Better Workplaces - Better Managers

Bacal And Associates Product Previews (15): Access over 25 samples and free previews of our work and life success tools. From communicating with your boss, to performance management, we have tools you can preview free of charge.

Business Ethics (23): Business ethics has become a more important topic since the legal issues with Enron, Martha Stewart, and other high profile companies. Learn about business ethics, how companies are trying to become more ethical, and legal and ethical issues.
(Discussion Lists) (Recommended Books)

By Robert Bacal (27): Author of eight books, Robert Bacal shares several hundred articles on a wide range of work and personal issues.

Change Management (54): Our world and our work environment is constantly undergoing change. Learn how to cope with constant change at home and at work, and learn how to help others (and your company) deal with it. Management can do a great deal to make employees immune to change related stress.
(Suggested Books)

Coaching (29): Coaching isn't just for athletes. More and more executives, managers and business owners are looking for the help that a good coach can provide. Learn about how to choose a coach, and about basic and advanced coaching techniques, and the dangers of coaching.

Communication (67): Communication skills might be the single most important family of skills necessary to job and life success. Learn about listening, critical conversations, and effective verbal, non-verbal and written communication skills here.
(Non-Verbal Communication) (Interpersonal Communication) (Business Communication) (Listening) (Delivering Bad News)

Competitive Intelligence (16): Companies succeed or fail based on the brain power of their people. Learn about the application of individual and corporate intelligence to improve company competitiveness.

Conflict (47): Conflicts occur as a result of human interaction, where people CARE about what they do. Improve your ability to manage and harness conflict to improve relationships, improve business productivity, and success. Topics include mediation and ADR.
(Suggested Books) (Mediation ADR)

Creativity And Innovation (20): Learn about the creative process, how the creative process works, its value, how to maximize it personally and for business. Also articles about innovation.

Critical Thinking (15): Critical thinking is deciding rationally what to or what not to believe and is essential in problem-solving and decision-making. Articles explain the concept and how to think critically.

Customer Service (66): Excellent customer service is the key to gaining new customers and customer retention. Learn to create a customer service oriented organization, create customer loyalty, and practical customer service tricks, hints, tips.
(Call Centers) (Suggested Books)

Decision Making (18): Improve your decision making from these articles that explain various decision making models and techniques, such as SWOT, decision trees and more.

Delegation - Getting Things Done Thru Other People (8): Managers and supervisor often try to do too much themselves, and burnout. Delegation is a critical part of management. Learn how to get things done through other people.

Difficult Employees - Managing (9): Managing difficult employees is one of the most difficult tasks for managers. Since all supervisors and managers face the challenge of difficult employees, here are some hints, tips and resources for improving your ability to manage problem employees.

Difficult People (23): Most of us deal with difficult people at work from difficult or angry clients, co-workers, to difficult bosses. Learn to work more effectively with the difficult (and learn to become less difficult yourself.
(Discussion Lists) (Suggested Books)

Diversity Issues (53): We live in a diverse society and diversity in the workplace has become much talked about. Learn about diversity with respect to culture, ethnic background, gender, and how to harness the power of diversity in the workplace.
(Suggested Books) (Doing Business Abroad)

Downsizing And Layoffs (22): Do downsizing and layoffs actually help companies succeed? You may be surprised at the answer. How do you succeed and survive layoffs and downsizing? Material in this section will help you understand the process and outcomes of downsizing.

Emotional Intelligence (23): Multiple Intelligences and Emotional Intelligence have become popular buzzwords. Learn more about the work of Goleman and others on this subject so you can separate the fads from the substance.

Facilitation (13): Facilitation is a process used to help participants communicate and solve their own problems. The art of facilitation requires great skills. Learn about the facilitative process and its value.

First Time Supervisors and Managers (15): Becoming a first time supervisor or managers is both exciting and challenging. In this section, find resources to help you succeed in your first time supervisory or managerial position.

Knowledge Management (20): Many experts content that we live in a knowledge economy, and the way we manage knowledge will determine whether we succeed or not. Learn about the new field/process of knowledge management in an era of information overload.

Labor Law For Managers (22): To avoid lawsuits, or threats of law suits, managers need to know the basics about labor law -- enough to protect them from poor practices and decisions. Here you'll find employment law information.

Leadership (59): Everyone understands leadership is important but what is it? What makes a good leader. What's the difference between a manager and leader? Learn about these and other leadership questions, and examine situational leadership
(Suggested Books)

Learning Organizations (15): Find out more about learning organizations, various characteristics of learning organizations and the leading LO gurus. Fad or substance? You decide.

Management (43): Improve your management skills from the material in this section, which contains articles, resources, hints and tips for managers and supervisors. Be sure to check the other management categories here.
(Suggested Books)

Management Buzzwords and Glossary (23): It seems like there's a new management buzzword, acronym or definition every month. Here you'll find definitions of the common terms and buzzwords about management techniques -- employee engagement, BPR, TQM.

Management Gurus and Heros (100): Learn from the acknowledged leaders and great minds in the fields of management, business and psychology. Biographical information indexed by name, along with key guru written articles.
(Drucker Peter) (Collins Jim) (Mintzberg Henry) (Argyris Chris) (Kanter Rosabeth Moss) (Welch Jack) (Handy Charles) (Herzberg Frederick) (Peters Tom) (Senge Peter) (Bennis Warren)

Management Issues For Women (5): Complete work equality and a level playing field is closer but elusive, and women still face different challenges related to management, executive and supervisory roles. Learn more about the issues faced by females/women in management or aspiring to it.

Management Mistakes and How To Avoid Them (11): Managers often take on management responsibilities without previous training. It's sink or swim, and as a result managers tend to make the same common mistakes. Here's some help in identifying possible management pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Meeting Management (26): Research indicates that a huge amount of time is wasted attending meetings that are inefficient, or badly conducted. The higher you go in the organization, the more time wasted. Learn how to maximize meetings, make them more fruitful from these hints and tips for meeting management.

Motivating Employees (23): One of the biggest management and leadership challenges involves getting and keeping staff motivated to put the effort into their jobs. Here you'll find tips and hints on motivating staff, in addition to models and theories to help.
(Suggested Books)

Negotiating And Negotiation (27): Negotiation skills are important for workplace success, for dealing with conflict, for making business deals, and creating win-win situations. Learn new negotiating skills and models you can use at work and at home.

Organizational Development (15): Organizational Development (OD) has a long history of helping organizations develop their capabilities while maintaining human values. Learn more about the OD field, techniques for developing organizations and more.

Performance Management (77): Performance management, performance appraisals and employee reviews are amongst the most misused tools in companies. It's possible for appraisals and employee reviews to be valuable if done properly, and if they are focused on IMPROVING performance, not blaming. Learn how to use performance management techniques so they help everyone succeed.
(Balanced Scorecard) (360) (Rewards) (Forms Letters) (Discussion Lists) (Practice) (Suggested Books) (Employee Ranking)

Personality And Learning Styles (22): Personality styles and learning styles have become faddish and are often ill used. Learn about the MBTI, (Myers-Briggs), Disc, Enneagram, so you can use these tools properly and ethically. Research studies are posted here.
(MBTI) (Enneagram)

Problem Solving Skills and Techniques (11): Improve your problem solving skills by learning about the various problem solving techniques, tools, and problem-oriented thinking. From defining the real problem to success in fixing.

Project Management (17): In our complex world it's become more important to manage the many aspects of projects so things don't get lost, and the work can be coordinated. Save time and money by learning project management skills described here.

Public Speaking (33): Public speaking is still the number one phobia. The more you know about how to deliver speeches, the more confident you will be. Learn public speaking and presentation skills from the material here.

Sexual Harrassment (13): Sexual harrassment is more complex than most people realize. Learn about sexual harrassment law, corporate and Human resource responsibilities, and what to do if you think you have been a victim.

Strategic Planning (33): Strategic planning CAN be a powerful tool for dealing with change and moving into the future, but it's often misused ending up as wasted effort. Learn how to improve your strategic planning process and about different models and definitions.
(Suggested Books)

Systems Thinking (6): Systems thinking has helped us understand organizations and complex phenomena in a different more modern way. It involves understanding a business process, practice or problem in terms of a bigger picture, where all parts are inter-related. Learn more about systems thinking from these resources.

TQM (24): Total Quality Management isn't as popular as it once was but its principles can provide us with valuable insight and enable improved productivity. Learn about the work of Juran, Deming and Crosby and how it helps organizations.

Teams And Team-Building (60): Teams and team-building become more and more important as employee work becomes more and more inter-dependent. Working with others effectively is a critical component of work success. Learn about how teams work, and how to build better formal and informal teams.

Time Management (21): Today's work place brings more work crammed into less time, so time management skills has become more important than before. Learn to maximize your time and productivity from these time management tools.

Tools For Success In The Workplace (0): Preview Bacal & Associate books and helpcards designed to help you improve success in the workplace, whether you are an employee, supervisor, manager or executive.

Training (96): Covers aspects of training, instructional design, training for trainers
(Games Icebreakers Activities) (Instructional Design) (Training Return On Investment) (Distance Or Computer Mediated) (Training Needs Assessment)

Women At Work (2): Women face somewhat different work challenges than men. This area is for articles about the working woman, and all articles pertain directly to women.

Workplace Violence (25): Workplace violence is a threat to everyone, and can occur out of nowhere. Learn how to create policies, procedures and practices to deal with violence in the workplace. Learn about high risk professions, statistics.