Cultivate Your “Boss Skills” – Management Tips that Work
- Aug 14, 2025
- 5 min read
No matter how many managers I have coached and programs I have run, I continue to be shocked by the number of people managers at all levels of organizations that keep getting promoted without learning basic, fundamental management principles. Some high functioning organizations do have structured, successful internal management training programs, but I bet many of you in people management positions have experienced the phenomenon of excelling at your functional role, and then finding yourself promoted into managing others, which requires an entirely different skillset.
People management is critical for the success of a business, and gets a lot of lip service, but is significantly undervalued as a competency. Because so many of the skills required are diminished as “soft skills” their importance is often overlooked, and people think they can just sort of figure it out by doing it. Smart, resourceful people can figure out most things after a while, but it would save the business significant resources to teach the best practices up front instead of wasting valuable time, money and human experience on floundering. “Soft skills” for the most part are actually “boss skills” – Harvard Business Review reports that “when companies today search for top leaders, especially new CEOs, they attribute less importance to those [technical and financial skills] than they used to and instead prioritize one qualification above all others: strong social skills[1].”
There are endless resources devoted to management training, many of them backed by years of research and hands-on experience. My strong recommendation is for managers to work with their company leadership and learning and development teams to find a reputable program that reflects the company’s values and can bring consistent, recurring training in for all supervisors. Of course, not every company is ready to jump in immediately, despite the host of data backing the ROI of such programs.
Meanwhile, here are some practical tips you can dig into immediately to hone your “boss skills” and support your people. The best part? It will make them feel good AND make you look good when your team gets excellent results!
Make – and keep – regular time to meet. If nothing else, do this. It sounds simple but so many managers ignore it. I don’t mean having an “open door policy.” That is also good, but not sufficient. You are busy and your team knows it. If you don’t reserve and prioritize a regular time to meet with each one of them at least once a month, though once a week is preferable, they will not want to bother you with their struggles, challenges and potential red flags. Those are the things where an early warning can mean the difference between derailing a project or delivering on target. Protecting that regular meeting time also makes people feel cared for and builds trust. Trust enables creativity and innovation. If people know they have time and space to bounce ideas off you that are not fully formed, they will come with great stuff that might be your next big business win. If you regularly miss or cancel the meetings, that erodes trust and impedes morale. Make sure you schedule time you can honor, and if you do have to move something around, be respectful, offer an explanation, and reschedule promptly. If you don’t feel you have enough time or you have too many direct reports to accommodate this, that indicates a problem with your own time management and/or your span of control that you should discuss with your supervisor. See #2 for more on this…
Don’t be afraid to delegate. So many managers I have worked with, from high profile leaders to first-time supervisors, fail to leverage this valuable part of having reports: the ability to do multiple things at the same time. Delegating is uncomfortable. Especially for high performers who are used to tightly controlling every aspect of their work product to ensure it is the highest quality, ceding that control can lead to actual feelings of panic. Delegating is not a natural state; it is a skill that can be learned, and the best way to do this is simply to practice. Use your meeting time with your team to get to know their strengths and interests, and give them things from your plate to free up your own time for the highest value work. Work together to break bigger projects down into appropriate steps, share resources and ensure you are available to provide guidance as needed; then step back and let them figure it out. You want to check in at major milestones to make sure the work is proceeding well, but don’t micromanage. It will take more time up front. It won’t be the same as if you had done it yourself. But that’s ok. Eventually, it will be better, you won’t have to worry about it at all, and instead of being resented as a bottleneck, you’ll be admired for the strength and productivity of your team. You’ll also empower your team to have ownership over more work and feel more engaged and connected to it.
Catch people doing good work. This is language borrowed from management guru Ken Blanchard, author of many best-selling management books including The One Minute Manager. Humans are wired for negativity bias, or to be more likely to register bad things and overlook good things. As a manager, you need to proactively retrain your brain to “catch” your reports doing good work and offer timely, specific praise. A good way to start is to put reminders into your calendar. At any given time, someone is doing something good. With a little creativity, you can provide a few words in the moment that will reinforce and motivate the behavior you want to see for a long time. It’s much more effective than criticism, which puts people on the defensive and slows them down. Of course, offer constructive feedback when needed – that is how people learn and grow. You don’t want to sacrifice quality. But you do want to develop your people and watch your team excel, so learn how to praise effectively.
Reserve time to think and plan. You are busy. That is a fact in the corporate world that will not change anytime soon. If you want to differentiate yourself as a strategic thinker with a successful, productive team, you need to carve time out to meet with yourself as well as your team members. Organization and innovation are too very different functions but both of them require mental space, and both are critical to effective management. At least once a month, think about the learnings from the year thus far and the priorities for the year ahead. Make sure your time and everyone’s workload are structured appropriately. Use some of the time to read articles and books to enrich your understanding of new developments in your field or the world in general. Synthesize that with the intel you get from your regular meetings with your team members and you’ll have a well-rounded view of the business that will pay dividends.
Management is a tough journey, but it can be incredibly rewarding if you approach it thoughtfully and take the time to learn the “boss skills”. Recent research shows that many Gen Z workers are not interested in taking on management roles at all; it seems the examples they have seen thus far have not impressed them[2]. You can turn this around. Start with the tips above and see how much more fun it can be when you have a high functioning team that feels supported and empowered.
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