Being a better boss is big business, with no end to the number of people who will sell you a new program, conference, or book on how to lead. But instead of walking away empowered, many managers feel overwhelmed by these leadership offers, spending thousands of dollars unnecessarily to be the best.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There are unlimited free and inexpensive resources available to leaders who want to improve, from podcasts to apps to blogs. To help you on your journey to better management, I’ve sorted through them all and pulled out the best of the best.
Get ready to take your skills to the next level. Here are 70+ great resources for becoming a better boss:
Podcasts
Podcasts help you work on your leadership skills by providing real-life advice, along with interviews with current leaders in the workplace. Even better? You can listen to podcasts on-the-go, whenever you have the time. I’m a big fan of turning one on during my commute and putting that otherwise unaccounted for time to productive use.
Not sure where to start? Here are some you should save (try the Jabbercast tool to easily save and categorise podcasts) for future listening:
- The Productive Woman by Laura McClellan
- Being Boss by Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon
- Manager Tools by Mike Auzenne and Mark Horstman
- Get it Done Guy by Stever Robbins
- Back to Work by Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin
- Coaching for Leaders by Dave Stachowiak
- Beyond the To Do List by Erik Fisher
- Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders from Stanford University
- Off the Charts by Nathalie Lussier
Ebooks
Reading is a necessary investment of your time, which is why all successful leaders make time for the books that help them become better bosses. And don’t try to tell me you’re too strapped for time to read. Take it from Kelsey Meyer, VP of Digital Talent Agents, writing for Forbes:
“Time never “appears” for anything; you have to make it. If you are a leader, you should be striving to develop knowledge to improve yourself, your company, and the people who work for you. To do anything less is to shortchange your ability to lead.”
Not only do you have the time, you don’t need a big investment of cash or space to become a voracious reader. The following ebooks will make a big difference in your career – and they’re all free (or nearly free):
- Getting There: A Book of Mentors by Gillian Zoe Segal
- Time Really Is Money by Rob Slee
- Content Machine by Dan Norris
- Mastering Business Email by Josh Doody
- 100 Days of Growth by Sujan Patel & Rob Wormley
- All In Startup by Diana Kander
- Time Management by Biz Library
- Building And Sustaining A Winning Culture by John Spence
- Becoming a Marketing Master by Haydn Symons
Apps and Tools
Learning is great, but it can only take you so far. The real test of a leader is how they apply the things they learn. Imagine, for example, that you pick up the 100 Days of Growth ebook I recommended above. It’s all about ways to boost your business productivity and profitability, but what if you read the book once and then never put any of its suggested practices into place?
Sure, you’d have gained the knowledge from reading it, but without applying its lessons, you’re missing out on nearly all the other benefits you could have achieved.
Ultimately, taking action is the “secret sauce” that brings you success. Here are some apps and tools you can use to streamline your business tasks:
- Awesome Boss makes it easy to engage, recognise, and reward your team
- Braavoo provides solutions to appreciate your team’s’ great work
- GreenHouse takes the frustration out of recruiting
- The Free Help Guy allows you to request help for free – and return the favour as well
- Toolbird is a directory of online tools that lets you find the best one for the job
- WooBoard is a cloud-based employee recognition platform that helps you motivate your team
- Wisp is an app that makes it simple to create an online employee handbook for your company
- Flow allows you to easily organise your team’s communication so nothing is overlooked
- WorkLife makes it easy to create and share meeting agendas within Google Calendar
- When I Work makes it easy to produce schedules that employees can see online, allowing you to reduce absenteeism while saving time (I might be biased with this one…)
Blog Posts
Blogs are a simple way to find helpful and free information. Of course, the downside is there are too many useless articles out there that finding truly valuable insights can be hard. Don’t even try to tell me that you’ve never fallen down the Google rabbit hole of searching for one thing, only to be misled by the thousands of other seemingly-helpful (but actually worthless) resources out there.
To make life easier, bookmark these blog posts to help you be a better boss:
- 7 Great Employee Retention Strategies by Chad Halvorson, CEO of When I Work
- 3 Things Managers Should Be Doing Every Day from Harvard Business Review
- 4 Leadership Exercises for Introverts by Dan Nicholson of Medium.com
- Small Business & HR: How to Hire the Right Person the First Time from Drake Pulse
- How to Hire Hiring Managers Who Know How to Manage from Inc.
- How to Manage Employee Expectations of Your Company by Paul Keijzer from Engage Asia
- 7 Ways Managers Can Prevent Employee Burnout from Vincent Benjamin
- 20 Questions to Ask in Effective Employee Performance Management Conversations from Quantum Workplace
- 15 Habits That Will Totally Transform Your Productivity from Fast Company
- 40 Productivity Quotes From Successful People from NG Careers
Slide Decks
I love slide decks – when they’re done well. When executed properly, a good slide deck is far more engaging to view than your typical article and is far better at presenting its salient points for viewer retention.
The Slideshare website makes it easy to locate key information about being a better leader; however, you do have to put in some work to find the stand-outs with the most helpful takeaways. To save you time, I took a look through my favourites and identified a few slide decks all leaders should see.
10 Things Extraordinary Bosses Give to Employees
How To Battle Employee Turnover
Customer Retention: Why Your Dog Would Make More Money Than You
20 Inspirational Customer Experience Quotes
10 Essential Pillars of Employee Engagement
15 Employee Engagement Activities That You Can Start Doing Now
How to Optimise Your Team’s Productivity: A Culture Handbook for Founders
10 Steps Great Leaders Take When Things Go Wrong
YouTube Videos
YouTube may one of the most powerful learning tools out there, offering everything from interviews to tutorials to testimonials. And despite what you may think, it isn’t all cat videos and Gangam Style. There’s actually a surprising amount of helpful managerial content that can be found on the websites.
Unfortunately, finding the best content on your own can be challenging at best, given that YouTube users upload 300 hours of content every minute. Cut through the noise with the following top YouTube Videos that all bosses should see.
- The 2 Skills You Need to Be a Leader
- 10 Ways to Motivate Employees
- How To Motivate Employees?
- World’s Best Boss
- The Keys To Success
- Steve Jobs Talks About Managing People
- Why Good Leaders Make You Feel Safe
- How Great Leaders Inspire Action
- How To Find Fulfilment At Work
- The Truth About Hard Work and Success
Business Courses
There are plenty of courses out there that cost thousands of dollars and require you to take time off work and make a major commitment to attend. Not these. The following courses are all free (or very inexpensive) and give you the freedom to learn at your own pace, on your own time:
- Primer is a free app that gives you bite-sized lessons on marketing
- Carnegie Mellon course: Entrepreneurship and Business Planning offers free access to this top-tier university course
- TNW Academy by The Next Web features inexpensive courses to transform both your personal and professional life
- Jack of All Skills is an inexpensive program that allows you to learn new skills in only 30 days
- LearnHero teaches specific marketing skills without a major financial investment
- Entrepreneurial Behaviour is offered for free through Open University
- Marketing 101: A Guide to Winning Customers is a 30 minute lecture offered by the Small Business Administration
- HubSpot Academy is free marketing training that helps you learn how to attract and engage customers
- Introduction to Marketing, as offered at Wharton, is free through Coursera
- Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence is a class offered through Case Western Reserve University, and is free through Coursera
Twitter Chats
Twitter is a fast and easy platform for connecting with fellow leaders and experts in your industry, and one of the best ways to use this network is to get active with Twitter chats.
Essentially, a Twitter chat is a real-time conversation that ties into a particular hashtag (#) so that participants can keep track of the feed. It can take a little bit of time to get comfortable with the formula, but once you’re in, you’ll learn new things while meeting people who may become friends or mentors who can help refine your leadership.
Here are some of the best Twitter chats bosses should follow:
- #beingbosschat is hosted by Being Boss podcasters Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon and takes place 4pm PT/7pm ET weekly
- #OWSchat is hosted by One Woman Shop and takes place 6pm PT/8pm ET once a month
- #nectarchat is hosted by The Nectar Collective and takes place 6pm PT/9pm ET weekly
- #creativebizchat is hosted by Little Farm Media and takes place 7pm PT/10pm ET weekly
- #savvychat is hosted by Heather Crabtree and takes place 8pm PT/11pm ET once a month
- #pocchat The Power of Connection chat discusses connection, leadership, and relationships with Bobby Umar Monday at 11 am EST/8 am PT
- #PMChat allows project managers to share thoughts on the skills and challenges of managing tasks and people and takes place Fridays at 12 pm EST/9 am PT
- #PeopleSkills covers communication, leadership, teamwork, customer service, and leading change in business and non-work life on Sundays at 10 am EST/7am PT
- #Mastermind allows discussion of personal development, business building, marketing, and business branding and takes place on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT.
- #BizHeros takes place at 2pm ET/11am PT every Tuesday
This list represents some of the best available resources for those who are looking to become a better boss. Even so, it’s far from exhaustive. So now, I want to hear from you.
What free or inexpensive resources do you recommend for learning new leadership skills and improving your work performance? Share your favourites by leaving a comment below.