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Are Your Managers Coaching, or Just Managing? How to Tell the Difference, and Why It Matters
Key takeaways When your managers finish a conversation with someone on their team, is that person more capable than before, or just waiting for the next instruction? That’s the line between managing and coaching. We see this gap constantly in the leaders we train. Plenty of teams believe they’ve built a coaching culture. What they’ve…
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What to Do When Managers Play Favorites
Key takeaways When employees believe the rules depend on who their manager likes, trust drops quickly. What looks like favoritism on the surface is almost always a consistency problem underneath: uneven expectations, uneven accountability, uneven communication, and uneven follow-up. Fix the consistency and most of the “favoritism” disappears. Favoritism is more common than most leaders…
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Evaluating Leadership Readiness Before Promoting a New Manager
Promoting a strong employee into management is not the same as confirming they are ready to lead. The practical question is simple: What evidence shows this person is ready to lead people, not just perform well as an individual contributor? For HR leaders and executives, that means creating a consistent promotion process tied to clear…
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A Common New Manager Mistake: Waiting Too Long to Address Performance Issues
New managers often wait too long to address performance issues. They may hope the problem improves, worry about damaging the relationship, or feel unsure about what to say. That hesitation is understandable, but it can also be costly. A missed deadline becomes a pattern. A vague concern becomes team frustration. A small coaching opportunity becomes…
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What to Do When Vague Leadership Expectations Create Performance Problems
“We did not have a plan but just assumed he would figure it out, and when he did not, we got annoyed at him for slowing us down.” That quote came from a manager reflecting on why a new hire quit after just a few weeks. It captures a common leadership problem: people are held…
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Spotlight on Stanley Park. Member of the Month June 2026
By Darlene Morse & Samantha Borsari Why Stanley Park Still Feels Magical Have you visited Stanley Park in Westfield, MA lately? Maybe you remember it from childhood visits or family outings years ago. This 300-acre Western Massachusetts treasure continues to welcome visitors with beautiful gardens, walking trails, picnic areas, athletic spaces, ponds, and peaceful places…
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Mid-Year Pulse Check: What EANE Members Are Telling Us
By Allison Ebner The results from our latest member survey are in — and they paint a clear, candid picture of what’s keeping HR and business leaders up at night right now. Nearly 200 members participated from across a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, human services, healthcare, professional services, finance, technology, and hospitality. We’re…
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Using AI to Modernize Job Architecture and Strengthen Total Rewards
By Cassandra Vaughan, SPHR, CCP As organizations across the Northeast continue to navigate talent shortages, pay transparency requirements, and evolve workforce expectations, we are reevaluating one foundational element of their compensation strategy: job architecture. Job architecture — the framework used to define job families, levels, career paths, and compensation structures — plays a critical role…