Bruce Tulgan

If your managers are like most managers, they are probably stuck in a vicious cycle of under management.

They feel they don’t have enough time to manage, so they try to “empower” employees by leaving them alone. They “check in” and “touch base” and their doors are “always open”… until something goes wrong. Then the manager goes into firefighting mode and everyone scrambles until the fire is out. By then the manager has even less time, so they go right back to being hands-off… until the next fire.

In this program Bruce debunks the myths that keep managers from managing and shares the fundamental leadership communication techniques so often missing from manager relationships. Bruce teaches managers how to provide regular coaching, guidance, support and direction, allowing them to stay ahead of problems and set up their employees to do the best work possible.

Takeaways and Techniques:

Too many managers are hands-off with their direct reports. Either they think there’s no time to manage, or they feel their hands are tied by HR, or they believe they’re just not cut out to be a leader.

But hands-off managing leads to problems. Managers struggle to hold employees accountable. They avoid interacting with “difficult” employees. They often wait to have important conversations until they are frustrated or angry. And they struggle to retain really great employees.

Bruce explains how anyone can practice strong, hands-on leadership to make their team more effective, and build relationships of trust and confidence with direct reports. Watch waste, inefficiency, errors, downtime, and conflict decline rapidly as you put Bruce’s action plans into place.

Takeaways and Techniques:

Businesses have redefined the workplace.  Suddenly, the elements of where we work, how we relate to our bosses and our colleagues, how we relate to our team is all in flux.  The most successful organizations and managers will approach these changes with an intentional and strategic approach.  They will acknowledge the impact of what has been lost – the intangible but critical human factor – and they will address it with the understanding that what matters is first, how we do the kind of work we do and second, when we do it.  Where comes last.

In this program, blending humor, insight, and concrete best-practices, Bruce draws on decades of research and observation, sharing real stories of helping leaders answer the common and pressing questions about the new remote workplace:

• What will organizations look like?
• How will company culture be communicated and lived?
• How will organizations and their teams handle the basic work of management – staffing, performance management and development?

Bruce will address how the remote workplace affects:

• Interdependent, collaborative work
• The need for high-structure, high-substance communication (and how to do it remotely)
• Meeting management and email etiquette

The number one issue troubling business leaders today is the increasing difficulty of recruiting, motivating, and retaining the best talent. There are talent shortages at every level, in every industry, and it’s tough to keep people when constant change and uncertainty are the new normal.

Employers have two options: Enter a bidding war for the best employees, or build the kind of culture that will make the top talent want to come work in their organization and stay longer In a presentation that can be customized for every industry, Bruce lays out the challenges, causes, and costs of today’s talent wars, then reveals the elements of a winning culture and how to get there.

Takeaways and Techniques:

Baby Boomers are leaving, younger Millennials and Gen Z are flooding in, and older Millennials and Gen X are stuck in the middle. It is not only a generational shift in the demographics—this is also an epic turning point in the norms and values around work.

With a workforce more generationally diverse than at any other time in history, employers and mangers are facing new challenges and struggling to balance their business needs with an increasingly high-maintenance workforce.

Bruce helps audiences understand the generations in the workplace today – each at different life stages, with conflicting perspectives, expectations, and needs—so that you can turn age diversity into a strategic advantage.

Takeaways and Techniques:

Many managers say that their new young employees have unrealistic expectations, lack good work habits, don’t want to pay their dues, and are too fragile and demanding.

But the reality? Millennials and Gen Z employees are not disloyal, lazy slackers. They’re not looking for leaders to humor them or do the work for them. Today’s young talent want managers who take them seriously, set them up for success, and recognize their best efforts. They want leaders who make expectations clear and provide support and guidance when needed.

Bruce busts the myths and gets to the reality of what Millennials and Gen Z truly want and need in the workplace, so that you have the tools to help your young talent succeed.

Takeaways and Techniques:

The young employees in your organization are coming into the workplace as the most highly-educated generation to date, with impressive technical skills. Yet many struggle with the basics of professionalism. Managers complain that many of their young employees lack good work habits, people skills, and critical thinking.

The good news is that soft skills can be taught, coached, and developed – just like technical skills. All it takes is the right understanding and commitment from the managers and leaders in your organization.

Bruce teaches managers how to successfully improve the soft skills of their direct reports using his soft skills competency model paired with the fundamentals of highly-engaged management.

Takeaways and Techniques:

The relationship employees have with their immediate manager is the number one factor determining their success.

So many managers are so busy—or otherwise unwilling to provide strong leadership—that most employees simply do not get what they need from their managers. But employees can do a lot to help themselves.

Bruce guides employees through the critical skills of managing their relationship with their bosses by highlighting what factors they can and can’t influence and how to work successfully within that framework.

Takeaways and Techniques:

Despite the diversity of people and situations, the same basic challenges around managing people come up over and over again: How do you manage employees who are not good at managing themselves? How do you help an employee get more and better work done? How do you manage an employee who has an attitude problem? How do you retain superstars and lose the low-performers?

No matter what the specific challenge, when things go wrong in a management relationship the common denominator is almost always unstructured, low-substance, hit-or-miss communication. The most effective solution is applying the fundamentals of highly-engaged management. In this program, Bruce illustrates how the fundamentals can be applied to the most common management challenges in your organization, one challenge at a time.

Takeaways and Techniques:

One major challenge facing organizations today is the impending leadership gap: as the most experienced managers retire and are replaced by today’s middle-management, there is an increasing demand for new young leaders to step up and fill the ranks.

Every new leader must go through the challenging process of assuming authority, establishing communication with direct reports, and managing workflow. This is especially daunting for those who are younger and less experienced. And yet new leaders often don’t receive enough structured guidance, direction, and support in taking on leadership responsibilities. Bruce introduces new leaders to the “take charge by learning” approach to standing up as a leader and gaining the tools they need to be a successful manager.

Takeaways and Techniques: