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It's common knowledge that helping employees set and reach goals is a critical part of every manager's job. Employees want to see how their work contributes to larger corporate objectives, and setting the right targets makes this connection explicit for them, and for you, as their manager. Goal-setting is particularly important as a mechanism for providing ongoing and year-end feedback. By establishing and monitoring targets, you can give your employees real-time input on their performance while motivating them to achieve more. What the Experts Say So, how involved should you be in helping employees establish and achieve their goals? Since failure to meet goals can have consequences for you, your employee, and your team, as well as the broader organization, you need to balance your involvement with the employee's ownership over the process. Linda Hill, the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and co-author ...

As politicians and economists puzzle over America's jobless recovery, managers who have started to hire again face another problem: how to handle all the overqualified candidates coming through their doors. The prevailing wisdom is to avoid such applicants. But the unprecedented availability of top talent created by this recession and new research on the success of these candidates may be changing that. What the Experts Say Recruiters have traditionally hesitated to place overqualified candidates because of several presumed risks, says Berrin Erdogan, a professor of management at Portland State University and the lead author of a recent study on the subject. "The assumption is that the person will be bored and not motivated, so they will underperform or leave." However, her research shows that these risks may be more perceived than real. In fact, sales associates in her study who were thought to be overqualified actually performed better. And rarely do p...

As I sit down to write this blog, I'm facing a blank page. I know it's going to be difficult, because it always is. Maybe I'll just check my email first, or update on Facebook or Twitter, or read the morning headlines on The New York Times , or sneak a peak at Google Analytics, or read the comments readers have left overnight on my earlier posts. Something insidious has happened. The same device most of use to get our primary work accomplished — a computer, a smartphone, an iPad, or some combination of the above — is also now the repository of 1,000 distractions and every imaginable source of immediate gratification. As we seek to work, just a keystroke or two away we also have access to Google and YouTube, books and blogs, TV shows and movies, music and video games, email and texting, newspapers and magazines, and countless web sites and apps. We're free to indulge our every whim, no matter how trivial, and that's exactly what we do. The socia...

Have you ever noticed how a pat on the back makes you feel great for days? If the praise comes in handwritten or email form, maybe you frame the note and put it on your wall so it can lift you up on a tough day or help you feel more engaged at work. (Years of studies by Gallup and other research groups have shown that engaged employees are much more productive .) Sadly, kudos from bosses are all too rare. Believe me, I know. Back in 1976, I was a 25-year old MBA when I took my first job as a marketing assistant at General Mills in Minneapolis. I had never held a job beyond teaching tennis and managing a tennis camp, and my starting salary was a whopping $10,500 a year. My co-workers tried to help me along, but the culture demanded crisp critical thinking skills that I had yet to fully develop. It seemed as if there was something wrong with everything I did. At my six-month performance review my boss said, "Doug, I like your determination, but to be honest, your performance has b...