people management

Beware of Serial Status MeetingsStandup meetings are great in many instances. But if you're calling serial status meetings, you may find that people will stop attending. To engage employees and address issues quicker, you may want to try lean coffee or a problem-solving meeting. Read on for tips on involving your team.
The Keys to Improving Employee Morale

You can have the most talented, experienced team of tech professionals all under one roof, but if they don’t have high morale, success will be hard to reach. That’s why a group like Plasticity Labs—which uses data analytics to gauge workplace morale—can even exist.

How to Work with Defensive People

It’s irritating to work with people who are always defensive. These are the people who, when things don’t work out as planned, are quick to blame circumstances, bad luck, or the people they work with. But if you can gain the trust of defensive people, you and the work you do together will benefit.

You Can Develop Executive Presence—at Any Level

Although executive presence is something executives should have for success, it’s a demeanor people at all levels can benefit from acquiring, both to be effective in their current positions and to advance. Read on to find out what qualities entail executive presence and how you can cultivate them.

Are You a Bad Boss? Here’s How to Know

If reading articles about how to be a good boss were all it took to be one, there wouldn’t be so many articles about how to survive a horrible boss. The trouble is that the bad bosses usually don’t know they’re bad. But there are clues. Read on to see if you exhibit any of these bad-boss behaviors.

Why You Should Take a Bow When You Deserve OneIf the project you're managing goes better than planned—you finish ahead of schedule, under budget, or with greater results than expected—you might be inclined to chalk it up to luck and not want to draw attention. But here's an argument for why you should make sure people notice and you get credit.
Effective—and Possibly Crazy—Tips for Persuading Anyone

Not a day goes by that you don’t have occasion to try to persuade others, whether it’s for something big like canceling a project or something inconsequential like deciding where to go for lunch. Read on for tips to help convince people and get them on your side, both on a team and outside work.

Stop Being Difficult! How to Deal with Passive Aggressive StakeholdersProject teams have to learn to manage the difficult personalities they encounter on a project. The key is to identify which type of personality you are dealing with, then quickly apply approaches to smooth over the situation. Here are some tips for handling passive aggressive stakeholders' concerns.