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Becoming a manager for the first time can feel exciting, gratifying, nerve-wracking, and even overwhelming. But being a good boss is not about following a checklist of what makes a perfect manager, as theres no such thing, argues Sabina Nawaz in her book Youre the Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need). A former HR leader at Microsoft and executive coach for Fortune 500 decision-makers, Nawaz offers actionable frameworks in her book on how to become a better manager, backed by lessons from her clients and personal career wins and losses. Here are some top takeaways from the book on how new managers can best make the transition. Being a good manager is a journey Its a common misconception that there are bad bosses and good ones, but according to Nawaz, we all have the capacity to teeter between good and bad boss behaviors. Just as no person is all good or all bad, the measure of a boss is neither binary nor fixed,” writes Nawaz. “‘Bad’ bosses are rarely bad people. In fact, most of them are good people with the best of intentions who unwittingly cross a tenuous dividing line between good intentions and bad behaviors. Acknowledging this can help you realize its an active practice to deliver skilled managementand quite common for negative habits to emerge if left unchecked. This mental shift of making continual progress towards productive behaviors and minimizing the emergence of lackluster ones often starts with reframing how you attain success. Your path to becoming a manager was likely the result of being an ambitious professional delivering beyond expectations, but thats no longer the case. Showcasing your output may be what got you where you are, but now you need to rewire who gets showcased and what ‘output’ means, writes Nawaz. Recalibrating to focus on driving your teams success is the critical distinction between being a standout employee and a standout boss. Its a continual effort as a manager to reorient how you were incentivized to perform before, and do your best to avoid the slow slip into bad boss behaviors, writes Nawaz. Communicate with greater precision Now that youre a manager, the power dynamics have shifted when it comes to how youre perceived by your colleagues. What you say, write, and do can carry more weight. Poor communication is the second most common perceived weakness of managers, according to Nawazs research. One of the most common mistakes is when managers give imprecise feedback or advice, resulting in a lack of clarity on appropriate next steps. This can lead to an overreaction like a colleague redesigning the entire pitch deck, when only one slide needed a revamp. Or too restrained of a response altogether. When youre a manager, the team often pays close attention to your every word, so Nawaz suggests using what she dubs the scaling tool to offset this pitfall and communicate with the intended level of impact and urgency. She suggests saying something like: On a scale of one to 10, Id rate the importance of this task at a . . . Or, in terms of a rough sketch vs. polished, this can be a . . . Or, On a scale of one to 10, how confident do you feel about your ability to deliver in the timeline given? Any professional could benefit from being a more calculated communicator by using the scaling tool, but it matters more when your team puts more weight to your message. Another common mistake among managers is giving uneven feedback or only offering corrective feedback about whats wrong and needs to be improved upon. Solely delivering negative feedback is demoralizing and harmful to a team members productivity when theyre not getting motivating insights into what is working. As human beings, we are wired to listen for the dangers, for the negatives, and dont take in the positive until its repeated endlessly like this weeks top song, writes Nawaz. She recommends managers offset this by offering five positive comments for every piece of corrective feedback, keeping the positive stuff more feedback than praise, and making the delivery of positive feedback a frequent habit. This is important: A Gallup survey found that employees rank the most meaningful and memorable recognition comes from their managers. Delegate effectively Now that youre a manager, you cant continue to do everything yourself like you did when you were an individual contributor. You have to delegate. Whats not obvious about delegating is how to do it successfully. You cant simply pass off tasks with a set of instructions and hope for results. According to Nawaz, delegation starts with identifying your direct reports level of knowledge on a given subject or task. The next step is adjusting your coaching so employees are given the right level of support and independence. Depending on how much support is needed, you could approach that in a number of ways. For instance, you could do the task and have them observe you, teach them the step-by-step process, ask what they need from you as they complete the task without your instruction, or make it clear youre a resource as they finalize the task on their own. These actions go in order of providing more coaching from you and less self-sufficiency initially to eventually scaling back your involvement and increasing their own autonomy to complete the task. Delegation is critical for not only empowering your team to grow and contribute to the organizations goals, but it also provides you with more blank space on your schedule for other tasks. Recognize your triggers that lead to bad boss behavior Youll be exposed to different sources of stress and pressure as a manager. Some is avoidable, but a lot of it is not. The buildup of these forces is typically what leads a well-intentioned manager to delegate poorly, communicate haphazardly, or come across as cold. To do your best to prevent a downward shift toward the bad boss lane, aim to control how you react to these strains by spotting the triggers that set you off. Nawaz refers to these as your pressure pitfalls, and the ability to identify them as theyre emerging can help you deescalate and change how you react in the moment. She suggests managers ask themselves these types of questions and keep note of the scenarios when these moments bubble up. What types of people tend to put me on high alert? What tends to get under my skin the most? What days of the week or cyclical or seasonal times are particularly pressure-filled for me? What do I experience physically when I get triggered? When are the moments I am not at my best? (When youre sleep-deprived? Hungry? In the mornings before youve had your coffee or late afternoons when your energy dips?) The answers you come up with can help you map your pressure-induced triggers and begin to adjust how you react through following a series of groundig exercises. Once a trigger is activated, Nawaz recommends doing complex math or thinking through a familiar memory to help direct the brain out of a flight or fight moment and back to executive functioning. To put this into practiceor any of these suggestionsNawaz advocates for creating a micro habit where you practice the skill daily and keep it small, so theyre tiny enough to sneak past our defense systems and start to inoculate us against change resistance. By small, she suggests so tiny that this habit takes two minutes or less a day, and may even feel absurdly minuscule on the surface, which means youre off to a strong start. Keep these management frameworks and recommendations in mind as you begin your journey of working to become a better boss for your team.
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E-Commerce
Sometimes, being a leader means making tough callsones that arent popular, and sometimes even get misunderstood. Youve probably heard the saying, If everyone likes you, youre not really leading. Fair enough. But what do you do when you hear that no one wants to work with you? Maybe it comes up in passing from a colleague, or maybe it hits harder in a 360 review. Either way, that kind of feedback can sting. Its that gut-punch moment where you think, Wait . . . what? Youve been putting in the work, prioritizing the team (at least in your mind), but somehow people arent seeing it. They dont get the pressure youre under, the decisions youve had to make, or why things played out the way they did. Heres the hard truth: Perception is reality. You might feel like youre doing everything right, but if your team feels disconnected or frustrated, their experience is what matters most. Its time to pause, reflect, and figure out how things veered off course. No, its not fair. And no, you cant fix it overnight. But you can make a plan to rebuild trust, reconnect with your team, and start turning things aroundone step at a time. Get the data Yeah, this parts going to be uncomfortablebut if youve heard that no one wants to work with you, its time to figure out why. Youve got a couple of options. If you havent already done a 360 review, thats a good place to start. Or you can reach out to a trusted advisor or mentor and ask for some honest feedback. One thing you dont want to do? March straight over to your team and start digging for answers. Thatll likely come off as defensiveor worse, accusatoryand it wont help your case. Instead, talk to someone outside the situation. Ideally, someone who knows you well but isnt directly impacted by your leadership style. You want perspective, not more tension. I worked with one client whos a strong, passionate leaderbut sometimes that passion got the best of him. For instance, when his team would present him with ideas, my client would shout them down if he thought those ideas wouldnt work. His team felt overwhelmed, and eventually no one wanted to work with him. My client wasnt aware of the pattern and had no idea his team felt so discouraged. His 360 revealed to him how much his reactions were demoralizing his team; my client learned to soften his delivery, slow down, and listen more. Say sorry Before you can really move forward, youve got to clean up some of the mess behind you. That means taking a hard look at the feedback you got and asking yourself: To whom do I owe an apology? You dont need to deliver a grand speech or make it weirdjust keep it simple and sincere. Something like: Eric, Im sorry for how Ive handled things in the past. I lost my cool and yelled, and I know that wasnt okay. I hope we can move forward and focus on doing great work together. Thats it. One apology, no over-explaining, no revisiting it later. Say it, mean it, and then move on. The goal isnt to dwellits to rebuild. Create a plan for moving forward After youve gathered data and said sorry to folks, it’s time to develop a structured, daily plan for how youll treat your teammates. Here are some ideas for elements to include in that plan, which you can refine based on your specific needs: Say “good morning” every day. On Mondays, ask how your team members weekends were. Ahead of difficult conversations, set aside planning time. Practice the interaction so you aren’t left winging it (thats a recipe for saying something youll later regret). Good is good enoughremind yourself of this maxim. Rather than shoot for perfect, identify what is 80%, or “good enough.” Write down what this looks like for your particular projects, as well as how youll reward your team for a job well done. If you have an upcoming meeting with peers who trigger you to yell and be disrespectful, create a plan for how youll mitigate that impulse (for example, “I will take three deep breaths before responding to Alex”). Plan to share a “thank you” and “good job” to someone at least two times a week. Dont be afraid to write down the details of the plan, no matter how trivial they may seem. Getting a plan in writing means youre more likely to follow through. Be consistent If youre trying to turn over a new leaf as a manager, just knowyour team is going to be cautious at first. Theyll be watching to see if this is the real deal or just a phase. One offhand comment or outburst and they’ll be thinking, Yep, there it is. Knew it wouldnt last. Its not because theyre rooting against youits because theyve been burned before. Thats why its so important to make sure your actions match your words. If you say youre changing but then fall back into old habits, it creates confusion and makes people feel unsafe. So take the time to prepareespecially for tough moments. Got a difficult conversation coming up? Map it out first. Think through what you want to say and how you want to say it. Yes, its more work upfront. But it helps lay the groundwork for real trustand thats what will make your new leadership style stick. Just remember: This is a long game, not a quick fix. Playing the long game is difficult when you want a quick win. I worked with one client who wanted things with her team to turn around right away. However, changing a behavior is never easy; this client had to continually focus on and practice a new way of speaking to her team. My client was frustrated with the amount of effort she had to put toward this new communication style. When she had slipups and reverted back to her old style, she felt as if she were starting from square one each time. I continually reminded this client that change takes time. She had many conversations with her manager in which she shared her management plan and the results she was getting. The manager served as a support system to my client as she implemented the changes. It’s hard to hear that no one wants to work with you, but you can turn the ship around. Remember that your team members are people first. Say “sorry” where you need to, treat people with respect, and make a concrete plan to be less reactive moving forward.
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E-Commerce
House Republicans passed a budget plan last week that could slash up to $880 billion over 10 years from Medicaid, a program that provides health insurance to 83 million low-income Americans. For the past several months, healthcare advocates have been ramping up pressure on three vulnerable California Republicans in CongressRepresentatives Ken Calvert, Young Kim, and David Valadaourging them to break ranks and reject those cuts when the final budget comes up for a vote in the coming months. All nine of Californias Republican representatives voted in February to advance the GOPs budget blueprint, which calls for massive cuts to Medicaid. But of the nine, Calvert, Kim, and Valadao won their seats in 2024 by the narrowest margins3, 11, and 7 percentage points, respectively. Healthcare advocacy groups and unions that represent healthcare workers are hoping to take advantage of their vulnerability by energizing voters in their districts to demand they vote against Medicaid cuts or else face massive backlash when up for reelection in 2026. The campaign is being spearheaded by advocacy groups Health Access California and Protect Our Care, as well as We Are California, a coalition of state and local community organizations. United Domestic Workers, which represents more than 170,000 home care and childcare providers in California, and the Service Employees International Union, which represents more than 2 million service workers across the country, are also playing a leading role in the campaign. (Disclosure: The SEIU and United Domestic Workers are both financial supporters of Capital & Main.) Protesters march in front of their Republican representatives office in Southern California. [Photo: Jeremy Lindenfeld/Capital & Main] Those groups have organized protests in front of the district offices of Calvert, Kim, and Valadao; coordinated letter-writing campaigns; aired digital and TV ads; and hosted town halls at which constituents speak about the importance of Medicaid, which is known as Medi-Cal in California. Though the representatives have been invited to attend those town halls, none have. The campaign aims to mobilize voters like Cynthia Williams, who attended a March protest outside Kims Anaheim office. She told the hundreds in attendance that she felt betrayed by the congresswoman she had supported. It was like a slap in the face, Williams said. It was like somebody saying, You dont matter. Your family doesnt matter. We helped vote to get this lady in there and this is what we get? Its wrong. Its totally wrong. Orange County, California, resident Cynthia Williams speaks at a rally outside her local representatives office. [Photo: Jeremy Lindenfeld/Capital & Main] Williams voted for Kim in 2024, believing that the Republican congresswoman was on the same page with us as far as Medicaid. But after the congresswoman voted in February to advance a budget blueprint that would slash the program, Williams became an outspoken critic of Kim. Williamss full-time job is taking care of her adult daughter Kailee, who is blind and has an intellectual disability and cerebral palsy, and her sister Shanta, who is a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder and other severe mental disabilities. Both Kailee and Shanta receive funding from In-Home Supportive Services, a public program in California that provides support to more than 700,000 low-income Californians with disabilities or who are 65 and older by funding caregivers like Williams. Because In-Home Supportive Services receives most of its funding from Medicaid, many fear cuts would reduce or even eliminate programs that support people with disabilities. Cynthia Williams, right, relies on a public health program to care for her daughter, Kailee, who is blind. [Photo: Jeremy Lindenfeld/Capital & Main] That’s why United Domestic Workers, of which Williams is a member, has joined in the efforts to pressure vulnerable Republican representatives against voting to cut critical healthcare funding. And according to Doug Moore, UDWs executie director, the pressure campaign is only getting started. We have just begun to apply the pressure. We have not turned it up yet. Were on simmer as far as Im concerned, Moore said in March. We are going to be relentless with pressure on them . . . and we will continue to target them until 2026 and beyond. If Moore and other advocates are able to exact a political price from vulnerable Republicans who vote to cut Medicaid, it wouldnt be the first time a California swing-district GOP representative lost an election because of healthcare policy decisions. In 2018, Valadao lost his seat shortly after voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which significantly expanded Medicaid. The congressman later regained his seat in 2020. This time around, Valadao signed onto a letter urging Republican House leadership not to cut Medicaid, a move that political strategist Steven Barkan views as a sign that some GOP lawmakers understand that cuts to healthcare funding are politically toxic. It is very dangerous for Republicans, especially those in swing districts, said Barkan, whose political consulting firm, Barkan Strategies, works with Democrats. If they dont stand up to the cuts, then they are vulnerable. They could conceivably lose the House majority over Medicaid. In a January poll conducted by YouGov, only 17% of Americans supported cutting Medicaid funding. Healthcare advocacy groups have emphasized that figure in pressure campaigns targeted at Republican lawmakers across the country. The strategy of focusing on Republicans support for Medicaid cuts may be working. Democratic candidates have significantly overperformed in special elections held since Novembers general election. Barkan said fears regarding Medicaid could be contributing to Republicans recent lackluster showings, although he added that it’s too early to be certain. Calvert, Kim, and Valadao have all expressed concern about the effects of cutting Medicaid, even after voting in February to advance the GOPs budget blueprint demanding just that. On Thursday, Kim and Calvert both voted to approve a revised congressional budget blueprint that maintained sweeping cuts to Medicaid. Valadao did not vote on the bill. In February, Valadao said he would not support a final reconciliation bill that would risk leaving behind people who depend on Medicaid. On February 26, Kim posted a statement to her website saying she would not vote for a budget that does not protect vital Medicaid services for the most vulnerable. In a March 19 Instagram post, Calvert wrote that he was committed to protecting Medicaid benefits for Americans who rely on the program. Barkan said that the fact that Calvert, Kim, and Valadao are talk[ing] out of both sides of their mouths is a sign that they are feeling the heat. The pressure campaign is putting the congresspeople in the increasingly difficult position of choosing between what their constituents want and what their party leadership wants, he added. The more they see their own base reacting, the more danger they will see, Barkan said. They have to figure out which is more harmful to them: standing up to Trump or screwing over their constituents. Calvert, Kim, and Valadao did not respond to requests for comment. The protests aimed at applying that pressure have been attended by people from across the political spectrum, according to Jonathan Paik, executive director of OC Action, a progressive advocacy group and partner organization of We Are California. Paik attributed the broad turnout to the bipartisan consequences of proposed Medicaid cuts. He added that the shared frustration among Democrats and Republicans provided a powerful organizing opportunity. The sheer scale and visibility is going to be materially felt all across Orange County, Paik said. This has been a moment for us to be able to help folks understand who would unilaterally benefit from these cuts: the billionaires. The GOP budget calls for Medicaid cuts to offset tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy. Gerald Kominski, senior fellow at UCLAs Center for Health Policy Research, said voters will likely see that tradeoff as blatant robbing from the poor to support the rich. By Jeremy Lindenfeld, Capital & Main This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
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E-Commerce
A software application called Interview Coder promises to help software developers succeed at technical job interviewsby surreptitiously feeding them answers to programming questions via AI. Interview Coder’s 21-year-old cofounder and CEO Roy Lee says he and Neel Shanmugam, the company’s cofounder and COO, created the tool partly as a protest against longstanding industry practices that require job candidates to solve programming puzzles during interviews. Lee, who until recently was a sophomore at Columbia University, says he spent hundreds of hours practicing such problemstime that could have been spent on actual coding projects. “This kind of killed a lot of my love for programming, just because I was forced to write code that just wasn’t fun,” he says. “I was forced to solve riddles instead of actually working on building real world projects, and I just grew to really dislike the system.” But protest or not, Lee says the project has proven lucrative, recently surpassing $3 million in annual recurring subscription revenuepresumably from customers more interested in cheating their way into a job than making a statement. The program, available for Windows and Mac, allows users to secretly take screenshots of programming puzzles presented during interviews, feeding the questions to AI for analysis and coded solutions. The software is designed to evade detection by anti-cheating measures in interview platforms. Controlled by keyboard shortcuts, it avoids the giveaway of mouse movements. Interview Coder can even be placed transparently atop the interview window, so users dont appear to shift their gaze while consulting AI-generated solutions and talking points. Lee recommends that users practice with the tool before deploying it in a real interview. Lee says he personally tested the software in real internship interviews and has posted videos online that appear to show him using Interview Coder during a challenge for Amazon. “We posted videos of me using it on Amazon, primarily, which is like the big boss interview that we took down,” he says. According to Lee, that led to takedown attempts by Amazon and disciplinary action from Columbia. He says the university initially placed him on probation over concerns that the tool could be used to cheat on class exams, then suspended him for a year for recording a disciplinary hearing and sharing related documents without permission. Lee says he’s unsure if hell return to school. He has published marked-up versions of Columbia documents related to the matter. The university declined to comment, citing federal privacy law, and Fast Company was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the documents. Amazon also declined to comment on Lee or his application but said, through spokesperson Margaret Callahan, that candidates are generally asked to acknowledge they wont use unauthorized aids like generative AI during interviews and assessments. For his part, Lee believes big tech interview processes should better reflect actual working conditions. “It doesn’t make sense to test someone on riddles and essentially give them an IQ test when they’re not going to be doing that at all,” he says. In his view, job candidates should be allowed to use any tools theyd have access to on the jobincluding AIduring interviews. Having an AI copilot during an interview isnt a completely far-fetched concept. Some technical interview platforms, like CoderPad and CodeSignal, already allow clients to enable AI assistants for candidates. But, says CodeSignal CEO Tigran Sloyan, that typically involves redesigning interview questions to suit AI usage and even revising job descriptions to reflect that AI proficiency is part of the job. He likens the transition to the introduction of digital calculators in schools, which eventually led to rethinking how math was taught and tested. It’s also critical, Sloyan adds, that companies provide the AI tools themselves rather than letting candidates bring their own. “Right now there is a gigantic menu of all sorts of different AI tools, some of which are very expensive to use, and there is a significant difference in what they can and cannot do,” he says. “So especially in the hiring process, when you want to give everybody a consistent and fair shot, the AI has to be embedded in the interview and assessment platform itself.” Sloyan also suggests Interview Coder may not be as stealthy as its creators claim. Beyond the technical countermeasures platforms like CodeSignal use to detect cheating, candidates might also give themselves away by awkwardly reading answers from a hidden windowbehavior that differs from natural brainstorming. “I would highly encourage candidates who are going through an assessment process with CodeSignal to think twice before using something like Interview Coder, because we flag it countless times, and the claim that it’s completely undetectable is not true,” he says. Lee acknowledges that, at least for now, his software might help people cheat into jobs they wouldnt otherwise landor get caught trying. “Sure, there will be some bad eggs that get caught or that just slip in,” he says. But Leewhos exploring other applications for screen-aware AI assistanceargues that Interview Coder is ultimately meant to make itself obsolete by pushing companies to modernize how they evaluate candidates. “The product is meant to kill itself,” he says. “And the day it kills itself is the day that every single company will hire significantly better engineers, and every engineer will be better because they’ll spend more time engineering instead of [solving programming puzzles.] It’ll just be a huge net positive for the developer community.”
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E-Commerce
Since President Donald Trump unleashed an onslaught of import taxes on countries around the world, the word tariff has entered the collective vocabulary, and with it reciprocal tariffs, retaliatory tariffs, compound tariffs, and most-favored nation tariffs. But here’s one you may not have heard before, even though it’s been around for decades: the pink tariff. Pink tariffs add a roughly 3% U.S. tax onto the price of women’s clothing compared to the same products made for men, according to CNN. How do pink tariffs work? Research shows that tariffs don’t affect everyone equally. In 2018, a U.S. International Trade Commission study found that women pay more than men for gendered product categories like clothing and shoes, as reported by Politico. That’s because the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, which creates U.S. tariff rates on U.S. imports, classifies footwear and apparel by gender, per CNN. It is very strange and hugely inappropriate that the U.S. government should be having differential tax rates that attack women more than men for essentially the same things, Ed Gresser, vice president and director for trade and global markets at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), told Politico. For example, Gresser looked at tariff rates for womens clothing in 2022 and found they were 16.7% higher than men’s, at 13.6%. How will Trumps trade war affect pink tariffs? Notably, Trump’s disruption of tariff policy does not extend to pink tariffs, which are being left in place. As women’s clothing will continue to be taxed at a higher rate than men’s, the tariffs Trump is placing on China and potentially other countries could hit female consumers in the U.S. harder than their male counterparts. Women in the U.S. were already paying “a kind of gender surcharge of at least $2 billion a year,” according to the PPI. Add on Trump’s tariffs, and that number will likely go up. For now, women will need to wait and see by how much. Although Trump has currently paused tariffs on all countries for 90 daysexcept China, which now faces a whopping 145% tax on imports to the U.S.many companies aren’t waiting to see the effects; theyre increasing their prices and passing those costs on to consumers. Its now common to see tariff surcharges on company invoices and websites.
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E-Commerce
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