The dreaded micromanager may have some competition: the undermanager. After reading the cover story, you'll learn why undermanaging is not a behavior you'll want to exhibit and recognize that neither type of manager is someone employees want as a supervisor.

You're busy. I get it. We all are. But as author Bruce Tulgan contends in his article, that's no reason to leave your employees without a present and engaged leader—one who meets regularly with them one on one to discuss matters beyond the surface level. "It may seem that \[managers\] are spending a lot of time communicating with their direct reports, but most of that communication is low structure and low substance," Tulgan writes.

In the end, you may come to regret those in-passing chats and fleeting check-ins when a project your team is working on goes awry. Could you have helped prevent the setbacks by simply asking a few key questions beforehand? If you had inquired about the steps your team had most recently taken, would you have recognized the slow drip before the deluge?

"The process of maintaining high-structure, high-substance, ongoing one-on-one dialogues really works wonders," Tulgan asserts. Give it a try.