Leadership & People Management: Practical Guides

Feedback and performance

• How to give feedback at work

  Give feedback close to the moment, describe the situation, the behavior and its impact, ask for the other person's view, and agree on one next step you will check. Small, frequent conversations work better than an annual review.

• How to address poor performance with an employee: a step-by-step guide

  Address poor performance early and privately.

Goals and accountability

Engagement, trust and culture

• Employee engagement vs. satisfaction: the difference and how to measure each

  Employee satisfaction is how content people are with the deal they get: pay, benefits, workload, conditions. Employee engagement is how invested they are in the work itself: the energy, effort and ownership they bring.

• How to build trust in the workplace, and rebuild it when it breaks

  Build trust at work by giving people steady evidence on three questions they ask about you: can you do the job, do you care about them, and do your words match your actions.

• Toxic leadership: signs, costs and what to do

  Toxic leadership is a repeated pattern of disrespect, intimidation, self-serving decisions or unethical conduct that harms people and results.

Recognition and motivation

Teams, communication and conflict

• High-performing teams: what they have in common and how to build one

  A high-performing team is a small group of people with complementary skills who depend on each other to reach a shared goal and keep getting better at it.

• How to improve team communication: five habits managers can practice this week

  To improve team communication, make expectations and the reasons behind them explicit, ask more follow-up questions, listen and acknowledge emotion before you solve, make it safe and worthwhile to disagree, and close every decision in…

• How to resolve conflict in the workplace: steps and scripts managers can use

  Act early, meet each person separately, name whether the conflict is about the task, the process or the relationship, then bring both people together to talk about interests rather than positions.

Developing leaders

• Emotional intelligence in leadership: what it is, how to build and measure it

  Emotional intelligence in leadership is a leader's ability to notice, understand and manage emotions, their own and their team's, and to use that information to decide what to say and do.

• How to develop leaders in your organization: a practical, evidence-based guide

  Develop leaders by giving promising people real leadership work before they have the title, sized so it stretches without swamping them, and surrounding it with feedback, coaching, a mentor and a short debrief after each experience.

• Humility in leadership: what it looks like, why it works and how to practice it

  Humility in leadership is seeing yourself accurately and acting on it: you admit mistakes and limits, give visible credit for other people's strengths, and stay open to learning from anyone on the team. It is not low confidence.

• Influence without authority: how to persuade peers, partners and your boss

  Influence without authority means getting people you do not manage, such as peers, other teams and your own boss, to commit because they want to, not because they must.

• What makes a good leader: the qualities research supports and how to build them

  A good leader combines character (integrity, courage, humility, honesty about what they see) with competence (setting direction, coaching, deciding, developing people).

Change and decisions

• Decision making in leadership: how to decide well, fast and together

  Sort each decision by how costly being wrong would be and how hard it is to undo. Delegate or decide reversible calls quickly; slow down only for those that are costly and hard to undo.

• How to lead change at work: a practical playbook for managers

  To lead change, get clear on what is changing and why, explain it in your team's terms, let people shape how it gets done, give them the skills and time to do it, reinforce the new way and adjust in the open as you learn.

Software for people managers

More indexes

• Software A–Z

  Every product we review, A to Z, with its main category.

• All comparisons

  Head-to-head comparisons with a scorecard and published prices.

• Buying guides

  How to choose, switch and compare HR software.

• Glossary of HR terms

  HR, payroll and compliance terms defined in plain English.

• Software vendors

  The vendors behind the products we review, and their line-ups.