Lab Manager Magazine®

6 Tips to Manage the Holiday Season

Published: December 2 2010

Does it seem like everyone around you is getting into the Holidays, but you are too busy to join in? Do you feel like you are the only one doing any work anymore? Would you like some help getting through the Holiday season?

Overcoming Analysis Paralysis

Published: September 2 2010

Analysis paralysis is a form of procrastination. Rather than creating a solid plan and then executing it, all the time is spent continually improving the plan so that, effectively, nothing gets done. I think many people can think of times when they w

Top 10 Tips for New Managers

Published: August 18 2010

Who better to offer tips and insight to someone just starting their management career than the seasoned professional manager. We are fortunate to have such a group of management professionals frequent the Management Forum on this site. Recently, I as

Listen to Your Inner Voice

Published: August 5 2010

If youre in management long enough, youre bound to face a decision that will challenge your principles. There will always be gray areas that need to be navigated, where something might or might not be right. But inside all of us is something that cut

Employee Coaching: When To Step In

Published: July 8 2010

A lot has been written about why managers should coach employees. A lot also has been written on how to coach employees. You can find many articles on the Pygmalion Effect and the Galatea Effect, which explain how employee coaching works. Very few ar

2 Purposes that Separate Delegating from Dumping

Published: June 3 2010

It can be difficult to delegate. When its your reputation on the line, no one is more reliable than yourself. As a manager, you know its important to become a good delegator. Still, its challenging to decide which shifts in responsibility will allow

Pareto's Principle - The 80-20 Rule

Published: May 27 2010

How the 80/20 rule can help you be more effective In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty pe

Team Building

Published: May 21 2010

How can you build a team environment when its individual performance that leads to recognition, advancement, and more money? To start, you have to show your employees that working as a team benefits them personally.

How to Help Reduce Stress at Work

Published: May 14 2010

Work can be a stressful place, wherever you earn your living, whether in an office, a factory, or a school. Some stress is good. It motivates us and makes us stronger. Too much stress is bad. It makes us irrational and it can, quite literally, kill u

Passion Pays

Published: May 6 2010

Do you look forward to Monday morning? Are you raring to go back to work? Or are you a TGIF (Thank God it's Friday) kind of person who can't wait to get away from the job for a couple of days? You spend at least 8 hours a day at the job. That is almost 25% of your week. If you are a TGIF person you are missing something really important in your work life—passion.

10 Simple Steps to Becoming a Confident Public Speaker

Published: April 15 2010

One of the most admirable qualities of Peyton Manning is his preparation. Even before he was a manager of the huddle in the NFL, he would film himself practicing his speeches so he could execute another flawless performance. As a manager yourself, pe

Learn at Lunch: A Program to Help Employees Grow

Published: April 8 2010

Do you have employees that are hungry to expand their knowledge and skill-set, but find your budget for training to be tight? If your employees are as eager as they claim, you could consider installing a Learn at Lunch program.

How to Screen Online Resumes

Published: March 18 2010

Have you ever posted a job opening online and received a huge number of resumes in response? On the one hand, the more resumes you receive the more likely youre going to find a talented employee who will strengthen your team. But narrowing a pile of

10 Tips to Manage Older Workers

Published: March 11 2010

The work force is aging as baby boomer move toward retirement. Gen X managers need to learn how to motivate and manage this talent pool of older workers. Both generations have very different views of the other and will need to learn how the other gen

3 Job Interview Questions to Ask

Published: February 11 2010

When the screening of the candidates is done, you will bring the top two or three in for an interview. What questions should you ask them? What answers should you be looking for? How will you know which one to hire? Whether you work for a large compa

Helping A Discouraged Employee

Published: January 26 2010

When employees are discouraged, they can be cancerous to the workplace. As their own production goes down, they will often attempt to contaminate others around them as well. Discouraged employees can be easily identified.

Management Skills Pyramid

Published: December 18 2009

To be successful, there are many skills a manager needs to master. I adapted Kammy Hatnes' pyramid structure to show the increasingly difficult management skills you must master at each level and to also display how these management skills build on e

Public Speaking For Managers

Published: November 12 2009

Some people are terrified to speak in public or in front of a group. These simple steps can help you do better at it, even if you don't like it.

Helping a Discouraged Employee

Published: November 5 2009

An employee who has become discouraged will not perform at the level he or she is capable of achieving. In addition, they can begin to draw others down to their level. It is important for a manager to know how to recognize a discouraged employee and

Rewards and Recognition Keep Good Employees

Published: October 22 2009

In a poor economy, employees are reluctant to give up their jobs because they worry more about finding a new one. However, this does not mean that you can just assume they will stay regardless of what you do. Nor does it mean you don't need to recogn

Don't Multi-task When You Can Use Chunking

Published: September 17 2009

We spend too much of our day trying to cram more into it. We adopted the computer term multi-tasking and tried to apply it to our own daily activities as another step in our quest to get more done. The problem is that multi-tasking doesn't work.

Listen To What They Are Not Saying

Published: September 10 2009

Many times what your employees do not say is as important as what they do say. A manager has to develop the ability to listen to what employees are not saying and dig through that to get to the truth. Otherwise you will not be an effective leader.

Take Advantage of the Slowdown

Published: September 3 2009

With the economy nearing the bottom and trying to recover, many businesses are slower than they would normally be. The reduction in customers has forced many businesses to reduce staff. Many of the remaining staff feel overworked and would like to co

Now It Is Even More Important To Be Focused

Published: August 19 2009

As we struggle through these difficult economic times, there are two things I want to share with you that can help you not just survive, but get a leg up on your competition. Those two things are...

Writing for Business

Published: July 30 2009

The purpose of business writing is to convey information to someone else or to request information from them. To be effective writing for business, you must be complete, concise, and accurate.

Good Management Is Predictive Management Not Reactive Management

Published: June 25 2009

Many managers believe that their job is to resolve problems that arise. While that is true, it is only the lesser part of the job. More importantly, a manager's job is to prevent problems.

Dont Let Process Get In The Way Of Results

Published: May 28 2009

In Management 101 we covered the four principal parts of management: plan, execute, monitor, and adjust. It is important to remember that all four are essential. You will never make it to the other three if you get hung up on the first one. While pla

Pareto's Principle - The 80-20 Rule

Published: May 7 2009

In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth. In the late 1940s, Dr. Joseph M.

How to Help Reduce Stress at Work

Published: April 8 2009

Work can be a stressful place, wherever you earn your living, whether in an office, a factory, or a school. Some stress is good. It motivates us and makes us stronger. Too much stress is bad. It makes us irrational and it can, quite literally, kill u

What's Wrong With A Messy Desk?

Published: March 26 2009

The problem here is not that your desk is messy. The problem is that important stuff gets lost. It either gets buried by new material coming in, or it is in the new material, but is not noticed. As a result, you spend too much time on things that are

Scruples Are a Good Thing

Published: March 3 2009

I believe most people are good and honest. I believe that most managers act in ways that are beneficial for their employers and their employees. I do not believe that most of us are driven to take from others regardless of the cost. Certainly we have

Learn at Lunch, A Program to Help Employees Grow

Published: February 2 2009

Learn at Lunch is a way to get more training done by making the lunch hour multi-tasking.

How to Give Positive Feedback

Published: January 29 2009

Don't ever underestimate the power of positive feedback. We are quick to point out to someone when they make a mistake. Sometimes we forget to acknowledge them when they do something right. Giving positive feedback can be a powerful tool for employee

What's the Competition Doing?

Published: January 12 2009

Resources and advice for gathering competitive intelligence.

Getting Your Point Across

Published: November 26 2008

When we're trying to get a point across to someone else we often think long and hard about what we want to say. That is the wrong way to go about it. Instead of focusing on what you want to say to get your point across, you should focus on what you w

Top Ten Management Tips

Published: October 28 2008

When asked the question, "Remember way back when - when you got your first management job. What do you wish someone had told you then? What would be the one tip you would give to a manager just starting out?"

Management 101

Published: August 18 2008

Management is both art and science. It is the art of making people more effective than they would have been without you. The science is in how you do that. There are four basic pillars: plan, organize, direct, and monitor. Plan

Don't DO Anything

Published: April 30 2008

Your job as a manager is to "plan, organize, control, and direct." Don't let yourself waste valuable time by falling back on what you did before you became a manager.