How to Manage Managers: What Changes When You Lead Leaders
How to manage managers: 5 changes for skip-level leaders, from delegating problems to judging yourself by your managers' teams. Practitioner evidence.
Leadership & Management Skills
Delegation, coaching, one-on-ones and the craft of managing people.
Managing managers and executive skills
Matrix Management: How to Lead When People Report to Two Bosses
Matrix management gives people two bosses. A 2015 US Gallup survey linked it to weaker role clarity; 5 practices help the two managers agree who decides what.
Trust, vision and leading through change
The Change Curve Explained: How People React to Workplace Change
The change curve turns Kübler-Ross's 1969 stages of dying into 4 or 5 workplace stages. What research found, and what managers can do at each point.
Leadership styles and theories
Theory X and Theory Y: What McGregor's Idea Still Teaches Managers
Theory X and Theory Y are a manager's assumptions about people, not two styles. What McGregor argued in 1960, the thin evidence and how to spot X habits.
Situational Leadership Explained: Matching Your Style to the Person
Situational leadership matches 4 styles, from directing to delegating, to a person's readiness for one task. Both versions, an example and the evidence.
Leadership Styles Explained: Which One Fits You and Your Team?
How 6 leadership style models compare on evidence: the modern styles overlap heavily, and hands-off leadership has the clearest record of harm.
One-on-ones and coaching
The GROW Model Explained: A Simple Coaching Framework for Managers
The GROW model runs a coaching talk in 4 stages: Goal, Reality, Options, Will. Questions for each stage, a worked one-on-one and the evidence behind it.
How to Run One-on-One Meetings That Employees Actually Value
One-on-one meetings make up nearly half of all workplace meetings, yet a 2023 review found no empirical research on them as a topic.
Delegation and accountability
Micromanagement: Signs You're Doing It and How to Stop
Micromanagement from the manager's side: 7 warning signs, the pressures behind them, what it costs a team, and a 4-step plan to step back.
Why Managers Struggle to Delegate (and How to Let Go)
Delegation is hard because work you shaped looks better to you and control feels good in itself. 5 habits drawn from the research help managers let go.
Underperformance and difficult situations
How to Manage an Underperforming Employee: A Step-by-Step Guide
How to manage an underperforming employee in 5 steps: check expectations were clear, diagnose the cause, agree a plan, review it, and know when HR takes over.
Leadership fundamentals
Leadership vs. Management: What's the Difference and Why It Matters
Leadership vs management: Kotter's 1990 essay split the work into 3 pairs of tasks, then warned that strong leadership with weak management can be worse.
What Is Leadership? Definitions That Actually Help You Lead
What is leadership? Nearly every definition centers on influence, and a 2011 meta-analysis found behaviors tend to explain more of effectiveness than traits.