Management Café

We hear a lot about tech. Tech disrupts businesses and creates unicorns. Tech changes workplaces and creates new ways to interact. But what about the impact of technology on our management practices? Our hosts talk about the difficulties that come if we allow technology to dictate how we manage. And the unintended consequences if we don't align our technology tools with the problems we are experie...

The wonderful Morgan Legge , founder of Pivot Your Work and Head of Organizational Change at Convert.com , joins the Management Cafe! Morgan, Pilar and Tim met through online communities and podcasting, a great example of what we discussed in #65 "Building a network outside your organisation" . You might need 2 coffees for this wide ranging conversation covering Morgan's path to her leadership sty...

Managers sit at the crux of organisational transparency and discretion. They need their employees and organisations to share information with them and are regularly deciding what to pass on and what to keep confidential. It's a tough balance. People need the right information to feel secure and do their job, but too much information can be overwhelming. Context and alignment are essential. Ideally...

This week our hosts (both Gen X) dig into the differences between different generations of workers. There have been endless articles and presentations on topics like "How to work with Millennials". But for Pilar and Tim there are inherent dangers in assigning behaviours to an entire group of people based on the year they were born. Whilst being the same age should mean we share some collective exp...

Pilar and Tim are back having a conversation about conversations. Following on from #66 which covered 1:1 conversations , in this episode they dive into group discussions. Facilitating a group adds another layer of complexity - for example giving more time to one person means less time for everyone else. And people behave differently in group conversations. There are more people to be mindful of,...

Pilar and Tim have a meta conversation about conversations . Participating in a good conversation means we listen, we get to talk, we feel heard, we deepen our understanding of a topic and we build connection with the other person. However not all conversations are created equal. Sometimes we are in a glorious free flowing exchange of ideas and other times we have internal dialogues about the conv...

As managers we will normally have a peer network within our company. But occasionally we might experience problems that our in-house peer network can't help us with. For example, when the issue is with those same colleagues or our organisation itself. At times like this an external professional network can be invaluable. In this conversation Pilar and Tim primarily talk about networks which can pr...

Our hosts discuss the recent research by Jindi Mann into men's emotional experiences at work. It is easily downloaded as a pdf and it's freely available - no email signup or any hoops to jump through. They surveyed 55 male managers, primarily British and working in a mid to senior management role. The results show a surprisingly broad range of responses. Over coffee Pilar and Tim explore what it m...

Pilar and Tim discuss the fascinating article 3 Ways Our Brains Undermine Our Ability to Be a Good Leader by Cian McEnroe and David Rock at the Neuroleadership Institute. David's book " Your Brain at Work " was one of the first to bring brain science into leadership. In this latest research they argue that our basic brain behaviour can get in the way of our work as leaders. They go even further to...

Action-centred leadership asks managers to juggle three priorities: the team, the task and the individual. and in this conversation Pilar and Tim discuss one-on-one meetings, one of the best tools that managers have to work on their relationship with an individual employee. Over coffee we talk about the nuances of this style of meeting and the myriad ways managers can benefit from them. Spoiler al...

Going deeper into their exploration of different leadership styles, and inspired by this article on the MindTools blog, Pilar and Tim look at the Emotional Leadership Theory pioneered by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee . It ends up being another therapy session in the café as Pilar and Tim talk about their own preferences, strengths and weaknesses. 02:30 mins We step through the s...

There are far too many leaders who don't really want to be managers. Given most workers cite their manager as their main reason for leaving a company, this is a big problem. It's hard to love your job when your boss hates theirs. How do so many people end up as managers when they shouldn't? Who should be a manager? Is leadership a natural trait or a learned skill? It's a wide ranging conversation...

Continuing with our discussions on leadership frameworks, Pilar and Tim discuss John Adair's Action-Centred Leadership which was first introduced in 1973. Adair uses three overlapping circles to illustrate that effective leadership happens at the intersection of the task, the team and the individual. And it is this deceptive simplicity which is a big part of the appeal. The model doesn't rely on a...

Inspired by the article about leadership on the Asana blog , Pilar and Tim discuss Kurt Lewin's 3 leadership styles. In a seminal study conducted in 1939, groups of 10 year old children were given a craft task and assigned an adult leader using either an authoritarian, democratic or laissez-faire leadership style. They concluded that democratic leadership was the most effective. Pilar and Tim shar...

Inspired by Liz and Mollie's wonderful book " No Hard Feelings " we talk about the role of emotions in our work, especially when hiring. One of the key principles in this book is that our emotions are a part of who we are at work and they impact our behaviour. Being aware of this helps us better understand ourselves and others, and ultimately helps us make better decisions. Choosing who to hire is...

One of the pressures we can feel as a manager is the pressure of attention. We watch our managers closely. We analyse their behaviours and motivations. We guess at their intentions. And this informs our judgements about cultural norms and which behaviours are encouraged or discouraged. In fact, the attention of our team gives us the opportunity to be a positive influence through role modelling. We...

For this episode we used a different format. Pilar and Tim spotted a question in a community they're members of, and with the permission of the poster, we've chosen to discuss it over coffee. This was the question: " Remote workers are faking enthusiasm. As a manager, I struggle to assess the motivation and engagement of my remote workers. Employees are very good are presenting a positive image du...

We reference this book all the time. In today's conversation we learn why Radical Candor resonates so much with us and how we've used it in our own work. The core principles of the book shouldn't really feel radical, it should be commonplace to care about the people we work with and tell them our honest thoughts and feelings. And yet for many of us this is hard to do. Radical Candor challenges us...

As a manager our success is really dependent on the success of our teams. Yet there is something a bit topsy-turvy about the idea that managers are responsible for the motivation of our people. Much of motivation is intrinsic, most people inherently want to do good work. In fact often times work, even the work of the manager, can get in the way of people's natural motivation. If the manager's resp...

Jeff Bezos called the one-pager the " smartest thing we ever did at Amazon ". And everywhere we look there are best practices and frameworks which worked wonders for big & successful organisations. So why do they often fail when we apply them in our organisations? We propose that best practices are not something to "lift and shift". Adopting practices without a proper assessment is risky. But goin...

A quick voice note to let you know that we'll be back in a couple of weeks. Until then, let us know if you have any questions you'd like us to answer on the show, or any topics you'd like us to tackle. Get in touch through our Contact Form  https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/  

The notion of a manager as a protector of the team is deeply embedded. After all, a primary part of any manager's job is to remove roadblocks and distractions so their team can stay focussed on their objectives. But it's not always easy to decide what will distract the team versus what might be helpful to them. Should the team know when a storm is forecast? When a storm is happening? And how much...

We tend to miss the smaller moments of achievement. Our focus is often on big organisational or team goals, huge milestones where we come together to celebrate (like the 50th episode of Management Cafe!). But in today's coffee catchup we are talking about more personal achievements. The sort of things which seem less consequential on the surface but can have an outsize impact on our performance. "...

Is it just us, or does it feel like the last few years have been a particularly torrid time for managers? Managers have always been the interface between employees and their organisation. They act as a kind of translator between the two. In recent years there have been extraordinary challenges in both directions of those relationships. And all this against a backdrop of pandemics, social polarisat...

Many leadership journeys start with a natural career progression: we get promoted to manager and leadership is viewed as just another work task. Over time this evolves into a broader understanding. It's a challenging job. We will get tested in all sorts of ways. And it can be an opportunity to learn so much about ourselves, to grow as a person and build invaluable skills. But we all have to start...