Insights from the 2025 Workplace Pulse Survey By Bruce Tulgan In October 2025, we asked leaders, managers, and individual contributors to share the biggest challenges they’re facing in their work right now. Professionals—from executives to frontline…
The biggest takeaway from our research is this: The vast majority of managers do not provide feedback often enough. For the most part, micromanagement is a rare occurrence. However, while most managers should be giving more…
There are volumes of research that have attempted to distinguish between leaders, managers, and supervisors: Leaders focus on the big picture, managers focus on details, and supervisors focus on carrying out the details. Leaders inspire, managers…
Every time a manager provides feedback, their credibility is on the line. Giving feedback that is generally inaccurate—off-base, unfair, unbalanced, or factually wrong—is a surefire way to undermine that credibility. On the other hand, employees come…
Despite how unique your management challenges may seem, the common denominator is likely unstructured, low-substance, hit-or-miss communication. When things are going wrong in a management relationship, that is usually at least part of the cause. What…
If you’re a manager who feels you are spending so much of your time managing, yet inevitably end up firefighting, something like this may sound familiar: Listen, I spend tons of time communicating with my direct…
Employers eager to attract the best young employees are too often delivering the wrong messages to the wrong people at the wrong times. Because young talent is perpetually in greater demand than supply, employers desperate to…
Our research shows that when things are going wrong in a management relationship, almost always, the common denominator is unstructured, low substance, hit-or-miss communication. With the added complications of managing some combination of remote, hybrid, and…
If you’re trying to be a better manager, it’s likely you’re one of the nearly 90% of leaders who are undermanaging. That’s not a judgment, that’s just math. Undermanagement is not a sign of laziness, apathy,…
A lot of managers ask me, “What about the employee who does just enough work and does it just well enough and nothing else? How do you motivate that person to go the extra mile?” The…
