Management Skills

Finding your feet as a manager

Being good at your job doesn’t automatically tell you how to help other people do theirs. Management asks you to learn a different set of skills, often while everyone is already looking to you for answers.

Here’s reading for your first weeks as a manager, the conversations that get complicated, and the work of helping a team grow. There’s also help for when your own manager is the problem.

Management Skills

Just became a manager?

First-time manager survival guide

Nobody trained you for this. You were great at your job, and now you're managing your peers. Here's what I'd say to me when I became a manager.

Dear Peter: Why'd they make me a manager?

WHO LET THIS HAPPEN?

Dealing with a bad manager

How to deal with a bad manager

When your manager makes work harder, get specific about what's happening, ask for a workable change, and decide what you need next.

Dear Peter: My boss is a "Nice Guy," so why am I miserable?

A reader struggles with a kind but ineffective boss who avoids conflict and feedback, creating anxiety and stagnation despite good intentions.

Building and growing your team

Beyond lip service: what real mentorship looks like

Mentorship in the workplace is often treated like an afterthought despite being highly valuable, yet rarely receives proper structure or investment from organizations.

Matchmaker, matchmaker

1:1s shouldn't feel like a rollercoaster ride. And not just principles and abstractions – what do I specifically look for?

The fun ones

Gandalf and the Golden Girls

Is it finally time for Gandalf to give up saving the world, and sit down for a game of bridge?

Dark Lord Sauron MBA

Can confirm: having the Eye of Sauron upon you as the Dark Lord himself tears apart your marketing material is.. terrifying.

Is your version of this different?

I no longer offer coaching, but I'm always glad to hear how this plays out for you.

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