This guidance helps managers be more collaborative by getting more input from their team members.

At Manager Tools, we love collaborating, but we hate everybody always saying how collaborative they are. Lots of people talk about collaboration, but it’s not much more than a buzzword to put into their ill-advised summary section of their resume. How can managers collaborate more? What can we DO to work better with our teams and others? In this cast, we’re focusing on things you can do before meetings to increase collaboration during meetings.

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This guidance continues our recommendations about topics to cover with new directs, encouraging them to ask questions about everything they don’t understand.

In earlier guidance we recommended managers have a “First Meeting” with their new team member. We encouraged you to recommend to your directs some always applicable guidance: be honest, be kind, and achieve results. We also recommended that you make this meeting the first of several weekly meetings, where you could regularly communicate about important issues. This guidance continues our recommendations.

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Our guidance on writing recommendations taking into account your boss’s DiSC profile.

When you need to get a decision from someone, anyone, the best way to present the information is in their DiSC style. It’s the way they understand information best, the way they like to work and that helps you get the decision you need. Here’s how.

[Editors Note: I'm sorry for posting this late. Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience! --- Mike]

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This guidance recommends a straightforward way to diffuse tension around, and overcome, objections others have to your ideas.

What do you do when someone – particularly a direct - disagrees with an idea you’ve shared, or a suggestion you’ve made? It’s actually a good idea to agree with them. A little.

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This guidance recommends managers never willingly allow their boss to talk to a skip directly.

What do you do if your boss suggests he or she talk to one of your directs directly? You intercede and say no, you’ll do it.

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This guidance tells you how to prepare for meetings where politics are going to play a role (which is to say, ALL of them). ;-)

Most folks don’t do any preparation for the meetings they go to, unless they’re presenting something. This is a mistake, particularly when we’re meeting with folks who are more senior, or who are outside of our team. In either case, you’ll be far more effective if you know who wants what and who likes whom.

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This guidance tells you what to do when directs bring you bad news.

A direct comes to you with bad news. He’s been hiding a significant delay, and he has to finally admit it because he knows you’ll find out tomorrow. She tells you the vendor she thought was great has just sent terribly quality, and late to boot. He has promised something in writing to another department that there’s NO WAY you can deliver.

The right thing to do first is say thanks.

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Our guidance on how to proofread a document.

Proofreading is a skill that will improve the quality of your work. It’s also a skill which will open doors for you, if you become known for being good at it. Here’s how to do it.

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This guidance recommends knowing where decision makers and influencers stand on proposals and decisions that matter to you and your team.

Your organization is MUCH more political than most of us realize. For those who know it’s political, some say, I’m not going to play that game. Either state of being – not seeing the politics, or ignoring them, is unfortunate. Professional Life is HUMAN life, and that means it’s emotional, and therefore political. Engineers, software designers, technical people take note: hate those marketing and sales people all you want, but they’re gonna end up being your boss unless you recognize the value of political, or put differently, non-rational, decision making.

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Our guidance on how to effectively email with people who have combination DiSC profiles.

We have covered email and DiSC profiles, and in that series we concentrated on the profiles which have a single 'high' tendency. What do you do if the recipient of your email has two high tendencies? A high D/I for example? In this cast, we’ll help you with that.

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