Dear Crucial Skills, I have the privilege and frustration of being the mother of a strong-willed teenage girl. It seems my child popped out believing she was an adult and in charge. She is very verbal and says it like she sees it—for good or ill. I realize that teenagers are emotionally driven, however I’m …
Dear Crucial Skills, I have been doing a job for 14 years, making improvements and reevaluating each year to make it more efficient and produce better results. The two teams I have been dealing with have always expressed satisfaction with my work. We now have a different management team with a different philosophy; they want …
Dear Crucial Skills, I am a middle-aged, part-time worker by choice and work very hard while I am at work. I have a great attendance record, I’m dedicated, meticulous, and take initiative without drawing attention to myself. I try to do everything I can to make my coworkers’ jobs easier. Per my supervisor and coworkers, …
During the month of July, we publish “best of” content. The following article was first published on February 2, 2005. Dear Crucial Skills, Whenever my husband and I get into a conversation that he doesn’t want to continue, he will resort to a comment like, “You always have to have things your way,” and will refuse …
I am getting incredibly frustrated by the various meetings I attend. I feel they are increasingly ineffective. Information that is shared is not understood and later attendees claim they were not aware of matters we discussed. In my opinion, technology is to blame. During the meetings, people are frequently checking their e-mails and texts and responding to them instead of paying attention. Am I just a dinosaur unwilling to get with the times, or are others being rude? What can be done?
I have a very hard time getting my children to do their chores. They often volunteer to help people outside of the house but, rarely make extra effort to help out at home. Growing up, my siblings and I saw what needed to be done around the house and just did it. My kids don’t seem to have any motivation to do anything. When asked to do a specific task, the normal response is to do the bare minimum (not always a good job at that) and not an iota more. While I’m sure it’s my fault that they are this way, I don’t know where to start to change things. Help!
Our company has worked long and hard to improve workplace safety and we’ve made some great strides. I have good employees that work for me and I’m sure none of them come to work with the thought that they will have an accident that day, but unfortunately it sometimes happens. Why would employees continue to take risks or shortcuts that lead to accidents?
With recent organizational changes, I acquired additional people reporting to me as their first-line manager. This particular group supports older legacy software products that are slowly becoming obsolete. Our organization is transforming in ways that require employees to learn and use new tools so they can eventually join teams that are developing our new products. All team members have learned the new tools except one older individual. He is content with the status quo, vocalized that he does not want to do anything new, and intentionally does not take training or opportunities when offered.
The problem is that prior managers allowed this behavior to exist and I inherited it. How can I influence this person to change?
I have invested a great deal of time and effort trying to help and train a young colleague on my team who joined the organization six months ago. However, my colleague consistently ignores the information I’ve prepared and sometimes does what I’ve explicitly asked her not to do. This approach undermines my trust in her.
I’ve been told that one cannot be an effective boss by being a friend to those one supervises. I have some serious concerns about this as I feel that being a friend at work is a good way to gain employee confidence and performance.
I’m concerned about where to draw the line between being a friend and being a boss, and how to set the proper environment where friendship is allowed and being a boss is respected. How can I be both an effective boss and also a friend to my employees?
