to supervise others well, you must invest in your own competencies--influence, communication, personal productivity, and self-development. To connect with and advocate for your employees, you must develop personal power and an authentic voice. And to help them organize their work, you must understand how to prioritize your time and projects. These skills make you a stronger contributor in the organization, but as a manager, they also deeply affect the overall functioning f your team.
• The first step in your self-development is articulating your career purpose: What do you want out of your work, and hat do you want to accomplish?
• Search for development opportunities by first examining the options available in your workplace.
• Feedback from those you work with can help you understand where to grow--as well as your areas of strength.
• Delegating is one of your most important responsibilities as a manager. Your role is to ensure the right people are doing the right work, at the right time, and in the right way.
• The most effective managers spend less time "doing" and more time planning work assignments, organizing resources, and coaching people to achieve their best possible results.
• When you delegate, you remove tasks from your to-do list that other are qualified to handle. This gives you more time to focus on activities that require you r unique skills and level of authority.
• From an organizational perspective, delegation helps you maximize your company's sources and improve productivity.
• Once you have identified a task to delegate start by making a written delegation plan, before you talk to your employee. It should detail everything from why the assignment is important to the deadlines involved.
• Deadlines are important, but thing about time constraints throughout the work process.
• You should be prepared to give your employee a clear deadline and/'or time-line for the work.
• By using your personal power when delegating, you're more likely to secure buy-in and encourage enthusiasm with your staff. Avoid using positional power unless absolutely necessary.
• Your responsibilities don't end when you hand off an assignment. Indeed, your biggest challenge as a delegating manager is to ensure that your direct report doesn't fail.
• To set a rhythm for the work with your employee, hold routine progress updates.
• Avid hovering over your direct report, second-guessing decisions, and initiating unnecessary or prolonged discussions.
• Sometimes your employees delegate to you, either by giving up entirely on a task you've given them or bringing so many problems and decisions back to you that you're effectively carrying the weight of the assignment.
• Delegation lowers your stress and lets you focus on high-priority, high-impact tasks that only you can do. It also gives employees managerial experience and meets a deep human need for continual growth. Finally, it allows you to maximize your company’s resources and improves team performance by deepening trust and boosting self-confidence.
• Making a plan is important so that you don't assign a task to a person with the wrong skill set, for example, or miscommunicate what you want them to do.
• When meeting with your direct reports, talk and listen; you want to hear that they understand the assignment, and what questions or concerns they may have.
• Your responsibilities don't end with the hand-off. Monitor your direct report's progress in a way that corresponds with the magnitude of the project.
• Keep an eye out for reverse delegation, in which the burden of the work stays with (or returns to) you.
• There is a difference between routine check-ins and micromanaging, which wastes time and communicates a lack of confidence.
• Giving your employees feedback is critical to helping them succeed in their jobs. Positive feedback reinforces god work. Praise and coaching advice can create genuine bonds between you and your employees.
• Corrective feedback urges the recipient to change course or adjust practices that aren't working.
• The best time to give feedback, whether positive or constructive, is in the moment.
• One of the reasons that we avoid giving corrective feedback in the moment is that it can be unpleasant to deliver criticism.
• Write down your key points before you go into the meeting. That way you'll know what you want to say as you begin the conversation.
• When the meeting begins, it's generally best to jump into the negative feedback right away.
• When you give feedback, focus instead on behaviors and skills. Avoid making global statements ("You're X kind of person") or speaking in absolutes ("You always do Y").
• Coaching can be described as the practice of "asking questions that help people discover the answers that are right for them".
• Asking questions instead of offering solutions pushes your employees to develop critical thinking skills and the confidence to act on their own.
• Coaching requires time, effort, and an emotional openness from both participants; it's a true partnership.
• Give your employee the first opportunity to develop a plan to close any gaps between their current and required performance: "What would you propose?" They'll be more committed to a solution they've authored an more explicitly responsible for carrying it out.
• Both corrective and positive feedback, given well, can solve imminent problems and also help your employees grow in their careers.
• Giving your team members feedback is critical to helping them succeed in their jobs.
• Positive feedback reinforces good work. Corrective feedback urges the recipient to change course or adjust practices that aren't working.
• Sharing feedback in real time gives you and your employee the best chance to resolve the issue in question.
• Following a process in which you ask questions and have an open view of the out come of your feedback will make it more effective and easier for your colleague to hear.
• Coaching is a proactive dialogue between you and your team members intended to foster high performance and long-term development.
• Though coaching is not just for your stars, not all situations are right for coaching.
• Similar principles hold for delivering performance reviews as for other forms of feedback, though performance reviews also call for more -formal documentation.
• Your role as a manager is to develop talent that meets the needs of your business. It is fundamentally future-oriented, ensuring you can deliver exceptional performance both today and tomorrow. Whereas feedback aims to improve performance now, talent development expands your employee's capacities for the future.
• One of the most important and rewarding responsibilities you have as a manager is to develop the capabilities of your direct reports.
• The company benefits greatly from your investments in talent development.
• By encouraging your direct reports to think strategically about their career and helping them become more capable and content, you're creating tangible value for your organization.
• Effective managers help employees discover what they really want out of their work and how they can use their present situation as a springboard to reach those goals.
• Careerer advancement requires more initiative and more imagination than ever before, from employee and manager alike.
• The more you know about the people who work for you, the more you'll be able to motivate them, coach them, and help them grow.
• High performers, who typically make up about 5 to 10 percent of your team, have unique needs. These employees exhibit strong performance and show great potential to do even more for the organization. This group requires a commitment from you to develop and promote their talent in the organization.
• High performance typically place a high value on their own development and see it as a sign that your company is a good place to build a career.
• In additional to promoting your direct reports' careers goals, you should also make sure you--and they--understand the cost of what it takes them to achieve those great results. If their work habits aren't sustainable, they risk burning out and maybe quitting your organization altogether.
• High performers often second-guess praise, even when they need it badly. So it's important to make your accolades as specific as you can, tailored to their own self-perceptions.
• Stretch assignments give employees an opportunity to assume new responsibilities that will challenge current competencies and provide an opportunity for growth.
• The ultimate stretch assignment, of course, is a full-time promotion to another role in your unit or elsewhere in the company.
• The sweet spot of development for high-achievers is when you have a 50-70% chance of success. You're looking for an assignment that the employee has a real shot of completing, but where they will genuinely have to fight for their success.
• One of the most important and rewarding responsibilities you have as a manager is to develop the capabilities of your direct reports.
• Your organization also benefits greatly from your investments in talent development. Help others grow with a focus on how that growth will intersect with the business goals of your unit.
• Today's world of lateral career moves means you and your employees can be creative about crafting career strategies that are responsive to their--and the company’s--needs.
• High performers, who typically make up 5 to 10 percent of your team, place a high value on their own development and therefore have a unique set of development needs and risks.
• Stretch assignments are a calculated risk on everyone part--the company, your employees--and you. But they will also give your employees new responsibilities and the opportunity for growth.
• Leading a team means managing multiple people who come together to achieve a shared goal.
• Your job is to make sure all members of your team contribute to their full potential, making the team as highly effective as possible.
• Learn as much as possible about team members, including their training and skills, professional background, work style, motivations and goals, and life experience. This allows you to plan for how to maximize each individual's contributions.
• Every team in the company should have goals that support the organization's strategy. These goals describe specific , attainable short-term objectives that pertain to the team as a unit.
• Keep conversations confidential.
• Be punctual to work and to meetings.
• Listen without interpreting peoples motives. Ask why they said, did, or asked for something.
• To overcome communication and coordination barriers, your team members need strong personal relationships.
• Everyone who's worked with virtual collaborators has experienced "ghosting" in some form, when a colleague just stops answering emails and phone calls.
• Remote work can be very isolating. Without regular face time, team members may struggle to build trusting relationships and may wonder if anyone really sees-and appreciates--their work. To keep motivation high, make low-stakes social time a priority in your team's routines.
• Conflict is an unavoidable, even necessary, part of collaboration, and all teams experience it, not just cross-cultural or virtual ones. "There will, even should be, conflict in a group with a task that has even a minimum of complexity."
• Teams that don't disagree also don't challenge assumptions, investigate ideas, point out mistakes, and motivate each other to their highest performance.
• Many managers believe that their role is to minimize all conflict on the team. Not so. The trick is to encourage healthy conflict. That means facilitating constructive conflicts and resolving harmful ones.
• Clarify your expectations with the team before a major conflict arises, either b posting your own rules somewhere or by leading the group in a shared discussion of norms.
• Sometimes your employees will bring an issue to your attention and ask for your help. But if they're not self-aware enough to do this, you may need to take the initiative ans ask them to participate.
• If the conflict is complicated or long-standing, you'll want to know what's going on before you invite two tense people to a meeting to hash it out.
• solutions don't work simply because they make sense or because you said so; they work when they have buy-in from the people who have to execute them.
• Bringing unique individuals with different points of view together in the workplace brings opportunities and challenges.
• Effective teams have a mix of competencies and backgrounds.
• Your role as a team leader is to create a work environment that allows each person to contribute fully.
• Defining group norms helps everyone understand how a good team member acts despite their differences and makes team member's behavior more predictable.
• Building strong relationships on the team will help you engage valued team members who might otherwise feel marginalized by the group.
• Cross-cultural and virtual teams run higher risks of conflict and misunderstanding because communication is more difficult and cultural assumptions may be different.
• Team conflict can be constructive or destructive, depending on whether they produce better work and/or stronger intra-team relationships.
• Creativity is the ability to generate novel ideas.
• Creative ideas arise from divergent thinking, when your team strikes out in a new thought direction, away from the familiar ways of seeing and doing things.
• By focusing on potential, future actions, instead of present conditions, you keep the group from locking in too tightly on just one point of view.
• Especially with a solution-centric approach, you want quantity over quality, so encourage even the wildest ideas, no matter how strange. You never know where they may lead.
• How could our team members change or adapt the way they already do things to achieve some different outcome?
• For a more solution-centric conversation, ask group members to imagine an ideal solution to the problem or question before you in great detail and then work backward to figure out how they might achieve it.
• Create a complete matrix of all the elements at play in a problem--clients, services, resources, and so on--and then systematically combine and re-combine them to find new business possibilities.
• Appoint someone to play devil's advocate. This role is about challenging assumptions, not attacking other people for the sport of it.
• Your role throughout this process is to be as supportive of the wide range of ideas as possible. Never show that you think an idea is silly, and thank everyone for their contributions at the end of the meeting.
• Keeping the conversation positive isn't about ignoring serious challenges to an idea; it's about keeping everyone engaged in coming up with solutions and coming to new ideas with an open mind.
• Creativity is the ability to generate novel ideas, whether innovative products or features, better ways to execute internal processes, or unexpected solutions in a negotiation.
• Creativity doesn't just come from "creative" people.
• Planning the timing and setting of a creative session can make it more productive.
• There are a number of different tools and approaches for generating new ideas; brainstorming isn't your only option.
•  Getting everyone's perspectives is very important; creative ideas come from unexpected places.
• Feeling psychologically safe helps individuals take risks and generate new ideas.
• Recruiting actually works best when you aren't hunting too strictly for competency and experience, but rather for potential.
• Acknowledging your own biases is a critical part of any decision-making process.
• The retention of good employees matters for two bottom-line reasons. First, when employees leave, your company loses their knowledge and their (often expensive) acquired skills. When those employees go to a competitor, the loss is compounded.
• The US Department of Labor estimate the total costs of turnover at about one-third of the new person's yearly salary.
• People want to work for well-managed companies with strong missions and skilled, resourceful leaders. When they don't trust the leadership or when they feel the organization is squandering their work, they'll leave.
• People want to work for companies that let them do the kinds of things ha appeal to their deepest interests. Satisfying and stimulating work makes all of us more productive.
• People want to work in an environment that doesn't cut them off from the other sources of meaning in their life--family, community, extracurricular activities.
• Make it clear that you approve of healthy work-life boundaries, and that you don't see them as a threat to your team's dedication.
• People want to work for companies that pay them fairly for their labor. This includes not only competitive wages and benefits but also intangible compensation in the form of opportunities to learn, grow, and achieve.
• Even people with strong intrinsic motivations see their compensation as an indication of the organization's appreciation for their contributions and abilities. But compensation isn't a completely reliable motivator.
• While companies need to pay people well to attract and retain high potentials in the first place, they should be careful not to overdo it, because that is the surest way to demotivate employees who are not classified as high potentials, who may feel unfairly paid.
• Decades of research have given us a remarkably coherent picture of what truly engages people in their jobs: interesting, challenging work; and the opportunity to achieve and grow into greater responsibility.
• Your role as a manager is to bring the best, most promising talent into the organization.
• Before you can make a god hire, you need to know what you are hiring for.
• Instead of just filling vacancies, consider how you want your team to evolve. What new competencies are you looking for?
• As you recruit candidates, beware of focusing too narrowly on the description. It can be more important to find someone who can grow.
• Retaining talent is vital to the organization because turnover costs are roughly one-third of the person's salary.
• Understanding what makes someone want to stay with your company and belong to your team can help you motivate your employees.
• To maximize your team's contributions, you must align their work with your company's strategy and the actions of others in the company. When your people see that they can truly drive change, their confidence in your leadership and their commitment to your decisions will deepen.
• To generate the best possible results overall for your organization, you need to consider the implications of each course of action.
• The differences between you and your competitors are the basis for your advantage.
• Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.
• Simply being different, of course, won't keep you in business. Your strategy must also deliver value. And customers define value in different ways: lower cost, greater convenience, greater reliability, faster delivery, more aesthetic appeal, easier use.
• Once companies have found a strategy that works, they want to use it, not change it. Consequently, most management teams do not develop a competence in strategic thinking.
• That’s the essence of strategy building: finding unique links between the opportunities and threats the present themselves to your business and your particular capacity to respond.
• There is seldom one way to do things, and in some cases, the best parts of two different strategies can be combined to make a stronger, third option.
• Even your entry-level employees should be able to articulate the goals of the organization and explain how their efforts every day fit in.
• Your employees need repeated exposure to your ideas in order to really internalize them.
• It's easier to lead change in an organization that embraces change as a matter of course.
• Although you may not formulate strategy, strategic thought is already a part of your job when it comes to managing the company's resources properly.
• Your role as a strategist will evolve as you assume more responsibility. But because few companies explicitly train managers for this sort of work, even experienced managers will benefit from a review.
• Strategy aims to develop a business’s competitive advantage and compound it. The basis of this advantage is difference--the unique value your company alone can deliver.
• Your company can create difference in three ways: need-based, variety-based, or access-based strategic positioning.
• You can evaluate your company's strategic position by analyzing its business with these three lenses.
• One could perhaps usefully divide the vase universe of subsequent strategy ideas into those that focus on:
• Doing something new
• Building on what you already do well
• Reacting opportunistically to emerging possibilities
• As a manager, you don't need to be a financial expert. But financial literacy, like strategic thinking, can improve your current performance, as well as your upward mobility. Financial literacy further supports your ability to understand your company's overall position and strategy, and how your piece fits into the bigger picture.
•  By becoming financially literate yourself, you can combine the numbers with your business insight in one powerful point of view on the company’s actions, performance, and opportunities.
• There are some things financial tools simply don't measure very well.
• To understand how your business works and whether it will keep working, consider these four questions:
• What does your company own, and what does it own to others?
• What are its sources of revenue, and how has it spent its money?
• How much profit has it made?
• What is the state of its financial health?
• You can find the answers to these questions in three main financial statements: the balance sheet, the cash flow statement, and the income statement. These are the essential documents of any business.
• Companies prepare balance sheets to summarize their financial position at a given point in time, usually at the end of the moth, the quarter, or the fiscal year. This document shows what the company owns (its assets), what it owes (its liabilities), and its book value, or net worth (also called owner's equity, or shareholder's equity).
• Assets comprise all the physical resources a company can put to work in the service of the business.
• Liabilities are debts to suppliers and other creditors.
• Owners' equity is what's left after you subtract total liabilities from total assets.
• The fundamental accounting equation:
• assets - liabilities = owners' equity
• assets = liabilities + owners equity
• The balance sheet describes not only how much the company has invested in assets but also what kinds of assets it owns,, what portion comes from creditors (liabilities), and what portion comes from owners (equity).
• Analyzing the balance sheet can give you an idea of how efficiently a company is utilizing its assets and managing its liabilities. This data is most helpful when compared with the same information from one or more previous years.
• Since fixed assets other than land don't last forever, the company must charge a portion of their cost against revenue over their estimated useful life. This is called depreciation, and the balance sheet shows the accumulated depreciation for all the company's fixed assets.
• If one company has purchased another for a price above the fair market value of its assets, the difference is known as goodwill, and it must be recorded.
• Subtracting current liabilities from current assets gives you the company's net working capital, or the amount of money tied up in current operations.
• Using borrowed money to acquire an asset is called financial leverage.
• Financial leverage can increase returns on an investment, but it also increases risk.
• Of the three main financial statements, the income statement has the greatest bearing on a manager's job. Thats because most managers are responsible in some way for one or more of its elements--generating revenue, managing profit and loss, or managing expense budgets.
• Unlike the balance sheet, which is a snapshot of a company’s position at one point in time, the income statement shows cumulative business results within a defined time frame, such as a quarter or a year. It tells you whether the company is making a profit or a loss--that is, whether it has a positive or negative net income (net earnings)--and  how much.
• revenue - expenses = net income
• Subtracting operating expenses and depreciation from gross profit gives you a company's operating earnings, or 9operating profit. This is often called earnings before interest and taxes, or EBIT.
• As with the balance sheet, comparing income statements over a period of years reveals much more than examining a single income statement. You can spot trends, turnarounds, and recurring problems.
• If your revenues rise faster than the competition's, you can reasonably assume that the folks in sales and marketing are doing a good job.
• A budge performs four basic functions, each critical to the success of a company in achieving its strategic objectives.
• A budget forces you to plan--to set goals, choose a course of action, and predict the results.
• During this process, you must also coordinate and communicate with the different arms of your business to reconcile your collective priorities in a single, unified scheme.
• Once your plan has been set in motion, you rely on this scheme to periodically monitor progress, comparing actual results with the budget's projections.
• Eventually, your company will use this information to evaluate performance--your's and other managers. And you'll use it to asses your own group.
• In a nutshell, the operating budget is structured as follows:
• revenues - (cost of goods sold + sales, general, and administrative costs) = operating income
• Validating your assumptions behind the forecast with others may help you refine the numbers before you finalize your budget.
• Financial data is most meaningful when you use it to compare your own performance to your competitors, and to future market conditions.
• Numbers aren't infallible. Question your data sources and be critical about the kinds of questions you apply financial techniques to.
• The balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statements offer three perspectives on a company's financial performance. They tell three different but related stories about how well your company is doing financially.
• The balance sheet shows a company's financial position at a specific point in time. It provides a snapshot of its assets, liabilities, and equity on a given day.
• The income statement shows the bottom line. It indicates how much profit or loss was generated over a period of time--usually a month, a quarter, or a year.
• The cash flow statement tells where the company’s cash came from and where it went. It shows the relationship between net profit and the change in cash recorded from on balance sheet to the next.
• Your own budgeting activities as a manger happen under the umbrella of your company’s master budget, operating budget, and financial budget.
• To stand out as a manager, you can't just preserve the status quo. You need to pitch new ideas that create real value for your organization--and opportunity for you.
• Building a business case is bout selling your idea and yourself to other people.
• Understanding these decision makers will help you tailor your presentation and position yourself fas compelling and credible to the people whose opinions matter.
• To find a champion, look for someone on the review committee who will directly and powerfully feel the benefits of your project. Then reach out, before you've fleshed out the details of your case and when you're still in an exploratory, information gathering mode.
• The better you outline why your proposal is good for the business, your clients, and your employees, the more likely you are to get a yes.
• As a manger, you benefit greatly from maintaining open dialogue with outside parties who can inform your strategy and business plans on an on going basis.
• To identify the biggest threats and opportunities, score each risk on its probability and its potential impact.
• By involving other people in this process from day one, you create a shared sense of ownership over the final proposal. Everyone whose advice you sought or whose expertise you consulted will see their own ideas reflected in the final product, and they'll want it to succeed.
• Building a business case relies on both the "soft" and "hard" skills you've learned in this book, from persuasion to financial analysis.
• Understanding your decision makers will help you tailor your presentation and position yourself as compelling and credible to the people whose opinions matter.
• The best business cases aren't the product of one person's genius but collaboration between colleagues.
• When you invest in your growth as a leader, you begin to recognize the true power you wield in others' lives.