This guidance describes how to be ready to talk with your boss about your team.

Most managers overestimate how much their boss knows about their directs. That's true for most of us – we think the people around us know far more about what we're thinking about than they actually do.

But is this a good or bad thing when it comes to what our boss knows about our team? For the most part, it's okay that your boss doesn't know a lot about your directs. If your boss has 5-8 to maybe even 10 directs, she's probably just keeping up with you and your peers. If you and each of your peers have 5-7 directs, think about it. Your boss has between 30 and 50 people to keep track of.

Which is to say, she's not doing it.

But what are we to do? There are several things that an effective manager does to make sure their team members are being given appropriate attention. We'll talk about some simple quarterly updates for everyone in a different show. But there's something more urgent that we recommend you be ready to discuss.

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This guidance concludes our discussion on how to learn about your skips and develop your direct report managers by discussing your skips on a regular basis.

We get asked all the time, "Should I have One on Ones with the directs of my directs? If relationships are good, relationships with everyone in my organization would be very good, right?" By this reductio ad absurdum logic, of course, the CEO "should" be having One on Ones with everyone, right?" That math doesn't work, and so the only question becomes, where to draw the line.

Others ask us, "How CAN I have One on Ones with my skips? I can barely fit in my directs' One on Ones. This is killing me!" Well, we don't know what else to say, but thank you for making our point to the other guys, and hey, we never told you to have O3s with your skips anyway. But, alas, one of our listeners and good friends tells us we once said the only day of the week to have O3s was Thursday. Whoa. I think what we said was only have One on Ones on days that end in Y.

It boils down to: What do we do about cultivating some sort of knowledge about our skips, for whose work we are responsible?

An even smarter question is How do I get the most out of my entire organization? It's not enough to see them in groups, as we recommend in our Skip Level Meetings guidance. How can we consider them wisely in our succession planning? Because, you know, you're supposed to be thinking about succession planning for your directs' positions, right?

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This guidance describes how to learn about your skips and develop your direct report managers by discussing your skips on a regular basis.

We get asked all the time, "Should I have One on Ones with the directs of my directs? If relationships are good, relationships with everyone in my organization would be very good, right?" By this reductio ad absurdum logic, of course, the CEO "should" be having One on Ones with everyone, right?" That math doesn't work, and so the only question becomes, where to draw the line.

Others ask us, "How CAN I have One on Ones with my skips? I can barely fit in my directs' One on Ones. This is killing me!" Well, we don't know what else to say, but thank you for making our point to the other guys, and hey, we never told you to have O3s with your skips anyway. But, alas, one of our listeners and good friends tells us we once said the only day of the week to have O3s was Thursday. Whoa. I think what we said was only have One on Ones on days that end in Y.

It boils down to: What do we do about cultivating some sort of knowledge about our skips, for whose work we are responsible?

An even smarter question is How do I get the most out of my entire organization? It's not enough to see them in groups, as we recommend in our Skip Level Meetings guidance. How can we consider them wisely in our succession planning? Because, you know, you're supposed to be thinking about succession planning for your directs' positions, right?

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This cast concludes our guidance on how to manage one of your directs who wanted the job you’re in now, and you may have reason to believe that they will hold it against you.

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This cast continues our guidance on how to manage one of your directs who wanted the job you’re in now, and you may have reason to believe that they will hold it against you.

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This guidance recommends how to manage one of your directs who wanted the job you’re in now, and you may have reason to believe that they will hold it against you.

You got the promotion, but someone who didn’t get it and wanted it now reports to you. They applied, too. They may have interviewed, too. But they didn’t get the job. You did. Clearly, they think they can DO the job. It’s perhaps worse that they can say, if you’ve come from somewhere else, that they know more than you do about the team’s operations. You’ve heard they’re not happy about it. How should you handle them? How might you treat them differently? What can you do to help them become effective? Some people say it’s even WORSE if you were their peer. We don’t agree…we just think that more people feel more pressure when that’s the case…but doing this successfully isn’t any “harder” in that situation.

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This guidance describes why and how effective managers insist on their directs pre-wiring information they brief to you.

We were with an executive recently and were told a story about a fellow executive that reminded us that sometimes, the things that go without saying still need to be said. This is one of those topics where, when we heard the story of this principle being abused, we looked at each other and said, you're kidding, right? EVERYBODY knows THAT. Apparently not.

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This cast concludes (Part 4 of 4) our guidance on how to respond when, through any number of factors, you and your team are OVERWHELMED with lots of new work. Perhaps it's a layoff, perhaps it's a re-organization, perhaps it's because you're GOOD. Regardless, what do you DO??

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This cast continues (Part 3 of 4) our guidance on how to respond when, through any number of factors, you and your team are OVERWHELMED with lots of new work. Perhaps it's a layoff, perhaps it's a re-organization, perhaps it's because you're GOOD. Regardless, what do you DO??

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This cast continues our guidance on how to respond when, through any number of factors, you and your team are OVERWHELMED with lots of new work. Perhaps it's a layoff, perhaps it's a re-organization, perhaps it's because you're GOOD. Regardless, what do you DO??

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