Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team at LifeHacker, where we help you improve your life one week at a time.

I'm Melissa Kirsch, editor-in-chief of Lifehacker.

And I'm Alice Bradley, LifeHacker's deputy editor and a real son of a time. I'm Melissa Kirsch, editor-in-chief of Lifehacker. And I'm Alice Bradley, Lifehacker's deputy editor, and a real son of a gun. And today we're talking about how to be a good

boss. So frequently, people are good at making a thing, and they get promoted to be the supervisors

of the other people who are making the thing without any training as to how to lead them.

Do good bosses just pick up leadership skills on the job?

Do they have mentors or coaches or just extraordinarily high EQs?

What separates good bosses from horrible ones?

And how can just so-so bosses get better at it?

First, we'll get a sense of what makes a good boss with the author of LifeHackers'

brand new career advice column, Human Resource, Rob Walker. If someone knows how to code, they know

how to code. If they don't, you better train them. Let's just assume that because they did

something else, that they can just magically have this new ability. Then we'll meet a real live executive coach.

Admit it, you too have always wondered what the hell an executive coach does.

Organizational psychologist Jen Goldman-Wetzler is here to tell us how she makes bad bosses better.

Being a good leader is a lot like being a good parent.

And finally, the creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder of Basecamp,

David Heinemeyer Hansen, tells us how to make a workplace that's not crazy in five steps.

Let's get to the show!

Self-help is a segment in which we pose pressing questions to the experts on the Lifehacker team.

This week, we're asking what makes a good boss.

Our guest is Rob Walker, the author of Lifehacker's brand new advice column, Human Resource.

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