It’s bad for morale.

That’s why Colin Powell said leadership is sometimes about being willing to piss people off.

Second, being aware of small problems and maybe even rolling up your sleeves and fixing them yourself is the best way to kill the “it’s not my job” or, worse, the “that’s beneath me” mentality on your team.

Guidance is often called “feedback.

Russ suggests encouraging people to come up with

Don’t be an “easy grader” or a “hard grader”

You don’t want to be an absentee manager any more than you want to be a micromanager. Instead, you want to be a partner—that is, you must take the time to help the people doing the best work overcome obstacles and make their good work even better. This is time-consuming because it requires that you know enough about the details of the person’s work

Ask each direct report to create a document with three to five columns; title each with the names of the dreams they described in the last conversation. Then, list the skills needed as rows. Show how important each skill is to each dream, and what their level of competency is in that skill. Generally, it will become very obvious what new skills the

Many people cross a dangerous emotional boundary when they become the boss. They try to manage other people’s emotions. This is a big overstep. All people, including the people who report to you, are responsible for their own emotional lives. There are fewer faster paths to Manipulative Insincerity than imagining you can control another person’s