If you don’t live in a fairy-tale world, where your boss is supportive, encouraging, wise, and your biggest advocate - welcome to the (very big) party. In this episode, I cover how to know if you truly have a bad boss, how to manage your relationship with your bad boss, and how to manage and support your team when you aren’t getting what you need from your boss.

Here’s the scenario: You’ve been promoted in your current unit. You are now mnaging people who used to be your peers - at least one of whom may have also applied for the promotion. How do yo transition from a colleague to a manager? Here are nine suggstions for leading those you used to work alongside.

This week my guest is Marcelle Yeager of Career Valet, and we’re talking about navigating remote work. Our focus is on managing and being managed in “the new world order” with in-office, remote, and hybrid employees all working together. We also cover how to ensure you are setting yourself up for success as a remote worker — and how, if you are a manager, you can set your employees up for success in a remote environment.

Each leadership style has its strengths, although some are seen as more desirable. It’s important to understand and harness the strengths of your leadership style so you can communicate effectively and motivate your team. That’s why this week we are diving into the 9 leadership styles and how to use the strengths of each to boost your leadership skills and, in doing so, helping your team succeed.

This week, I’m talking about the stages of group development — what is necessary (and inevitable) for a team to grow, face up to challenges, tackle problems, find solutions, plan work, and deliver results. This work is based on the research of Bruce Tuckman from 1965, who hypothesized that, along with these factors, interpersonal relationships would create an effective group function.

A difficult employee is a term used to describe a person who acts in a careless, unprofessional, or irresponsible manner in the workplace. It is easy to get into a victim/villain mode with a difficult employee—thinking that they are intentionally doing the things they are doing to “get you” as the boss. This type of thinking puts you as the supervisor in a helpless, disempowering position with the difficult employee having power over you. So, how do we manage difficult employees? Let’s talk about it.

Many employees would assume that their boss knows exactly what they are already doing, minute by minute. They figure if the boss gave them this responsibility, they should be able to manage it in addition to what they are already doing – otherwise, why would the boss have assigned it? WRONG. Of course, your boss has at least a general idea of what you’re doing, but it is a mistake to assume she knows how full your plate is. Today we’ll be talking about the factors you need to consider when the boss puts a new responsibility on your plate.

Today we’ll be talking about the questions that can be useful during a first meeting with a boss. This is your chance to determine what your boss’s expectations of you are, what criteria he will use to measure your success, and what is most important to your boss. This is also the perfect time to clarify job responsibilities, as well as things like work hours, dress code, and expense reporting. For the boss, this is an opportunity to understand how to motivate and communicate with the new hire.

Today’s guest is Bruce Tulgan of Rainmaker Thinking. Today we talk about how to be indispensable at work. Bruce defines indispensability: to whom should you seek to be indispensable, and how to be indispensable while maintaining a work/life balance (or, as I like to call it, work/life blend). Bruce talks about his extensive research in this area, and the key takeaways you can use to become indispensable at work.

This week, I have return guest Bruce Tulgan with me. We are talking about the unique challenges of managing, and being managed, remotely. With so many companies working from home at least part of the time, this is a particularly relevant topic.

Today’s podcast is based heavily on the getlighthouse.com blog, specifically the blog titled “18 Questions to Ask Your Manager to Improve Your Relationship and Better Manage Up.” Whether you are trying to improve your relationship with your manager from bad to okay, okay to good, or good to great, you can work with your manager to improve your relationship and make work much more enjoyable for both of you.

My guest this week is Mark Herschberg, and we’re talking about How to Manage People You Don’t Manage. This is a particularly important topic in light of the changes we’re seeing as corporations respond to COVID. Mark talks about the unique challenges of managing people you don’t manage and gives us tips for leading by influence.