Your managers are losing money! They don't mean to. They can't help it, but you can. You see, managers who don't know basic leadership skills can't stop this hemorrhage of money and probably aren't even aware it's happening. Are you? Here are some signs that your managers are costing you money.

1. Your employee turnover rate is high. You will always have employee turnover, it's a cost of doing business, but if that turnover rate is more than 10% - 15% per year, you're losing a lot of money. It takes anywhere from 50% to 150% of an employee's annual salary to replace lost employees that are trained and knowledgeable. Think about that in regard to your profit margin. How many items, or services, or contracts must you sell to make that up?

2. You have too many disruptions like EEO complaints and high absenteeism. Sure, people complain and they sometimes miss work, but when it happens more than a few times over a year you have a problem and your losing money.

3. You're receiving too many customer complaints. How many is too many? Of course you don't want any complaints but there will always be a few. Look for the same types of problems from a range of customers.

So, how do you stop managers from losing money?

1. Help them understand that leading people is the most important thing they do.

Conflicts on project teams are a fact of life! Only on rare occasions do conflicts not arise - even on the smallest projects conflicts rear their ugly heads! It's human nature to have conflicts and it arises for any number of reasons, including:

• Misunderstandings
• Personality clashes
• Disagreements about the right way to approach a problem
• Egos

As a project manager, part of your responsibilities includes managing conflicts on the project team. The best way to manage a conflict is to ensure that the parties involved in the conflict are the ones developing the solution. You can't resolve it for them; they have to come to agreement on how to resolve the conflict themselves.

Bear in mind that sometimes a conflict cannot be resolved. For example, you may have two individuals on the project team that just are not going to get along no matter what - too much has happened between them. If you can't help them resolve their conflict, they must, at the very least, work together professionally for the good of the team and the project. Your job in this case, then is to help them figure out how they are going to get through this project being cordial and professional with each other.

Here are some suggestions to get you moving in the right direction.

• Schedule a first meeting with the individuals who are having the conflict to discuss:
• What is (are) the issue(s)? Get it all out on the table - let them vent.
• What are their perspectives?
• Work with the parties to develop criteria for solutions to their conflict.
• Ask them to think about what they can do to get past the issue, or put it aside, based on the criteria for resolution they agreed to, in order to move forward with working together.

Of the 44 men who have been President of the United States, none have as much paper and ink dedicated to them as has Abraham Lincoln. It was Lincoln's dubious distinction to be elected on the eve of the nation's civil war, but he saw the conflict through successfully and in a manner that few, if any, others could have achieved.

Lincoln was very much the common man while his most notable political competitors; William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates all enjoyed much better circumstances, had more formal education, and were more successful in politics than Lincoln. In the 1869 race for nomination for the new Republican Party's nomination all three felt confident they were sure to win, and non felt Lincoln had any real chance. But Lincoln surprised them and went on to occupy the office during what was arguably the most challenging phase of our national history. What is unusual, and in large part defining of his presidency was that he gathered his political rivals together to form a most unusual cabinet.

In Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin reveals several factors of Lincoln's life and success that are instructive for leaders today.

1. A life of privilege and formal education is not always an indication of success. Lincoln himself enjoyed no advantage in his life and certainly had no formal education. His three competitors enjoyed varying degrees of wealth and all had partaken of formal education.

2. Principle above politics can succeed.

From The Office Life. For more go to http://www.theofficelife.com