Advertise on podcast: The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown

Send us Fan Mail Do you struggle to say no at work, even when you know you don't have the time? For years, Dr. Donita Brown considered herself a yes person. When someone asked her to take on another project, join a committee, or help with something new, she'd agree before stopping to think about what she was committing to. But all those yeses came with a cost. In this episode of The Management Minute, Donita talks about people pleasing at work, setting healthy boundaries, and learning how to say no without feeling like you're letting someone down. Saying no doesn't have to mean being rude, damaging relationships, or closing the door on future opportunities. Often, it's about how you communicate your decision. Donita shares three practical ways to make saying no easier: Pause before agreeing. Give yourself time to think about your schedule and priorities before making a commitment.Decline the request, not the person. You can appreciate the opportunity and even suggest someone else who might be a better fit.Stop overexplaining. Sometimes a simple, kind response is enough.Because every time you say yes to something you don't have time for, you're saying no to something else. That might be an important project, your personal time, or the people waiting for you at home. Here's your challenge for the week: The next time someone asks you to take on something new, don't say yes immediately. Give yourself a day to think about it. You might be surprised how differently you feel tomorrow. Find us at www.management-minute.com About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail What happens when you're managing someone who has more experience than you do? For new managers, leading employees who have spent years, or even decades, mastering their work can feel intimidating. You might feel pressure to prove yourself, demonstrate your expertise, or show everyone why you deserve to be in charge. But that's exactly the trap Dr. Donita Brown wants managers to avoid. In this episode of The Management Minute, Donita shares her experience managing someone who had been doing the job longer than she'd been alive and explains why good leadership isn't about being the most knowledgeable person in the room. Your job as a manager isn't to compete with your team's expertise. It's to make that expertise count. That means respecting what experienced employees know, asking thoughtful questions, listening to their recommendations, and helping them connect their work to the bigger picture. It also means understanding that you can make difficult decisions without pretending to know everything. Whether you're a first-time manager, a younger leader managing older employees, or someone leading a team of experienced professionals, this episode offers a practical reminder about building trust and earning respect. Because successful management isn't about proving you're smarter than your employees. It's about helping them do their best work. Here's your question for the week: If someone on your team has more experience than you, are you competing with them or supporting them? Find us at www.management-minute.com About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail Are your one-on-one meetings with employees actually helping them, or are they just another status update? For years, Dr. Donita Brown approached employee one-on-one meetings with a checklist of project updates, client questions, and unfinished tasks. The meetings felt productive, but she eventually realized something important: a one-on-one meeting should belong to the employee, not the manager. In this episode of The Management Minute, Donita shares how changing her approach to one-on-one meetings helped create space for more meaningful conversations. Instead of leading with a list of questions, she starts by asking, "What's on your mind?" or "What do you need me most for right now?" And then comes the hardest part: staying quiet long enough to listen. Effective one-on-one meetings give managers an opportunity to understand employee frustrations, identify problems early, discuss career goals, and build trust. Those are conversations that rarely happen when the entire meeting is spent reviewing a project checklist. Donita also shares a simple way to evaluate your next meeting: Who did most of the talking? If it was you, you might be running a status meeting instead of a true one-on-one. Also in this episode: Donita introduces Mission Made Simple, her book and 90-minute workshop designed to help managers develop a one-sentence decision-making filter so teams can move forward with greater clarity and alignment. Resources mentioned: Mission Made Simple book: [https://www.amazon.ie/Mission-Made-Simple-Donita-Brown/dp/173402612X] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown Find us at www.management-minute.com About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail "Great job, team!" We've all said it. We've probably all heard it, too. But how much does that kind of praise actually mean? In this episode of The Management Minute, Dr. Donita Brown explains why generic praise often falls short and how managers can make employee recognition more meaningful. The difference comes down to being specific. Instead of simply telling someone they did a great job, tell them what they did well and why it mattered. Recognize the behavior and the result. Whether it's the way someone handled a difficult client, supported a new employee, or helped a project succeed, specific praise shows people you're paying attention. It also helps your team understand what good work looks like. Donita shares a few practical reminders for giving effective praise at work: Recognize specific behaviors and their impact.Give praise while the moment is still fresh.Understand whether your employees prefer public or private recognition.Keep it genuine. Manufactured praise can damage trust.Because meaningful employee recognition isn't about making a big announcement. It's about noticing the right things and taking the time to acknowledge them. Here's your challenge: Who on your team has done something good that you haven't recognized yet? Go tell them today. Find us at www.management-minute.com About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail Getting promoted to manager is exciting, but what happens when you're suddenly responsible for leading the same people who used to be your coworkers? One day you're part of the team, sharing lunch, conversations, and frustrations. The next, you're making decisions that affect those same people. And nobody really prepares you for how awkward that transition can feel. In this episode of The Management Minute, Dr. Donita Brown discusses one of the hardest transitions in leadership: going from peer to manager. Some new managers try to keep everything exactly the same, avoiding difficult decisions because they don't want to upset their former peers. Others go to the opposite extreme, distancing themselves from the team and damaging relationships they've spent years building. Neither approach works particularly well. Instead, Donita explains why new managers need to acknowledge the change, establish clear boundaries, and treat everyone fairly, even when that means their closest workplace friendships have to evolve. You can still be warm, approachable, and supportive. But your responsibilities have changed, and pretending otherwise only creates confusion. If you've recently been promoted or are preparing to manage your former coworkers, this episode is for you. And if you've already made that transition, here's a question worth considering: Are you still trying to be one of the group, or have you fully stepped into your role as their leader? Find us at www.management-minute.com About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail Can the people on your team tell you the truth, especially when something goes wrong? Psychological safety has become a common workplace term, but what does it actually look like in practice? In this episode of The Management Minute, Dr. Donita Brown breaks psychological safety down into a simple question: Do the people who work for you feel safe enough to speak up? Can they ask a question they think might sound dumb? Own a mistake? Bring you bad news? Push back on a decision without worrying they'll pay for it later? Research on team effectiveness has shown why those questions matter. Google’s research into effective teams identified psychological safety as an important factor in how successful teams work together. Earlier research by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson also examined the relationship between team climate and the reporting of mistakes. For managers, there’s an important distinction: psychological safety doesn’t mean lowering expectations. Strong teams can have both high standards and an environment where people feel comfortable speaking honestly about problems, mistakes, questions, and disagreements. Dr. Brown shares two practical ways managers can start building that environment: Pay attention to your first reaction when someone brings you bad news. And openly acknowledge something you got wrong. Because your reaction teaches people whether it’s safe to come to you again. One final gut check: When was the last time someone on your team told you that you were wrong? If you can’t remember, it might be worth asking why. Find us at www.management-minute.com About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail What should you do when you’re convinced your boss is making the wrong decision? Most people take one of two approaches. They stay quiet, nod along, and complain about the decision later. Or they challenge their boss in the moment and turn a disagreement into a standoff. Neither one is particularly useful. In this episode of The Management Minute, Dr. Donita Brown offers a third option for how to disagree with your boss professionally: go to them privately, go early, and say it once. Instead of simply saying you don’t like the decision, come prepared to explain what you’re seeing, why you’re concerned, and what your boss may need to consider before moving forward. Then comes the harder part. Once the decision has been made, commit to moving forward with the team, even if your recommendation wasn’t chosen. Being willing to respectfully disagree and then support the final decision can make you the kind of employee whose opinion leaders actively seek out. Of course, ethical concerns are different. If a decision involves something unethical or wrong, simply going along with it is not the answer. But most workplace disagreements aren’t questions of right versus wrong. They’re judgment calls. And in those situations, how you disagree can matter just as much as whether you turn out to be right. So the next time you’re sure your boss is wrong, don’t stay silent and don’t go to war. Try the third option. Find us at www.management-minute.com About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail What makes someone a good mentor? It may have less to do with having the right answers and more to do with asking the right questions. In this episode of The Management Minute, Dr. Donita Brown shares a lesson she learned from years of mentoring students and professionals: the mentor shouldn’t do the hard work for the mentee. It can be tempting to share your own experience and tell someone exactly what you think they should do. But your career isn’t their career, and simply handing over an answer can take away an important part of the mentoring process. Instead, Dr. Brown encourages mentors and managers to slow down and ask thoughtful questions that help people work through decisions for themselves. This matters for managers, too. Asking better questions can help employees develop the confidence and critical thinking skills to work through problems before coming to you. And when it comes to your own growth, one mentor may not be enough. Dr. Brown also introduces the idea of building a Personal Board of Directors, a group of people who can offer different perspectives on your career, decisions, and development. This week’s reflection: When someone comes to you for an answer, will you give them the answer or ask them a thoughtful question instead? Personal Board of Directors Workbook: https://www.management-minute.com/store About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail What if one sign of good leadership is that your team needs you less? In this episode of The Management Minute, Dr. Donita Brown reflects on a lesson she has experienced both as a mother and as a leader: doing your job well sometimes means becoming less necessary. After recently dropping her daughter off at college, Dr. Brown found herself thinking about the strange tension that comes with watching someone become more independent. As a parent, the goal was never to remain the answer to everything. It was to teach, support, and eventually trust her daughters to handle more on their own. Leadership follows a similar pattern. When you first take responsibility for a team, people may come to you for decisions, approvals, answers, and direction. Being the person everyone needs can feel good. But effective leadership isn't about keeping people dependent on you. It's about developing people who can make decisions, take ownership, handle responsibilities you once carried, and even make a few safe mistakes along the way. Because the manager who stays in the middle of everything may feel important, but the manager who develops a team that can operate without constant involvement is building something that can last. Who on your team needs less of you than they did a year ago? And can you let that actually be the win? If your organization is working to develop stronger, more independent leaders and teams, Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops on leadership, followership, and resilience. About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail Resilience at work isn't about how much pressure you can take. It's about how you recover. For years, Dr. Donita Brown believed resilience meant pushing through, working harder, and making sure the people around her never saw that she was tired. Eventually, that approach contributed to burnout that affected her both personally and professionally. In this episode of The Management Minute, Dr. Brown challenges the idea that resilience and toughness are the same thing. Instead, she looks at resilience as a recovery skill and what that means for managers trying to build healthier, more sustainable teams. Just as athletes need recovery between periods of physical stress, employees and leaders need space to recover from demanding work. Yet many workplaces continually increase the load without intentionally creating room for recovery. For managers, that can mean allowing breathing room after a major project, noticing when someone has had an unusually difficult week, checking in with employees, and modeling healthy recovery yourself. Because recovery isn't something you earn when all the work is finished. Recovery has to be part of the work. This week's reflection: Where in your team's rhythm has recovery gone missing, and where can you put it back? If this topic hits close to home, Dr. Brown has created a short burnout assessment to help you take a closer look at where you are. Find it in the links below. Take the Burnout Assessment: [https://www.management-minute.com/burnout-gut-check] Learn more about The Management Minute: [management-minute.com] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown on LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail What changes when you slow down and write feedback by hand? In this episode of The Management Minute, Dr. Donita Brown explores why handwritten feedback can still have a place in a workplace increasingly shaped by speed, technology, and AI. After asking a classroom of students to complete peer feedback with pen and paper, Dr. Brown began thinking about what happens when we intentionally slow down the process of giving feedback. Research on handwriting suggests that writing by hand engages the brain differently than typing, although researchers continue to debate what those differences mean for learning and memory. But after more than 20 years of giving feedback, Dr. Brown has noticed something much more practical: slowing down changes the way we choose our words. Whether it’s constructive feedback for an employee, a note to someone who is capable of more, or a handwritten thank you for a job well done, putting pen to paper creates a moment to think more deliberately about what you want to say. This week’s challenge is simple: the next time you have meaningful feedback to give, don’t type it. Write it. It could be a few sentences on a card or even one sentence on a Post-it note. Then consider: Whose feedback have you been outsourcing to speed? And who on your team would remember receiving a handwritten note from you? About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail How do you give difficult feedback without damaging a working relationship? Dr. Donita Brown shares a personal experience with a trusted advisor who needed to tell her something she didn't want to hear. Instead of rushing into the conversation, he did something simple: he asked whether she had the time and headspace to receive his feedback. That small gesture changed how the conversation unfolded. In this episode of The Management Minute, Donita explores why timing, trust, and asking permission matter when delivering honest feedback. She also reflects on what she's learned from more than 20 years of giving feedback, including moments when she didn't get it right. Whether you're a manager, team leader, or colleague, this episode is a reminder that how you start a difficult conversation can make all the difference in how your message is received. Before your next feedback conversation, ask yourself: Is this person ready to hear what I have to say? About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail What if building better habits had less to do with discipline and more to do with consistency? Dr. Donita Brown shares how a simple morning routine taught her an important lesson about motivation, willpower, and the power of small daily habits. In this episode of The Management Minute, she explores why relying on motivation doesn't always work, how repeating small actions can turn them into lasting habits, and why consistency is especially important for managers. Whether it's holding regular one-on-one meetings, communicating project updates, or following through on commitments, the small things you do consistently help build trust with your team. What's one small habit you could start today that would make you a better leader tomorrow? About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail 47 seconds. That's how long the average person stays on one screen before switching to something else. The number comes from Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine, who has spent two decades measuring what people actually do at their computers. When she started, the average was about two and a half minutes. It's been falling ever since. In this episode, Dr. Donita Brown looks at what that means for anyone who runs a meeting. When you're presenting or giving feedback, you're competing with a brain trained to move every 47 seconds, and with the phone sitting face up on the table. But the research says something hopeful too: attention isn't broken. People hold focus for long stretches when the task absorbs them and the interruptions stop. Attention is a resource, and your environment either spends it or protects it. Two things you can do this week:  Put one question at the top of your agenda, so attention has somewhere to land.  Work in blocks, one task, notifications off, phone out of sight. This week's reflection question: in the last meeting you ran, what was the one thing you needed people to walk out with? And if you couldn't name it, could they? Under five minutes, one idea for your next meeting. Let's connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown/ About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]

Send us Fan Mail On a country road near Johnson City, Tennessee, a donkey ignored Donita and her dad completely. The next morning, all it took was his name and a pocketful of apples, and he crossed the whole field to reach them. What changed wasn't the donkey. Somebody had told them what he cared about. In this episode, Dr. Donita Brown turns a summer walk into a question for managers: who on your team is standing on the far side of the field, and have you called them by name in the way that counts? And who already knows what they care about, if you'd ask? Two questions to carry into Monday. Under five minutes. Two short emails a week, Thursday tip and Sunday reflection: https://tinyurl.com/r4bwesfc Connect with Donita on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/DonitaBrown About The Management Minute: Practical leadership and management ideas you can actually use. The Management Minute with Dr. Donita Brown delivers short, actionable conversations on leadership, communication, resilience, workplace culture, and professional growth. Bring The Management Minute to Your Organization Dr. Donita Brown leads in-person and virtual workshops designed to help leaders and teams communicate better, build resilience, and strengthen the way they work together. Interested in bringing a workshop to your organization? Learn more or get in touch here: [https://www.management-minute.com/workshops] Connect with Dr. Donita Brown LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/donitabrown] Management Minute: [https://www.management-minute.com/]