Leadership & People Management: Practical Guides
Original, sourced guidance for people managers: feedback, goals, trust, recognition, teams, development, change and wellbeing, and the software that supports each practice.
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
- How to delegate effectively: what to hand off, to whom and how much
Delegate outcomes, not steps. Pick work someone else can do or learn to do, choose the person for their strengths or development, and match their autonomy to their readiness and the cost of a mistake.
- How to increase employee productivity by removing what slows the work down
Increase employee productivity by removing what slows good work down rather than pushing people to work harder.
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.
- How to improve workplace culture: from stated values to daily behavior
Culture is what people do and tolerate every day, not the values on the wall.
- Inclusive leadership: how to make every voice count on your team
Inclusive leadership means every person can contribute fully and is treated fairly, whatever their background, role or status.
- 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
- How to motivate employees when perks and pep talks stop working
Motivate employees by meeting three needs research keeps finding: a say in how they work, a sense of getting better at it, and connection to people who matter.
- How to recognize employees: specific, personal and fair recognition
Recognize employees by naming what they did and the difference it made, soon after it happens, in the way the person prefers.
- Meaningful work: what it is and how leaders help people find it
Meaningful work is work people see as worthwhile because it matters to someone beyond themselves.
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 create a learning culture: habits that make a team learn every week
A learning culture is a team where learning happens inside the work, not only in courses.
- 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.
- Integrity in leadership: what it means, why it pays and how to show it
Integrity in leadership means your words and actions match, and your standards hold when keeping them costs you something. People judge it from what they see: promises kept, rules applied to yourself first, mistakes owned.
- Self-leadership: how to lead yourself before you lead others
Self-leadership is the way you guide your own actions, thinking and energy toward goals, without waiting for someone else to direct you.
- Servant leadership: what it means and how to practice it at work
Servant leadership is leading by putting the growth and well-being of the people you lead first, so that they perform and, in time, serve others too. Its test is whether the people served grow.
- 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
- Adaptive leadership: how to lead when there is no known answer
Adaptive leadership is mobilizing people to tackle problems with no known solution, which require them to change how they work. Decide first whether a problem is technical (an expert can fix it) or adaptive (the people involved must learn).
- 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.
- Leadership vision: how to create one your team can see and use
A leadership vision is a concrete picture of what your team's work will look like when it succeeds, and why that matters.
Wellbeing and burnout
Wellbeing and burnout
Software for people managers
More indexes
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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.
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The vendors behind the products we review, and their line-ups.