Whether you're at a small or big company, the competitiveness of the commercial world and the demands for growth make your firm either prey or predator. If a company can't grow organically - by growing sales of its own products - often leadership looks to be acquired or acquire another firm. But what does that mean for a manager? What is our role in helping two organizations come together? How do you navigate the stressful, water-cooler-talk-filled, flurry-of-emails world of a merger or an acquisition? In this series of casts, we lay it out for you.
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Today's show is the third and final part of our series on resigning. If you have to resign, distinguish yourself my resigning professionally. With the completion of this series, you now know how!

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Today, we follow-up with part 2 of our 3-part series on Resigning. Usually not a lot of fun contemplating, and certainly no more fun executing. However, IF you have to do it, there IS a professional way to resign. You CAN leave your job and feel good about HOW you did it, AND leave a great impression on the way out. Now, how often does that happen in your workplace today?

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Today's show is an interesting one ... At least once in your career, and perhaps as many as five times, you're going to have to resign from a position. And this is another one of those tasks or responsibilities that no one talks about, no one knows how to do, and therefore many do it poorly.

It's not hard to do well, and in this series of casts, we make it a simple step by step process. If you're thinking that you already know how, consider that we recommend you need SIX WEEKS to do it well.

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Today we cover the second in our 2-part series on mentoring. As a reminder, our 7 simple guidelines for mentoring are:

1. Whom Should I Ask?
2. How Long Should It Last?
3. You Make the Ask
4. How Does It Work?
5. You Run It
6. The First Meeting is Critical - Script It
7. Be Ready For Feedback

Also, June 26th represents the 1-year Anniversary of Manager Tools.

Every week, we get questions about people's resumes on the discussion boards. Our resume casts are some of the most wanted of all our work. It's pretty obvious that more and more folks are tuned into their own careers, and how to manage them. That's a good thing, as we've said before, because no one else is managing it for you. And, because so few people manage their careers at all, it only takes a little to get a competitive advantage.

We thought we'd address a career management topic that also leverages our recent cast about building your network.

This week, we finish (finally!) our series on working effectively with administrative assistants.

Also, for all of those who went to Podcast Alley and voted for Manager Tools, thank you very much! We achieved a long-held objective of getting in the Top 10 list of all podcasts. We don't know how long we'll stay there ... but we're enjoying the moment. And we owe that to all our friends here on Manager Tools. Thank You!

This week, we continue our series on working effectively with administrative assistants. Given that this is part 2 of 3 parts, we've obviously had a lot to discuss on the subject.

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One of the lost arts of the corporate world in the past 20 years is how to work with an administrative assistant. While we won't argue that a great deal of the "leaning out" of corporations has been a good thing, working with admins effectively is one of the painful legacies of the cutbacks.

If you're a manager, don't think for a moment that someone else is managing your career. Those days are long gone. YOU are managing your career. What you do - not only in job skills, but also in what we call "Transition Skills" - will be the primary determinant of your career success. You're not going to have the richest, most rewarding series of roles and opportunities by allowing someone in HR to know enough about you to get you where you need to be. And succession planning won't save you either.

And one of the most important of the Transition Skills is Building And Maintaining Your Network. Most people are terrible at it. We know this because they have no network.

Now, notice that we did NOT say that the skill was "networking". That term conjures up schmoozing, and cocktail parties, and too many people don't like it. So, we're not suggesting you do that.

We're suggesting you Build and Maintain Your Network. It only takes THREE SIMPLE SKILLS, and we'll walk through them.

Oh, yeah ... and there's a blooper in the show. Did you catch it?

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