Actionable strategies and techniques that are easy to understand and apply in real life.
Becoming a manager isn’t easy. All the uncertainty and confusion can either leave you disoriented and feeling overwhelmed with a lack of control or you can embrace it and use it as the force to push ahead. You can succeed as a manager by looking beyond all the randomness and chaos to adopting a mentality where nothing can pull you down. You can lead and succeed by practicing these 20 principles.
Are you not getting the feedback you need because others aren’t giving it to you or is it because you aren’t taking the initiative to get it right? Getting the feedback that you need requires taking full responsibility with the belief that you have the power to drive your own growth at work as opposed to blaming someone else for not moving forward.
Delivering bad news to your boss is not exactly fun. Imagining how they would react, what they would say, and how they would judge you can be terrifying and reason enough to try to cover it up. But knowing that with the right strategies you can turn things around and even win their trust and respect, you can get over your fears and take the necessary steps.
Are you in a constant state of frenzy throughout the day moving from one meeting to the next only to be left exhausted, disoriented and grumpy? Don’t let the “too many meetings” and “this is a manager’s life” excuse go on for too long. Get over your own nonsense and start putting some sense into your work
Working with a dominant personality is not fun, but sometimes avoiding them is not an option either. Their authoritative behavior combined with a body language that reeks of dominance can be quite upsetting. When you can’t avoid or quit, what should you do? Learn to work with them
The person who makes it to the top isn’t the one who faces many hardships and obstacles along the way, it’s the one who persists and resists – persists in their efforts and resists the easy path to give up. In other words, it’s not our failure, but our reaction to it that determines where we end up
The simple three-letter word “yet” is the sound of possibility, a positive intervention in our life to help us see straight. The nudge we all need to take control of our life by looking beyond the obstacles in the present to the opportunities of tomorrow. “Yet” carries with it the expectation that we can reach our destination
Strategic thinking is a muscle that we all need to build because using it right at work can be a strategic advantage in your career growth as an individual. You need to cross the boundary of the comfort zone to think about an idea to its extreme without mental guardrails to put it down. You need to uncover new insights that moderate thinking would never surface
Promoting vacation time, taking breaks between work, doing walk-and-talk audio calls instead of video calls to deal with zoom fatigue, and even asking people to have no meeting days are all super useful techniques to deal with the problems of work related exhaustion, but by themselves they are not sufficient to solve the problem of burnout at work. That’s because work overload is just one of the causes of burnout
Irrespective of how much we tell our teams to move past failures and learn from mistakes, we know that it isn’t easy to accept a failure. The expectation to do well at work makes people believe that failure isn’t an option. There’s a huge difference between feelings of disappointment and letting those emotions turn into feelings of devastation. Building resilience as a team is all about understanding that difference
Leadership anxiety can be a good thing when managed well. It can inspire you to question your choices, confront your own feelings and engage proactively with the desire to do better. The problem occurs when you let your leadership anxiety prevent you from seeing the reality of your situation. When you are so caught up in your own anxiety that it fogs your ability to think and see clearly
When your team members are fighting or are otherwise engaged in an uncordial relationship, the rest of the team can’t function very well. Freedom to disagree with others cannot be boundaryless and it cannot come at the cost of creating a toxic work environment for the team. As a manager, it’s your job to define a healthy boundary between constructive disagreements and destructive behavior
Caring for your people and holding them accountable for their work aren’t mutually exclusive. You don’t need to be nice and kind to people to show them you care. And caring for them doesn’t mean you don’t care about the outcomes. Build accountability at work by helping your employees differentiate between taking responsibility and showing accountability
Saying no is never easy. And saying no to your boss may actually backfire like it did in my case. But, saying yes to things you don’t want to do shouldn’t be an option either. You can either choose comfort in the moment by saying yes and then live with the regret afterwards or you can face brief discomfort in the moment by saying no to live a life in which you can feel at ease with your decisions later. Choice is yours
Robert Iger, now Executive Chairman of The Walt Disney Company is the former CEO of Disney. During his 15 years as CEO of Disney and as President of ABC Television prior to that, he led the company to amazing new heights. Under his leadership, Disney’s market capitalization increased from $48 billion to $257 billion. Every leader needs to embody his personal leadership lessons
The environment in which your employees operate can place a bound on what they can achieve. A powerful and empowering culture can enable them to achieve transformational results, while troubling workplace attitudes and behaviors can limit their effectiveness and undermine what they can accomplish
From strategy to execution to results, no leader can be effective without the foundations of trust. Trust is the single most critical driver of every leader’s effectiveness and the hidden element in the formula of every business’s success. Trust can only be earned and evolved by consistently practicing positive behaviors over long periods of time
When you meet a new person, you take time to decide if it’s a relationship worth investing in or not. When it comes to your job though, do you apply the same level of due diligence? Companies are after all in some sense similar to people. You can think of a company as a group of people with a shared identity. Spend effort into knowing this identity as you would with any new person. Determine if it’s a relationship worth investing
Being good at what you do cannot make you stand out at work. How you operate and interact with others play a crucial role in your success at work. You need to adopt powerful behaviors that can make you influential, impactful and move you forward. Adopting and practicing these behaviors will bring about the biggest positive change in your work life
Our life is nothing but a sum total of our decisions. From health to relationships to professional and personal growth, our decisions form an integral part of our overall well-being. An understanding of why you make bad decisions will profoundly enhance the success of all your future decision-making by preventing you from making choices you end up regretting
To delegate effectively, managers need to be intentional about the work that only they need to do and create clarity for their team on the rest. They have to learn to invest in those around them by letting go of control. Giving up control can feel hard, but it’s also necessary for growth. It’s the only way to scale for impact in an organization
The secret to getting ahead is not just doing great work, it also requires the ability to navigate office politics, not in an insincere or manipulative way, but rather as a skill to better handle the politics that goes on inside your organization. You simply can’t win people based on logic and rationality
Most managers discard the notion that they could be toxic due to a flawed assumption about what contributes to toxicity. The standard list of toxic behaviors is well known. What misses attention are the subtle behaviors that also impact employees’ well-being. If you are a manager, open yourself to the idea that your actions might be unintentionally contributing to a toxic work environment
What’s more crucial than not promoting the person who isn’t ready for one? The right kind of communication. Because this is where most managers fail to do their job. As the manager fails to communicate, the employees continue developing a chip on their shoulders with their unfulfilled wishes and desires. It amplifies every time they lose an opportunity to get promoted
Effects of the role conflict can vary from person to person. While some learn to deal with the friction that comes with a role conflict and thrive by staying positive and seeking measures to counteract it, others stop functioning and stop being productive by choosing to stay with stress and resentment. Learn to increase your productivity and general well-being when dealing with a role conflict
How can you bring your best to every situation when dealing with the pressure of high expectations? Performing under pressure isn’t some innate talent. Anyone can learn to tackle it. You may have all the expertise, skills and the knowledge to do well, but if you don’t know how to handle pressure situations well, pressure will make you do worse, and lead you to fail utterly
Growth mindset in the workplace shows up when hard work, determination and perseverance are valued over talent. Employees who work for growth mindset organizations have far more trust in their company and a greater sense of empowerment. They welcome challenges which makes them more successful learners and better contributors to their organizations. Learn to promote this mindset
Any manager looking to grow into a leader needs to do a self-evaluation of their skills to the demands of the role. It’s only by staying true to yourself, you can embrace the role with openness and curiosity. Developing your leadership style is always going to be a work in progress. There’s no end state. But recognising a few essential traits can get you started and help you identify if you are ready for the leadership position
Most of us have many desires at work. We fantasize about a positive future. But we are always too busy or too lazy to turn them into goals. Without defining what it is that we want, we let many opportunities slip by. We fail to make the best use of every situation and let distractions eat away into our mental energy and time. Goal setting mitigates the problem by helping us step outside our dreams to execute in reality
Are you a bad manager standing in the way of your employee’s true potential? You may believe that you are clearing the path for employees to produce great work. What you may end up doing is standing over their heads thereby preventing them to think clearly. You know what’s worst about the worst boss? They are ignorant of their own ignorance. Learn to recognize signs that lead to bad boss behaviour
Confident humility is the confidence in a leader’s ability to make the right decision while acknowledging that they need others to do it right. It’s knowing what they don’t know and having trust in what they do. It’s having faith in their strengths, while also being aware of their weaknesses. It’s accepting that they don’t have the required knowledge, but enough confidence in their ability to acquire that knowledge
Managing conflict demands that we calm down and think clearly. Instead of letting our reaction slip through our unconscious, we need to take charge of it in conscious awareness. Instead of letting destructive patterns of behaviour be our default reaction, we can choose to engage in positive action. Seeing the conflict for what it is and not how it manifests at first
Even with the best of intentions, giving constructive feedback is hard. It isn’t intuitive and most of us aren’t good at it. Even when we dare to do the right thing, we may not do it right. Telling people what they are doing right and wrong is not enough, you need to learn the art of giving constructive criticism and positive feedback to your employees
Why are we so afraid to ask for help when we need it. Is it because we are worried others will question our intelligence and smartness? Asking for help signals self awareness of our own limitations, humility to accept what we don’t know and the courage to ask for it. It’s a sign that we are confident in our abilities to tackle whatever is standing in our way to get to where we need to go
Path to success goes through failure. It’s scattered with mistakes, big and small and when confronted with challenges, we emerge on the other side more confident than we began. Instead of letting self-justification cloud our judgment, we can learn to embrace those painful moments that are essential for progress
Greater achievement comes from realizing how our thinking impacts our goals. By adopting the right mindset and using the right mode of thinking, we can overcome the challenges that stand in the way of achieving our goals. Learn when to use the big picture “why” and when you need nitty-gritty “what” based thinking
How do you deal with adversity? Are you an optimist who is briefly disturbed by the experience but soon bounce back and storms out of the phase with the belief that it’s only a rough patch or a pessimist who continues to be paralyzed by fear of failure and spirals into hopelessness with the belief in the permanent nature of their situation. Learn to shift from learned helplessness to learned optimism
No doubt some people are bad at delivering criticism. But aren’t we far worse at receiving it? We don’t know when it’s useful to tune in to someone’s criticism and when it makes sense to politely shove it aside and move on. It is easy to ignore feedback with the attitude that it doesn’t apply to you, but accepting the uncomfortable truth, even if it’s painful at first is the only way to grow
Leadership isn’t about personal greatness and entitlement, it’s the humility to lead with courage and passion. Leaders who focus on their brilliant mindset spend time and money in enhancing their image, and use people in the company to feed their ego as opposed to leaders with a growth mindset who show drive and enthusiasm to grow their companies
Are your actions inline with the life you want to lead? The problem of work life balance isn’t about more work, it’s about staying productive in what you are doing. There will always be some obstacles, something more to be done to finally get the life you want, but knowing that these obstacles are also a part of your life can help you start now, this very moment
What’s your contribution to the communication structure of your team? What assumptions did you make, how did you separate what’s acceptable from what’s not and what problems do you see in the current way of working together. Letting every team member develop their own communication playbook is not only inefficient, it leaves a lot to interpretation
When leaders don’t practice effective listening, they are disconnected from their people and their problems. These leaders fail to recognise that true value is created only when people listen to each other, when they are free to share an opinion and when they feel heard and respected for their views
Learn how communication varies across cultures and how subtle differences in communication patterns can have a tremendous impact on how we understand one another and how we convey and interpret information
Lead with vulnerability. It’s the courage to let your guard down, courage to be seen, courage to accept you don’t know, courage to acknowledge mistakes, disconnect your identity from your ideas, embrace discomfort and the ultimate belief that you are not perfect, you are always work in progress
Whatever dreams you have of the future cannot be fulfilled without reflecting on the lessons from the past. Experience by itself does not lead to learning. True learning comes from reflecting on your experiences. Take this journey of self reflection using reflection triangles
Do you take time to tell your high performers that you value them and care enough to be invested in their growth? High performers are 400% more productive than an average performer. Losing them robs the organisation of excellence. Nothing will be more valuable than the time spent in helping your excellent performers achieve further excellence
We speak more through our bodies than our words. The posture we assume, expression on our face, hand gestures and our eye movement conveys far more than we would like to expose. Understand the power of our body language and the role it plays in workplace communication and collaboration
Signing up to be a manager is an act of great courage. While the change demands letting go of our existing identity and embracing new one with openness and curiosity, it’s our mindset that determines what we make of it. What type of manager are you – do you accept vulnerability and commit to learning or put on an armor and try to protect yourself from the challenges that lie ahead?
Do you act out of your sense of goodness for others or out of fear of rejection, discomfort from displeasing others and not having the courage to receive their disapproval? Being a people pleaser will trap you within the boundaries of your own limitations by seeking external validation instead of utilising your true potential. Learn to create value instead of doing work to satisfy others expectations
Availability heuristic which optimises for efficiency is error prone as it exaggerates the probability of an event based on ease of recall. Learning when we can rely on efficiency and when we need to be accurate can help us in making better decisions. Apply the right strategies when deciding on the likelihood of something happening again or determining how the future would turn out
What do you do to deal with frustration? After being stuck in a spiral of feeling frustrated, you panic about the situation, add stress and anxiety to your life, feel powerless with your situation and then do absolutely nothing about it. Instead of wasting time overthinking through situations that cause you frustration at work, know that you cannot get rid of them, but you can learn to respond to them in a healthy manner
Do you control the number of decisions you make by choice and dedicate your peak mental energy to those significant decisions that impact your life in a huge way? Learn to make active choices and design a systematic approach to reduce the effect of decision fatigue and maximise your chances of making the best decision
Great leaders aren’t perfect and they are not always right, but they clearly exhibit a set of leadership qualities that makes them stand out. To understand what makes someone a truly great leader, we need to move from a superficial attribution of their characteristics to the underlying behaviours and actions that make up these qualities
Do you base your decision on what’s going to happen in the future or what investments have been made in the past? By not shifting our mental frame from the cost of moving on to the cost of not moving on, sunk cost fallacy causes us to ignore the promise of a better experience in the future by making an attempt to negate a loss in the past
Striking up a conversation at work can be intimidating. We avoid eye contact, turn our heads away and pretend to be busy on our phones all in an attempt to save ourselves from the awkward moment of meeting someone and not sure what to say. Learn how to start a conversation that does not involve small talk and adds value to work without making you feel uncomfortable
The ability to think big is the first step to break out of our bubble of self imposed limits and channel our energies to explore a bigger and better future. Thinking big doesn’t end with the visualisation of a better future, it’s rather the beginning of commitment to think right every step of the way
How do you know if a distraction is good or bad for you? Distractions do not ask for permission, they have an autonomy of their own. Learn to design your own personal system to make your distracted identity collaborate with your desire for focussed attention instead of fighting against it
Navigating the path to each employee’s success is not trivial and requires a commitment to be patient, dedication to push ahead despite failures and devising unique ways to inspire and bring out the best in every individual. One-on-one meetings is a slow process, but done right it can be your ultimate advantage as a manager
Snap judgments without careful consideration rules our workplaces and our lives. Fundamental attribution error or attribution bias makes us attribute a person’s behaviour to their character without taking into account the limitations and constraints within which the person might be operating
We all face multiple conflicts at work, but it’s the conflict with the boss that can be our biggest source of stress and exhaustion at work. Does your manager push your buttons, takes away your high hopes, crushes your desire to be innovative and refrains you from producing your best work. Are they a micromanager?
How can we transform from the command and control style to leveraging the power of self-direction that energizes and engages people? Empowering teams by giving up control is not easy. The fear that others are not capable and lack the required amount of clarity to make the best decision interferes with our ability to relinquish control
Is motivation a state of mind or a muscle we need to build? Lack of motivation is not lack of information, it’s the lack of behaviour to put that knowledge to use. Only the act itself can set motivation flywheel in action. It can turn impossible to possible. We do not fear failure once we learn to find pleasure in trying.
In a culture where title carries more weight than the desire to do your best work, staying in a position for long is considered a sign of incompetence and promotions are a means to drive authority and exert influence, the classic Peter principle comes into play
Should we agree to disagree or disagree and commit? Agree to disagree stems from a negative mindset of right vs wrong, us vs them and can make us adopt dismissive behaviour and ignore the decision. Disagree and commit divulges the importance of commitment despite our differences
How can we learn to lead with questions and not answers, shift from giving advice to gaining insight, and from knowing to learning through others? Leading with open ended questions develops innovators, deep thinkers and decision-makers who consider not knowing as an opportunity to build new skills
Difficult people push our buttons by acting in undesirable ways. Their behaviour gives us permission to pass judgement and offload responsibility by blaming them. Is it really in our best interest to navigate our lives by blaming them, holding them responsible for not reaching our goals and pretending that we didn’t succeed because of some mean co-workers
What do we do when things do not turn out as intended? Applying Hanlon’s razor can open our mind to seek alternate views instead of assuming bad intention, shift our perspective from a negative frame of mind to a positive one, from shutting down communication to actively engage and blaming others to finding solutions together
Do you tend to solve problems in your head instead of putting them to action? There’s a fine line between thinking and thinking too much. Overthinking can make us obsess about the problem instead of finding solutions, bind our mental frame to seek negative and get stuck in analysis paralysis with the desire to find a perfect solution
When confronted with information that challenges your personal narrative, are you curious about the new information and use that to update your beliefs or do you give in to confirmation bias and find ways to reject the evidence that contradicts your assumptions and look for information that strengthens your point of view
Do you let hierarchy magnify the distance that you have from your people, especially those who do not report to you. How do you learn about the issues that impact people on a day-to-day basis? Skip-level meetings are powerful conversations that can give you access to the personal map every person uses to navigate the organisation
When you are part of a group, do you speak up and voice your opinion or avoid criticism and choose a path of less conflicts. When popularity takes priority over individual responsibility, people develop a tendency to conform to ideas that lead to conservative thinking and make decisions with incomplete and biased information leading to groupthink
Why do strategy and tactics belong together? Strategy without tactics is intent without action while effort spent in planning that does not originate from a specific strategy is keeping busy without clarity on what you are trying to accomplish
Do you believe in a fixed mindset which is constrained by beliefs and thoughts or a growth mindset which finds freedom through learning? While giving up might be easy with fear of failure, persevering despite failures helps us progress in the direction of our goals
How can we be deliberate in our choices to do effective work more efficiently? Productivity demands shifting our focus from obsessing about the outcome to the system, the process to achieve that outcome
While making decisions, how often do we optimize for long term gain at the cost of short term pain? A good process for making decisions requires second order thinking which unravels the implications of our decisions by thinking about its consequences in the future
As a new manager do you watch out for mistakes? The excitement of the new job along with the commotion of its demands will cause you to make mistakes. Without the mindset to acknowledge mistakes and learn from them, you cannot approach this role with openness and curiosity
Do you take charge of your own growth by managing up or believe it’s your managers responsibility to enable trust, build a strong rapport with you, give you work that will help you shine and remove all barriers that can impede your success at work. How do you see the other side of this bi-directional relationship?
Are you leading from fear? As a leader, you may believe that you do not lead from fear, but have you taken time to reconcile reality. Are you willing to let go of your ego and develop leadership skills and qualities that make people want to follow you?
Management is a choice. Embracing it for the right reasons requires reasoning with self, questioning our thoughts, staying true to how we feel about the role and then making a conscious decision. If you really want to be a manager, explore possibilities and understand its unique challenges
Do you consciously opt out of the drama triangle and assume responsibility? Learning to shift the dynamics from drama to empowerment is of crucial importance since it moves the culture of the organisation from finding problems to creating solutions
How do you turn a group of strangers into a team which is united by common goals and empowered to succeed? Navigating friction requires understanding different stages of the team development to help the team move across these stages with leadership and guidance
In times of uncertainty when there’s little clarity on how the events will unfold, fear and worry of the unknown can consume us. Risk of business and personal lives in such surreal circumstances can cause feelings of fear, helplessness, anger and stress. Learning to lead through a crisis will require people to step up in their roles and lead others through unsettling and uncertain times
Thinking opposite of what we desire is not natural. Inversion mental model provides an objective way to explore the problem by thinking the opposite of what we seek. Going beyond our limitation requires questioning our existing beliefs and assumptions to uncover new possibilities and establish a better perspective to our original question with greater clarity and understanding.
Mentor mentee relationship is a beautiful orchestration between two parties built on trust. It’s an incredible experience effective in shaping learning and growth. Mentoring is a true meeting of the minds that requires commitment to hold each other accountable, respect and openness to share ideas and perspectives and engage in meaningful goals
Feedback culture built on the principles of openness and growth can give way to a feedback rich environment where employees feel safe to voice opinions and take charge of their own growth by giving and seeking feedback. The desire to work better and improve together shifts the mindset from one of fear to one of growth.
Given a complex solution with multiple assumptions and a simple solution with less assumptions, which one will you choose? Occam’s razor is a problem solving principle and a mental model that’s highly relevant in fast moving and highly competitive work environments. Learn why simple is hard and how simple solution to a problem is usually the correct one
Do you negotiate using your story or understanding other’s truths? Is negotiation a game of power. What role do our biases and emotions play in the way we negotiate and the outcome we achieve. Learn how to use negotiation as a powerful tool for effective collaboration and create win-win solutions at work
Engineering management is a discipline, a subjective practice that’s hard to quantify. It requires a mindset shift from doing to enabling others. While there’s no one answer to all the problems an engineering manager faces at the workplace, learning about the basic building blocks can help people improve and find their own management style
Do you start with the limitations or think of the possibilities. First principles thinking embraces a new mindset that shifts our thinking from exploring variations of existing solutions to creating a new recipe from the fundamental truth. Learn how it is the most powerful form of thinking to keep you one step ahead and plan and build for the future
Right talent is the most valuable resource and asset of any organisation. As humans continue to be the future of work, creating a structured interview process which is consistent and repeatable is crucial to objectively assess the candidate, provide superior candidate experience and drive results
Leaders who find time to create the right balance of effectiveness and efficiency determine what needs to be done first and then find a way to do it efficiently. They look beyond the bounds of the organisation with the desire for a better future laying down future strategy that leads to growing people and business
Can we be curious like a child without burdening ourselves with the image we have created. Imposter syndrome can help us find a new reality by questioning our ideas, knowledge and beliefs and confront our own feelings. Learning to deal with the inner self, its struggles and conflict and not put them aside can turn anxiety, unworthiness into a desire to do better and strive for more
Are you solving the urgent or planning for the important. Do you think strategically and prioritise work that avoids tomorrow’s crisis or too busy solving the problems of yesterday that there’s no time to create a better future. Find out how to prioritise, master productivity and create win win situations at work by putting eisenhower matrix to use
Leaders with self awareness and willingness to learn and change can be a powerful force of a successful company or the ones with closed mindedness and sense of superiority reason for its downfall. Recognise, reconcile reality and take charge of your blind spots
How does workplace culture give way to inflexible working environments. Can we provide flexibility in the workplace where trust is the basis of all work and employees feel committed to company’s success and growth
How do we learn how to learn? Breaking mental barriers to self directed learning is possible with a shift in mindset. It starts with the belief that you can learn.
Learn how to turn a powerhouse of cross functional teams to enable effective collaboration and achieve 10x better results through empowerment and open communication
Difficult conversations are reality of a workplace, an opportunity to do better. Yet we avoid them. Learn how to have meaningful conversations without the stress and build trust with people at work.
It is very easy to say YES. It takes strength and leadership to say NO. Doing one thing right is better than doing many things wrong. Learn WHY to SAY NO, WHEN to SAY NO and HOW to SAY NO
Is there power in observation and listening before acting. Is first one-on-one meeting important? Learn how to set the foundation and build strong relationships with people at work.
