Category

Explainers

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Effective Leaders Learn and Teach at the Same Time

Effective leaders must steer into the uncomfortable feelings of teaching people things they themselves are just learning. Many of us hesitate to learn skills as we climb the ladder because we might be seen as ignorant or unexperienced, but the worst leader is a leader who thinks they are done learning.

How to Change a Habit

Organizational change can be mystifying, which is why people hire NOBL in the first place. But we’ll let you in on a little secret: organizational change is really just individual behavior change at scale. When lots of people choose to work differently, change is effortless and natural.

Empowering Middle Managers to Lead Change

Whether you report to one, manage one, or are one, the middle manager is often a thankless role within the organization. They have to deal with the “relentless and conflicting” influx of demands, serving as gatekeeper between senior and junior levels. And while they’re meant to have autonomy over their direct reports, they often get stuck enforcing decisions made by those above them.

Deputization Versus Delegation

As leaders, we are repeatedly told that we need to learn to delegate. And unsurprisingly most of us struggle with it. After all, we likely got our jobs because we were star performers that happily took on more work and responsibilities.

When a New Team Member Isn’t Working Out

Being thoughtful and deliberate with your new hire’s first 90 days on the job will make them that much more successful down the road. But if you’re already noticing some bumps, this is the time to have a frank conversation about your expectations, where they’re not delivering, and how you can help them get there.

How to Overcome Resistance to Your Vision

So you’ve created a vision for change and rolled it out to your team. People have agreed to it because you’re the boss, but when it comes to acting on it, they’re moving slower than molasses in January.

How to Overcome Your Overconfidence

Think about an upcoming deadline at work that you’re 90% certain you’ll hit on time, or a recent budget estimate that you’re 90% sure about. The likelihood that you’re right about either is actually closer to 50%. It’s not exactly the model of decisive leadership that we all like to envision as leaders of high-performing teams.

Confronting a Culture of “NO”

When we work with large enterprises, we sometimes confront cultures of “No.” Not the strategic “no”, not even the occasional “no”, but a reflexive “no.” An automatic and unconscious rejection of new ideas and new approaches.

So You Think You Want to Reorg

Recently, someone asked us a simple question with no simple answers: “How should you restructure a global organization?”

We See Less as Leaders

Hierarchies have odd effects on us, physically and mentally. Where we sit in a power structure can influence our stress levels, our ability to cooperate, and even how we perceive the reality of our organizations.

What to Do When Facing Employee Burnout

Employee burnout can lead to underperformance. If you spot signs of burnout in your employees, try identifying new ways to re-energize and motivate the employee—especially if that employee is you!

How to Make the Workplace Friendly for Introverts

Introverted employees may prefer a different style of management than extroverted employees, but everyone can benefit from these tactics.

Demystifying Millennials at Work

Far too many employers cast a side-eye at the Millennials among them. Lots of falsehoods and misconceptions abound about this generational group.

Physical Distance Still Matters at Work

In the 1970s, MIT Professor Thomas Allen discovered that the farther apart workspaces are, the less communication there is between them: “we are four times as likely to communicate regularly with someone sitting six feet away from us as with someone 60 feet away, and we almost never communicate with colleagues on separate floors or in separate buildings.” But thanks to email and other modern technology, physical separation isn’t a problem anymore, right?

Get Better at Giving Feedback

To foster effective learning during feedback sessions, consider the employee’s interests and needs when communicating the problem and the solution. In addition, monitor your body language to promote psychological safety and increase receptivity.

The 7 Cultural Mistakes that Startups Make

Every founder knows that culture is crucial to a startup’s success — as Fred Wilson says, “If you want to be in business forever, you need to build a culture that sustains the business” — but there are seven common mistakes that startups make when creating their culture:

How to Deal with an Annoying Colleague

If you’re annoyed with a colleague, take a simple, non-aggressive approach to solving the problem, with a focus on compromise.

How to Foster Psychological Safety in Remote Teams

Creating a high-performing, creative team is challenging enough—but how do you foster a sense of teamwork when your team isn’t even in the same timezone?

Navigating the Conflict Between Innovation and Focus

If there’s one thing leaders know about success, it’s that you have to focus on doing the one thing that you do best. If there’s a second thing leaders know about success, it’s that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket.

How Annual Performance Reviews are Changing

The annual performance review is the latest traditional management practice being questioned, abandoned, or reinvented.