Manager Fundamentals

Explore how managers focus on three areas, starting with building trust, through a guided meditation that reveals how trust shows up in your life and inspires new insights and actions.

Engage in a guided meditation on trust using breathing to explore how trust forms from childhood to work, through reliability, transparency, and integrity.

Focus area create clarity trains managers to ensure every team member can answer the four W's—what, why, when, who—and to validate or provide context, sustaining engagement as priorities shift.

Explore authentically care as a core management focus that boosts engagement. Examine two sides of care from how you care to how employees perceive care and empathy for Gen Z.

Identify what you truly care about—developing people, work impact, or pay. Investing in your team multiplies impact and can lead to promotion or higher pay.

Learn to apply the five care languages—words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and connectedness—in managing employees, tailoring care to each person.

Master the three focus areas for managers: build trust, create clarity, and authentically care. Explore reflection, actions, and team activities to boost engagement and impact at your own pace.

Discover the primary manager skill: curiosity, the single most important driver of team impact. Focusing on curiosity yields high returns with minimal effort, even if other skills are set aside.

Reframe curiosity as embracing the gap between what is believed to be true and what is actually true, not just the desire to learn. Explore this idea through practical examples.

Apply curiosity with ourselves by turning 'I am not good enough' into 'I am thinking' and exploring how to delegate old tasks for success in a new role.

Develop the skill to use open-ended questions to build trust, create clarity, and show care in conversations, using who, what, when, where, and how.

Managers learn when to apply curiosity strategically, prioritizing urgent deadlines, high-risk scenarios, and security patches, while delaying inquiry for safety and outcomes.

Explore the secondary skills, namely consistency, feedback, and vulnerability, that sharpen two of the three focus areas and deliver high impact value beyond curiosity in manager fundamentals.

Consistency builds trust and clarity by being reliable and predictable in actions and decisions. Schedule regular check-ins, follow through on commitments, share updates, and stay approachable with integrity.

Explore three consistency traps in management—customized consistency for different employees, communicating changes to preserve trust, and balancing consistency with wellness—so you can reward impact, adapt when needed, and prevent burnout.

Provide clear feedback that shows you care, blending praise with constructive suggestions to unlock an employee's higher impact and renewed energy.

Learn why feedback is challenging for managers—fear of conflict, time constraints, and uncertainty—and explore reducing uncertainty by using the SBI model (situation, behavior, impact).

Reduce uncertainty in feedback by building consistency, authentic care, and careful phrasing, using two one-on-one questions to foster accountability, fairness, and actionable guidance.

Lead with vulnerability to build trust and a safe space between managers and employees by admitting mistakes, inviting bidirectional feedback, and embracing imperfection on the path to growth.

Learn four practical ways to embrace vulnerability as a manager: admit mistakes, request and act on feedback, ask for and offer help, and show up authentically to foster belonging.

Review three secondary skills: consistency, feedback, and vulnerability, and practice applying them, then prepare to learn about targeted skills.

Explore targeted skills across three focus areas—career development, ownership, and aligned direction—and learn to tailor a personal plan by investing in specific areas of the manager model.

Develop your employees' careers through learning and growth, championing opportunities within and beyond the team. Balance this with the reality they may outgrow your team and outline career development components.

Invest in employee growth by applying the 70-20-10 learning rule—70 percent on the job, 20 from others, 10 through formal methods—and provide caring feedback that informs learning plans.

Provide performance reviews that reduce stress by delivering ongoing feedback, so employees are never surprised. Focus on future development and career opportunities with the learning guide and a written plan.

learn how to use performance reviews to drive conversations that grow employees and impact the business, regardless of the tool, focusing on celebrating impact, strengths, growth feedback, and future plans.

Promotions hinge on employee readiness, company need, and budget. Managers balance these factors with development opportunities, transfers, or external options when openings are limited.

Own the budget conversation by engaging leadership, asking key questions, and planning clear discussions that avoid promising promotion while aligning readiness, need, and budget.

discover how to determine and grow employee ownership using curiosity and feedback, balancing supervision, check-ins, and collaboration to build trust and foster deeper responsibility.

Align direction to create clarity and help employees see how their work supports team and company mission, what direction to follow, why it matters, and how they add value.

Discover the Taber Coaching Manager Model: build trust, create clarity, and authentically care. Prioritize curiosity, with consistency, feedback, and vulnerability, plus career development, ownership, and aligned direction.

Explore the manager model in a resignation scenario to create clarity and trust, cultivate curiosity about capacity and automation, and realign priorities through a team activity and regular check-ins.

Embrace a growth journey by breaking actions into small steps and checking in with an accountabilibuddy. Be curious about failure, take bold actions, and keep the process enjoyable.

Reflect on your journey and apply what you learned to grow and positively impact your teams. Reach out for one on one coaching to continue your development.