Different work situations call for different leadership styles, and most managers use one of two approaches: dominance or prestige. When you lead through dominance, you influence others by being assertive and leveraging your power and formal authority. This approach works best when your job is to get everyone aligned and moving in the same direction. When there is a clear strategy for a new product launch, for example, and the challenge is in getting your team to enact that vision, dominance is an effective way to create a unified front. Prestige, in contrast, means influencing others by displaying signs of wisdom and expertise and being a role model. This approach works best when you’re trying to empower the people who report to you. If a marketing team is charged with creating an innovative advertising campaign, for example, a prestigious leader can release the constraints on team members and encourage them to think outside the box.

Start by thinking of a leadership skill you want to get better at: giving feedback, listening, being direct—whatever you want to grow in. Then practice that skill in a low-risk situation. For example, let’s say you want to get better at being direct. The next time there’s a mistake on your phone bill, call customer service and practice being succinct and clear. Notice how you want to react—Get angry? Backpedal?—and focus on resisting those impulses. These are the same feelings you’ll encounter in higher-risk situations at work, so learn to push through them. Continue to practice until you feel comfortable and can respond the way you’d like to.

If you’re a senior executive, there’s a good chance you’re out of touch. Having a layer of handlers who decide what you should or shouldn’t see may save you time, but it also keeps you isolated and disconnected. This is a serious problem. If you don’t have firsthand information about your employees and customers, you’re unlikely to make the best decisions. So get out of your bubble. Do a stint on the front line—answering customer service calls or handling a key client—so you get direct exposure to lower-level employees and the people who buy your products. Consider instituting skip-level meetings, where you can talk with lower-level teams (without their bosses present) about business conditions and customer reactions, and how to implement strategies. In all settings, encourage people to challenge your thinking instead of just saying what you want to hear.

Your job as a leader is to create a safe space where your team can share ideas without fear of judgment. But knowing how to give input without squashing others’ suggestions can be tough. Should you jump in with your own ideas during brainstorming sessions, or step back and be a coach? The key is to find the right balance. Deadlines and performance targets can increase the pressure to impose your own opinions, but doing so will increase your team’s self-doubt and perpetuate the perception of the all-knowing leader. So take off your leader hat and convincingly tell your team not to treat your ideas any differently than their own. If you notice that your contributions mute their participation, return to coaching. Your team won’t be creative if they are waiting for you to tell them what to do.

Innovative thinking is fueled when a wide range of talents, skills, and traits come together. If you want to enhance the creative potential of your team, develop the diversity of their skills. Here are a few ways to get started:

• Build expertise. Send your team to professional conferences, or arrange training sessions to help them gain new skills.
• Take field trips. Arrange a site visit to a customer or even to a competitor. Or observe best practices in an unfamiliar industry. For example, an airline hoping to improve customer service might visit a clothing retailer known for its excellence in that area.
• Host creative events. Bring in outside speakers to give talks or workshops.
• Seek additional resources. Gather your team to watch and discuss a TED talk, or form an ad hoc reading club to discuss books and articles of interest.

Some bosses wonder how to manage creative people. Research suggests that they may in fact have a different type of personality. But that doesn’t mean you need to manage them in a completely different way; a lot of the same rules apply. Focus on making sure there’s a good fit between their creative tendencies and their role, so you can tap into the full range of their talents. Surround them with detail-oriented project managers who will handle the implementation of their ideas. Don’t worry if their approach to work is nothing like yours, as long as they’re meeting deadlines. Prove that your company truly values creativity by rewarding people who come up with innovations. And apply the right amount of pressure to projects; too little will lead to a lack of motivation, and too much will create stress that inhibits creativity. Organizations that provide their most talented people with personalized development plans and mentoring opportunities, and that promote a culture of support and inclusion, will benefit from increased creative performance.

You might be tempted to want colleagues to see you only at your best, but that’s a bad way to lead. For one thing, it’s unsustainable. We’re all human, and we all make mistakes. Sooner or later, you will, too. For another, leading is about connecting. People will follow you, work hard for you, and sacrifice for you if they feel connected to you. And they won’t feel that way if you only let them see what you think will impress them. So don’t be afraid to own up to the areas where you aren’t perfect. If it helps, think of it this way: you aren’t weak; you have weaknesses. There is a difference.

Amazing bosses try to make work meaningful and enjoyable for employees. They’re most successful when they adhere to a few best practices:

• Manage individuals, not just teams. When you’re under pressure, you can forget that employees have varying interests, abilities, goals, and styles of learning. But it’s important to understand what makes each person tick so that you can customize your interactions with them.
• Go big on meaning. Inspire people with a vision, set challenging goals, and articulate a clear purpose. Don’t rely on incentives like bonuses, stock options, or raises.
• Focus on feedback. Use regular (at least weekly) one-on-one conversations for coaching. Make the feedback clear, honest, and constructive.
• Don’t just talk—listen. Pose problems and challenges, and then ask questions to enlist the entire team in generating solutions.
• Be consistent. Be open to new ideas in your management style, vision, expectations, and feedback. If change becomes necessary, acknowledge it quickly.

One-on-one meetings often feel hurried and disorganized. To improve them, be deliberate about how you structure them. First, schedule them, so they are repeating events on your calendar. And honor these time slots. Don’t cancel, which signals to your employee that you don’t value their time. Make sure there’s an agenda. Before the meeting, ask your direct report for a synopsis of what they’d like to talk about. You should do the same for them. During the meeting, be present. Turn off your phone; mute notifications. Start by complimenting your colleague on something they do well. Then, listen to your colleague’s concerns and provide feedback and ideas on how they might solve problems. Always close with a note of appreciation.

You may want to be kept in the loop, but micromanaging hurts morale, establishes mistrust, and limits your team’s growth. Here’s how to break the habit:

• Understand why you do it. Micromanaging often comes from insecurity. Think about the reasons you shouldn’t micromanage.
• Prioritize what actually matters. Determine which tasks you truly need to do. The real work of leaders is to think strategically, not do their team’s jobs for them.
• Talk to your team. Be clear about when you want updates on their work, so they can ease your anxiety. Ask them how you can better support them.
• Step back slowly. Tell your employees you trust them to make decisions. Try not to overreact when things don’t go exactly as you’d like.

As a leader, admitting failure is critical. Many people try to shrug off missteps as things that happen to everyone. Although doing so might seem harmless, there are many good reasons why you should admit you’ve messed up. Here are three:

• To connect with your employees. While most employees won’t want to discuss their own failures, they are more likely to connect with leaders who admit to theirs. Even if the specific failure isn’t applicable to staff, simply talking about it helps you connect.
• To learn. Failure is only positive when you learn something important from it and make the necessary adjustments. If you don’t do this, you cannot learn from outside perspectives and you’re more likely to stay in denial.
• To tolerate mistakes in others. As much as leaders openly say that failure must happen for innovation to be present, many get upset at staff who fail or struggle. That attitude shuts up staff, closes down experimentation, and obliterates creativity. Set an example that failure is OK.

Your job is to support your team through intense work periods. The first step is to take care of yourself: eat nutritious food, exercise, get plenty of sleep, and find a friend to vent to when you need it. These things aren’t luxuries—a healthy mind and body will help you lead well. When you turn your attention to your team, think about how you can be compassionate, be a source of optimism, and set a good example. Show your employees that, whatever the stressful situation, you’re all in it together. Talk about how you cope with stress, and encourage people to take breaks, improve their work-life balance, and maintain a healthy attitude toward daily work and deadlines. Remind people why their work is important to the company and to customers. Renewing your sense of purpose is a good way to fight the drain of burnout.

People have long used ceremonies—bar mitzvahs, baptisms, weddings, quinceañeras—to mark changes and turning points. Companies have ceremonies too, but they often focus on celebrating the positive: work anniversaries, promotions, and project victories. These types of recognition are important and shouldn’t stop, but companies should consider using celebrations to help people through hard times. This can be a powerful way to mark difficulties, acknowledge and honor those who have sacrificed or experienced hardship, and help people move on. You may not celebrate after a difficult reorg, but you might gather as a group and read your mission statement aloud. Communal experiences can help strengthen your group’s bonds, values, and vision.

Instilling purpose in your employees takes more than motivational talks, lofty speeches, or mission statements. In fact, if overblown or insincere, those methods can backfire, triggering cynicism rather than commitment. To inspire and engage your employees, keep two things in mind. First, purpose is a feeling. You could tell your team that their work is important, but how can you help individuals feel it firsthand? Think about ways to show people the impact of their jobs. Perhaps you could bring a customer in to share a testimonial, or send a small team into the field to experience the client’s needs for themselves. Second, authenticity matters—a lot. If your attempts at creating purpose do not align with how you’ve acted in the past, employees will likely be skeptical, and they might be left feeling more manipulated than inspired. Making the pursuit of purpose a routine, rather than a one-off initiative, will show employees that you’re serious about it.

Start off by asking a few questions: What problem are you solving? What concerns you about it? What frustrates other people about it? Your goal is to get the person thinking about why their efforts aren’t working. Repeat their answers back to them. Once they understand why their plan of action is flawed, ask what else they might try, based on what they know about the problem. Encourage them to think about what type of solution would make sense for this type of problem. Remember, your role here is not to provide answers. It is to clarify the questions the employee is trying to answer, push them to consider new perspectives, and help them reflect on what they’ve learned.

For many managers, the hardest part of delegating is trusting that a task will be done well. But it becomes easier when you think of it as a chance to train your staff—not just get rid of some work. The next time you need to delegate something, start by determining who on your team is ready to handle more responsibility. Then create simple tasks to help them learn the skills they’ll need. If you’d like someone to take over running a weekly meeting, for instance, have them practice each part of the process: one week, they can create an agenda, which you’ll review. The next, they can watch you run the meeting, with plenty of chances to ask questions. Eventually they’ll be ready to try running the meeting themselves, after which you can offer feedback. This kind of teaching can be time consuming, but it will go a long way toward preparing your team for more-complex work.

Leaders want employees to continue to learn and develop new skills, but this wish will fail if you don’t give people extra support. You might encourage employees to sign up for extra training and courses, but not many people will have time to engage properly, or at all, if their workloads remain the same and they have to study after hours. To promote more team learning, give them opportunities to develop. Give them stretch assignments and more autonomy. Make sure your team has access to resources to learn and grow, including people. Use mentoring to connect younger stars with seasoned executives; they can learn from each other. Establish regular check-ins for feedback, and measure progress through 360s. You can also fuel development by giving rewards such as promotions and stock ownership.

Every job contains some grunt work. If you manage someone who thinks they have more than their fair share, consider ways to change their responsibilities. You might, for example, impose a time constraint on an unglamorous task: Tell them the previous week’s data needs to be compiled and reported by Monday at 4 p.m. Expect some pushback, since the employee is likely to say they can’t complete the work in half the time. But ask them to at least try; a time constraint can turn an unexciting task into an engaging challenge. You should also consider assigning them some new work. Giving them more-exciting projects will compel them to get through their lower-value work more quickly. And share the burden: if employees see you doing grunt work, they’ll be less likely to complain about it.

Leaders have to actively build a sense of connectedness with their employees, and this starts with expressing appreciation.

• Notice employees’ unique contributions. Say something that highlights something specific: “I appreciate the way you pull in people from other departments to reach your team goals. You’re a connector.”
• Thank people personally and publicly. Daily interactions—from the elevator to the parking lot—are opportunities to show appreciation for your employees’ efforts. Public recognition at a staff meeting or a thoughtful “thank you” in a newsletter or email are also meaningful.
• Ask “What do you think?” Give people the opportunity to express themselves and be recognized for their ideas. Proactively ask employees, “How do you think we could improve?” and “What is keeping us stuck?”

Past-focused questions, like “What were you thinking?” only reinforce the mistake and make the person feel defensive. Instead, ask a question that looks forward: “How will you do it differently next time?” Focusing on the future this way allows the person to acknowledge their mistake and demonstrate what they’ve learned. It shows that you’re confident in the person’s abilities and gives you the chance to point out any problems in their thinking. Future-focused questions aren’t easy to ask when your emotions are hot. Take a deep breath before speaking and remember that your goal in this situation is to help the employee grow, not to make them feel worse than they already do.

No manager wants a stressed-out team. And while employees have some responsibility to monitor their stress levels, leaders need to play a critical role in preventing and remedying burnout. Start with curiosity. Ask yourself: What is making my staff so unhealthy? How can I help them flourish? Then, gather data by asking your team what causes them to feel motivated or frustrated. Employees may not have a silver-bullet solution, but they can most certainly tell you what isn’t working, and that is often very helpful data. Then, ask your team what they need. Think about small changes, for example, asking: If we had this much budget and could spend it on X many items in our department, what would be the first priority? Have the team vote anonymously, and then share the data with everyone. Discuss what was prioritized and why, and then start working down the list, performing small pilots and assessing what works. The good news is that burnout is preventable, and these low-risk and inexpensive experiments will give you useful information about what you need to change in your work environment.

When an employee returns from a medical leave, it’s your job to help them ease back into work. The process starts during the leave: check in with the employee a few times so that they don’t feel cut off from the team. When they’re ready to return, come up with a transition plan and think through the precise details. For example, ask the employee how they want their return announced and talk about any schedule changes needed. Make sure to phase the transition plan, since the person may not be ready to return to 100 percent capacity right away. And consider how you can create a welcoming experience for their first day back. Once they’re back, check in more frequently than you normally would to make sure they feel supported.

Many employees downplay their differences from each other at work to avoid drawing unwanted attention or making others uncomfortable. If you help your team members feel comfortable being themselves, they can focus on work rather than on hiding parts of their identities.

• Shift the language. When organizations talk about diversity, people tune out. Introduce the concept of “covering,” or hiding certain aspects of yourself, to not appear different. Most people have done it at some point in their careers. This opens up a new way to talk about differences.
• Share your story. Most of us have had experiences related to covering, whether we faced it ourselves or witnessed it in someone close to us. Start the dialogue and let others know it’s OK to do the same.
• Force the conversation. Build genuine connections with your employees, and speak up if they believe the corporate culture encourages covering.

Human beings are hardwired to prefer people who are like us, which is one reason bias creeps into hiring decisions. Diversity initiatives and process audits can help, but for hiring to improve meaningfully, individual managers have to recognize and address their personal biases. The first step is to accept that you have biases. Think about why you might feel drawn to some job candidates more than others, and what biases or preferences might be involved. Consider how factors such as race, gender, education, socioeconomic background, and even height might influence you. Aim to go into hiring decisions with an awareness of how they might go astray. Then, when you’re actually evaluating a candidate, keep asking yourself: “Where could bias show up in this decision?” You should also form your own opinion of the candidate before comparing notes with your colleagues, so you aren’t influenced by others’ views.

Being promoted into a manager position is exciting, but it can be awkward if your new team is made up of your former peers. When you’re promoted over people who have always been friends (or rivals), the power relationship is inevitably altered. Here’s how to ease the transition:

• Meet with each team member one-on-one. Individual meetings let you personalize your message and be more candid than a group setting allows. Talk to each person about what they do and how you can help them.
• Hold a team meeting. Using some ideas from the one-on-ones, discuss the purpose of the team, what should change, and what should stay the same. Explain how you like to operate and how you want your team to work together.
• Deal swiftly with challenges to your authority. If someone resists your leadership or goes behind your back, state your displeasure firmly and ask what’s causing their dissent.

Project overload is real. But as a leader, you can find it hard to tell whether your team needs more resources or just could be working more efficiently. Ask people to identify their key activities and how much time they spend on them in a typical week. Use that data to assess workloads and priorities. Consider which tasks the team could stop doing and which might benefit from rethinking their process. Pay special attention to low-value projects that have to get done but that take an inordinate amount of time. Are there ways to simplify the workflows to reduce the amount of time your team spends in these areas? And look for tasks that simply can be done more quickly. If your team is still struggling after these steps, it might be time to hire more people.

Two of your team members have had a disagreement that has escalated from a squabble to a full-blown argument, and now they want you to resolve it. What’s the best way for you to step in? Your instinct might be to immediately fix the problem by making an executive decision, but your team will benefit more if you intervene as a mediator. Ask your colleagues to engage in a mediation process with you. Explain your hope that everyone will work together to find a resolution. And set a ground rule that they should focus on reaching agreement, not on persuading you that one of them is right. Taking this mediator approach will enable your colleagues to resolve the conflict themselves, making them less dependent on you to sort out future problems, and making it more likely that they’ll follow through on the solution. In most workplace arguments, dictating a solution is less effective in the long run than showing your employees how to talk through their concerns together.

As a manager, helping your direct reports achieve their career goals is part of your job. But what do you do if they aren’t sure what those goals are? First, tell the person that it’s OK—and sometimes even preferable—not to have a concrete career path in mind. Being overly attached to a specific plan can cause people to miss opportunities that aren’t on the prescribed route. Next, ask questions to understand what drives the employee, such as, “What problems excite you?” and “What types of work do you want to do less of and more of?” From there, encourage them to think about the skills they’ll need in the future, focusing on those that will be transferable to other jobs or roles. Then suggest they try small experiments to learn more about what they like to do and where they need to develop.

The mid-career crisis is a real phenomenon. People’s satisfaction bottoms out when they’re in the middle of their careers. As a manager, you don’t want to lose these valuable employees just because they fall into a slump. To keep them engaged, consider offering a change of scenery through remote work or even a relocation. Remote work can let them change their personal lives without hurting their professional progress. A relocation to a different office could make sense for both the company and the employee if that office needs the employee’s skills. Of course, a relocation is a big life change, so the company should be ready to assist with the move. In offering these options, you can help an experienced employee who still has years left in their career rekindle their enthusiasm for work.

Mental health issues affect one in four adults. But when a colleague or direct report confides in you about an issue, you might find it hard to know the right way to respond. You can help in a few ways. Offer training to employees in how to support their colleagues. Training can teach people to recognize the signs of anxiety, depression, and other common mental health issues. They can also provide a safe space for role-playing so that employees can practice different scenarios. You can also create and share a list of trusted, publicly available resources for information and 24/7 advice. People often worry about the stigma that accompanies mental health issues, so tools they can use anonymously are valuable. By taking these steps, you can offer another essential kind of support: signaling that mental health issues, and the employees who struggle with them, matter.

The most innovative companies encourage their employees to experiment. If you’d like to push your team to be more entrepreneurial, start by encouraging people to bring their outside interests to work. Ask your employees about their hobbies. What do they enjoy doing on weekends? What are they proud of outside of work? Employees who feel comfortable expressing their full, authentic selves are often better at coming up with new ideas. Creating a culture of experimentation also requires a fairly hands-off approach to leadership. Don’t be a micromanager. Instead, show employees that you trust them to get work done, even in ways that haven’t been tried before. When people have a sense of ownership, they feel more freedom to try something new. And finally, get comfortable with failure. People won’t take risks if they’re afraid of what will happen if a project doesn’t work out. Measure someone’s performance by their level of ingenuity, not their ability to play it safe.

As you move up in an organization, people increasingly look to you for answers. But the best leaders don’t provide all of the solutions; they inspire curiosity, creativity, and deeper thinking in their employees. And that starts with asking the right questions. Encourage your employees to slow down and explain what they’re proposing in more detail by saying something simple and to the point, like “Wait, what?” You could also use phrases like “I wonder why … ” to encourage curiosity. And then follow up with “I wonder if things could be done differently.” Another question to try: “How can I help?” This question forces your colleague to define the problem, which is the first step toward owning and solving it.

When you give feedback on a fellow employee, it should be useful. But unless you connect it to what matters to them—and separate it from your personal beliefs and preferences—they won’t be able to act on it. Emphasize facts, not interpretations. Stay away from subjective comments: “She’s self-centered.” “He lacks confidence.” Even if you believe an employee’s behavior stems from lack of confidence, for example, that’s just your opinion; it may be inaccurate. Point to specific behaviors instead: “He doesn’t contribute during meetings.” “She interrupts me when I’m speaking.” And ensure your feedback is both negative and positive, which helps to counteract your personal biases and preferences. For a colleague to improve, they need to know what they are doing well and where they have room to grow.

Feedback should be a regular part of work, but not every behavior warrants input. For example, you shouldn’t offer corrective feedback just because someone has a different work process, even if it stresses you out. Before you deliver feedback, think about what you want to achieve. Avoid giving it when:

• You do not have all the information.
• It’s something the recipient can’t control.
• The person appears to be highly emotional or especially vulnerable.
• You don’t have time to explain it thoroughly.
• It’s based on a personal preference, not a need for more effective behavior.
• You don’t have a solution for how the person can move forward.

Many of us hide what we know at work because we don’t want to lose the power or status that we think the knowledge gives us. But recent research shows that hoarding information often backfires and can negatively impact the withholder’s growth and development. Your job is to create a culture in which your employees feel comfortable sharing information and speaking openly about their concerns. One way to figure out why your staff is holding back information is to use third-party, anonymous surveys. Then act on this feedback to gain back their trust. And make sure the people you manage understand the consequences of hiding knowledge. Those who are keeping information in order to protect themselves may not understand that they are actually doing the opposite. Use trainings, newsletters, bulletin boards, and other communication channels to help employees understand why sharing knowledge with your teammates is important.

One of the reasons email is so hard to manage is that sending it is easy. We can fill up each other’s inboxes by just clicking a button, which is why it’s important to set boundaries around email. Try these three things:

• Use autoreplies. When you need time to focus on work, your email autoreply can tell people that you’re unavailable and when you’ll get back to them. Whether you’ll reply in a day or a week, let people know what to expect. (And in the meantime, give yourself permission to ignore messages that can wait.)
• Set guidelines for your team. Tell people how and when you prefer to communicate, and ask colleagues and clients about their preferences as well. Don’t forget to revisit this discussion when people join the team or new projects begin.
• Lead by example. If you answer emails late at night or on weekends, you’re telling your team to do the same. Use services that allow you to schedule emails to send later. Better yet, step away from your inbox entirely.

As more employees work offsite, virtual meetings are a necessity. “Reading the room” can be hard when you’re not in the same room as your team, making these meetings tricky to navigate. Focus on building relationships. Allow ten minutes at the start for people to connect and catch up. This is your virtual watercooler time when you can have informal conversations. Ask questions about personal lives and families to get to know each other outside of work. Once you officially start the meeting, refer to each contributor by name so that everyone feels recognized and part of the community. When you can, meet face-to-face with the team. These techniques are the foundation for authentic conversation and connection, leading to more-effective virtual meetings.

When people feel safe enough to speak their minds in meetings, everyone benefits: employees get to be honest, and managers get to hear what their team members really think. Leaders can invite candid conversation by doing two things. First, focus on permission. Give people permission to say or ask anything they want. Sometimes in meetings it’s unclear who is allowed to say what, or which topics people can and can’t ask about. Discuss these things with your team up front. Ask your team for permission to lead the meeting—whether that means calling on people who haven’t spoken, keeping the conversation on track, or holding people back if they’re talking too much. Second, create psychological safety. Everyone has had the experience of not feeling heard or respected; show your team that won’t happen in your meetings. Ask the group to devote their full attention to whoever is talking, to not interrupt each other, and to highlight the value in other people’s contributions.

You have a lot of influence on how employees spend their time. Consider the ripple effects your input can have. Think of your comments, suggestions, and questions as pebbles you’re throwing into a stream: Each one can have an impact far larger than you may intend. Always recognize the weight your words carry and speak with intention. During meetings with your team, don’t think out loud, and lob ideas at everyone. Be sure you’re giving the team a clear, unified picture of projects and strategies; if you aren’t ready to do that, hold off on saying anything until you are. And don’t ask for updates unless you really need them. Always specify what information you need, why, and when, so you don’t create an unnecessary fire drill.

We all want to work in a place where people treat each other with kindness and respect. But you can’t expect your team to behave that way without making it clear that you want them to. This process starts when you interview potential team members: tell candidates that your team values civility, so they can opt in to working for an organization where those values are prized. Have discussions with team members about what civility means and define the norms that you expect everyone to uphold daily. Compile those norms into a “civility code,” which your employees can use as a guide. Once the norms are established, reinforce them however you can—in team meetings, at important events, and through rewards. These conversations and efforts garner buy-in and empower employees to hold one another accountable for civil behavior.

If your team is constantly bringing issues to you rather than addressing them on their own, you aren’t doing your job as a manager. Only let problems get escalated to you thoughtfully and occasionally. Make sure you’re not stepping in when you shouldn’t. Don’t ask yourself, “How do we solve the problem?” until you’ve paused and considered, “Who should own this problem?” Balance the need to resolve the issue with consideration for how your actions will influence future behavior. In your desire to help your team, you might be tempted to do more than you should. If others are struggling to solve problems they should rightfully own, always ask, “What is the least I can do?” Find the lowest level of initiative for yourself, while requiring your team members to act in ways they are capable of.

Between scanning our inboxes, checking our phones, and feeling overwhelmed by our workloads, it’s a wonder anyone can get work done. To help your employees focus and stay productive, you need to counterbalance these distractions. First, make sure the office has designated spaces where employees can disconnect. You don’t have to install nap pods like Google—you can set aside a corner with comfy chairs or rooms where people can close the door and work. Second, encourage employees to block out chunks of focus time on their calendars. Tell them it’s OK to ignore email or Slack for a few hours; have them use an autoreply to let people know they’re unavailable. (“I’m stepping away from my email to finish this project. I’ll be back in one hour.”) And set policies for how quickly employees have to respond to messages. The more time they’re spending on urgent emails, the less time they’re spending on deep work.

As a leader, it’s important to understand your work style and the styles of your employees. Prioritizers focus on goals, deadlines, and facts. Planners ask how the project will be delivered and completed. Arrangers want to know who the stakeholders are and who else should be involved. Visualizers consider why the project matters and what the end of the project will look like. All four types of people bring a valuable perspective to the table, and companies need all four types to remain competitive. Realistically, your team probably won’t have a balance of all four styles, but you can bring on new members or call in outside experts to bridge the gaps. And if your team is heavily weighted toward one or two styles, recognize the value in balancing it. Work-style diversity ensures you’ll have people focusing on both the big picture and the details.

Judgment is a muscle that you can help your team build. Talk through how you make important decisions. Explain the criteria and stakeholders you consider, as well as any risks and trade-offs you assess to teach people how you think, help them understand company priorities, and demonstrate the factors to consider when making future judgment calls. Acknowledge that mistakes will happen, and that it’s OK. Let your team members occasionally make big or hard decisions on their own. Remind yourself of your mistakes that helped you grow. Be curious, not dismissive, when a team member makes a poor judgment call. Ask questions to understand their thought process and push their thinking for next time.

Every manager would love to have a team of A players, but that’s probably not realistic. You’re almost always going to have a mix of performers on your team, so make sure you’re not ignoring your B players. These employees can be selfless, dedicated employees who fill important roles, but often they don’t get the attention they deserve. Make sure you’re giving them enough support and guidance by learning about their concerns, preferences, and work styles. Occasionally reassess their job fit to make sure they’re in roles that draw on their strengths. And don’t overlook someone’s talents just because the person is quiet or reserved, or because they don’t fit your idea of what a leader should act like. Some B players aren’t comfortable in the spotlight but thrive when they’re encouraged to complete a project or to contribute for the good of the company. When they have the motivation and the encouragement they need, B players can turn in an A+ performance.

Can a team of B players achieve A+ success? Research says yes, but only with an A-level leader. As an effective leader, you can have a variety of styles, with certain characteristics: superior judgment, which helps you make good decisions and learn from mistakes; high emotional intelligence, which helps you stay calm under pressure and build relationships with your teams; and high ambition, which pushes you to high performance. In addition, you can use four tactics to make your teams more effective: Have a strong vision that motivates your team with a plan of attack and milestones. Use analytics to help your team make smarter, better decisions with data. Give honest feedback about team members’ limits and help them improve. And foster morale by encouraging team bonding. When people care about each other, they raise their performance for each other, too.

When you’re staffing a high-profile project, you want an all-star team. But it’s not enough to put your high performers on the task. There are three types of people who should be on the team of any breakthrough initiative. First, look for employees who are comfortable with uncertainty. You need individuals who will remain curious and focused even when the project is far from the end goal. Second, be sure you have people who create structure within chaos and take action. These workers can drive a team forward even when circumstances change. Finally, find employees who have a combination of these critical traits: divergent thinking (the ability to connect seemingly unrelated information and ideas); convergent action (the ability to execute on ideas and create something tangible); and influential communication (the ability to share knowledge in a coherent, compelling way). Many people have one of these critical traits, but your project team needs employees who have all of them.

When a high performer on your team burns out, you might think it’s their problem to solve. But your job is to help employees control their stress. You can protect your stars by giving them some autonomy in choosing their projects. Don’t just put them on the toughest tasks; letting them choose ensures they’re working on assignments that excite them. Pair the person with another high performer on a hard project, which will help them challenge and push each other. The pairs should be employees at similar levels.

Every manager wants to keep their stars. One of the best ways to win loyalty from your top talent is to give them as many opportunities as you can. Let them take on big challenges like a highly visible project or a new leadership role. You may have to battle HR to make this happen. After all, HR leaders tend to want to treat people homogeneously and limit opportunities to rigid time frames. They may insist that your star isn’t ready, or that giving the role to the star isn’t fair to others who are more senior. You can promise to look for opportunities for those you’ve bypassed and take full responsibility for what your top talent is—and isn’t—able to do. Don’t let red tape stand in your way. If your top talent is blocked and made to wait for opportunity to be available, they will simply go somewhere else.

Telling someone they’re fired is never easy, but you can take steps to make it less painful. Before starting the conversation, make sure you’ve prepared responsibly. Does the person know there’s been an issue? Have they been given an opportunity to act on your feedback? Identify the right environment for the meeting—a private place where you won’t be interrupted. Think about what you want to say. Instead of preparing a script, focus on setting your intentions. Really think about the person: who they are, why you hired them, what this will be like for them. Try to see the best in the other person. Imagine them contributing more powerfully in another organization or role. And approach the conversation with the assumption that they have value—it may just be in a different job.

Keeping a cool head at work is important for decision making and team cohesion, but it can have an unintended drawback: your calm professional persona may be so rigid that you forget to be yourself or show your emotions. As a leader, it’s hard to generate enthusiasm among your direct reports if you always wear a serious face. Next time you prepare for an important speech or meeting, think about the emotional takeaway you want to impart to your employees. Then choose words that match your emotional tone. If you want your team to feel confident, for example, say you are “proud” and their ideas are “powerful.” Or if your team is facing a tight deadline, tell them the task is “critical” and you’re “eager” to meet the opportunity so that your organization won’t “miss out.” Without emotional language, your message may fall flat, so be forthcoming about how you feel; a leader’s emotions are contagious. If you project excitement or encouragement, your team will pick up on your energy.

Leaders play a significant role in helping employees understand why their jobs matter, but it’s not just about connecting their work to a larger purpose. You can also do it by demonstrating curiosity: explore, ask questions, and engage people on their ideas about the future. Make clear that there is a wide range of possibilities for how work gets done and that you want your employees to try new things. At the same time, keep them focused on meeting goals and making progress. Remain ambitious in the face of both failure and success, and push your people to continually accomplish more. You want employees to feel a sense of progress, reinvention, and growth, which results in a more meaningful and positive work experience.

To be effective, leaders need their team’s trust. But how do you get that trust—and how do you get it back if you’ve lost it? Three behaviors are essential. First, create positive relationships on your team. Help employees cooperate, resolve conflicts between others, give honest feedback, and check in with people about their concerns. Second, demonstrate expertise and judgment. People are more likely to trust you if they believe you have technical know-how and the experience to make good decisions about the team’s work. Last, be consistent. You must do what you say you will do. Follow through on your commitments and keep any promises you make. You don’t need to be perfect at these three behaviors to be a trusted leader, but you do need to be good at them.

Most managers dedicate significant amounts of time and energy to ensuring they’re being fair. But it’s inevitable that some will perceive outcomes as fair, and others, as unfair. Be transparent about how and why you made a decision. For example, if you want an equitable promotions process, with certain competencies or styles counting more than others, tell your team your intentions. If you want equal sharing of bonuses, to reinforce the importance of every employee, be up front about it. As the manager, you have the discretion to make those decisions. As long as you have thought carefully about what the business needs, and made your decision as objectively as possible, you have done your job. You’ll always have an opportunity to restore balance with the next decision.

Collaborating is hard if you view your colleague as the competition. Even when leaders don’t explicitly paint a win-lose game for their teams, the competitive mindset is the default for most high-achieving professionals. So you have to communicate the message that success in the team can be greater and more exciting when people work together. Emphasize the opportunity for all team members to value and learn from each other. And follow these tactics to help employees adopt a teaming mindset:

• Model the behavior you’re hoping to inspire. Demonstrate curiosity and interest in the people you work with, ask them genuine questions, and respond thoughtfully to what you hear.
• Place a high value on and reward successful teaming more than individual performance.
• Frame the challenge ahead (the work, the initiative, the project) as something in need of diverse perspectives and skills.

Nothing good comes of envy. If employees are resentful about what they feel they deserve or what others have, morale and well-being will suffer. You can combat envy by building a culture of goodwill (“I’m grateful for what I have, and happy about your success”) rather than one of comparison (“I deserve what you have”). Start by setting an example. Let your team see you supporting your peers and cheering their accomplishments. Show employees that you value genuine camaraderie, and encourage them to measure themselves by their own achievements rather than by others’. Discuss how people can combat feelings of envy (and even how you’ve managed envy in the past). For example, employees may benefit from talking with a friend or mentor to dissect what they’re feeling and regain perspective. They should also try to avoid unhealthy comparisons and the distorted perspectives that come with them. A culture in which people want each other to succeed is one that can bring out the best in everyone.

Company culture exerts a powerful influence on employees’ behavior. In some cases, that power can turn toxic, driving us to compromise our values and do things we normally wouldn’t. You probably can’t change a toxic culture on your own, but there are steps you can take to insulate yourself from its effects. First, figure out the kind of environment you need to be effective—and happy—at work. Which of your values have fallen by the wayside? Do you feel healthy and content? Are you proud of how you behave toward colleagues? Next, talk to your teammates about the culture you all wish you had. Ask what’s important to them at work and how company norms have affected their behavior. Then talk about establishing and committing to a team “microculture” based on everyone’s shared values. The microculture may not fix the company’s broader issues, but it can encourage your team members to resist the negative pressures they face in their jobs.

As a manager, what do you do if, after working hard with your employee to set goals at the beginning of the year, it’s no longer clear that those targets are still worth pursuing? Perhaps your employee has achieved a goal and needs a new challenge, or the organization’s objectives have changed. Meet with the employee to review the existing goals and plans. These questions can help guide your discussion and reassess the targets:

• Are the goals still realistic, given any changes in resources or constraints?
• Are they still timely? Is now the best time to achieve them?
• Are they still relevant? Do they still align with the company’s strategy?

Depending on the answers, you may need to change only a single goal, replacing it with a new one—but in some cases, the entire plan might need to shift. Work collaboratively with your direct report to come up with new goals that are achievable and important to the organization.

If you want to lead a successful organizational change, you have to communicate about the change empathetically. And that means finding out how your team feels and tailoring your emails and meetings to their concerns. Leaders who don’t take this step risk alienating their employees, who may already be feeling nervous or skeptical. So talk to your team members about what’s happening and why. Ask what they’re worried about and what kind of improvements they’d like to see. Listen closely and then use your communications to address what you heard. Repeat these steps during each phase of the change, so you can gauge how people’s feelings are shifting over time. The goal is to make sure everyone feels included and heard. You should also be as transparent about the change as possible. It’s likely that you’ll need to keep some details about the how and why private, but being open will build trust and credibility.

Being a strategic leader starts with asking your team the right questions about their work, your company, and the big picture. Here are five questions to pose to team members on a regular basis:

• What are you doing today? This will bring to light any significant work that you aren’t aware is being done or that’s taking much more time than it should.
• Why are you doing the work you’re doing? This allows you to gain clarity on what’s important and why it’s important from your team’s perspective.
• How does what we’re doing today align with the bigger picture? This is a discussion about gaps and outliers. If your team is working on something that doesn’t align with the broader goals of the organization, challenge the value of doing that work.
• What does success look like for our team? This allows you to home in on what’s really driving your team’s success, in terms of activities, behaviors, relationships, and strategic outcomes.
• What else could we do to achieve more, better, faster? This is where you push your team to be innovative. If you’ve done the work to answer the preceding questions, you are well positioned to be strategic in answering this one.