This week in the every Tuesday Club I talk about how as a leader or manager at work, you need to think about what perception you create within the team and in the workplace.

Let’s look at the impact of your behaviour and appearance at work.

The first thing you need to do is decide what sort of leader you want to be.  Write down 3 words you’d like your employees to use to describe your leadership style.

During the week think about the things that contribute to your image as a leader and manager in your workplace and compare them against those words.  Make sure you are delivering a consistent perception.

The things you need to think about are:

1.     How you say things – What language do you use?  How do you speak?  Is it a consistent tone of voice?  Are you loud?  Are you abrupt?  Are you patient? 

2.     How do you behave?  Do you move quickly around the office, looking in a fluster? Or do you walk slowly and calmly?  How do you act at meetings?  How do you talk to your team?  How do you talk and act with clients?

3.     Your work area or office – How does it look?  Is it untidy? Is it organised?  Is it clean?  Is it cluttered?

4.     Are you responsive and accessible to your team?  Or are you difficult to get hold of?

5.     Your personal appearance – How do you dress? How tidy are you?  Your cleanliness? Are you casual? Are you formal? 

These are all things that say something about you as a leader and a manager.

So during the week think about those 3 words, review the list and see if you can project a more consistent image as a leader.

Let me know what behaviour or appearances you have noticed about yourself and what you will look at changing.

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to sign up to the Every Tuesday Club with MBE (Management & Business Education), then do so today by going to www.buseducation.com.

This week let’s talk about values.  Values are an important tool for leaders and managers to use.  They help you define the behaviour and your expectations as a boss.

Does your organisation have values?  Larger organisations have them displayed on the wall and use them in corporate documents.  But often when it gets down to a team level they don’t have as much meaning. 

You might work for an organisation that doesn’t have any written values.  I think it is a good idea as a leader to try at least within your team to define some values or expectations of behaviour.

Values fit into business strategy as describing how the work is done.  Why we do the work is often the mission or purpose.  The what we do is the objectives, but the how we do it is important to describe because often that is what determines quality.  The difference that separates you from the rest of your industry – your competitive advantage.  So defining it is of critical business importance.

Coming up with values for your team is easy.  Whether they already exist for your organisation or not.  If you don’t have anything to go by, there’s a simple process you can go through.

1.     Get a flip chart and sit your team down.  Draw a big square. 

2.     Inside the square ask your team members to write the dos of how they should work together and behave.  Being accountable might be one; another one might be sharing the work load. 

3.     Then on the outside of the square, ask them to write the don’ts.  Gossiping, putting people down at meetings, and so on.

4.     Once you have got this from them, you as the leader can go away and refine them and come up with some ground rules, phrases or words that describe the values and how your team will behave and work together. 

By going through that first step in the process of involving your team, gets buy-in, they’ll own the values as much as you will.  Once they’re established they’re good for you as a leader to use to reinforce what your expectations are from your team. 

Try it this week, and let me know how you and your team get on.

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to sign up to the Every Tuesday Club with MBE (Management & Business Education), then do so today by going to www.buseducation.com.

This week in the every Tuesday Club Aleen Bayard discusses Emotional Intelligence. 

Emotional Intelligence typically has five components:

1.     Self Awareness;

2.     Self regulation or control;

3.     Motivation;

4.     Empathy; and

5.     Social skills.

Why are these important to those of you in leadership?  Because there has been a direct correlation between those leaders who show great emotional intelligence and the impact on the culture or climate of an organisation.  In a positive climate, employees are more engaged, do a better job and that leads to better customer service.  Better customer service equates to stronger profits.

So how can you become more emotionally intelligent?  Probably by getting a handle on what we call ‘self regulation’.

Think of a situation, either a person or a condition at the office, where you tend to lose your cool.  Next time bite your tongue.  Take a deep breath.  Think about your behaviour in public and choose another time or place to vent your anger.  That will immediately score you higher on the Emotional Intelligence Quotient. 

This is an important subject for all leaders to understand and demonstrate in the workplace.

Practice ‘self regulation’ this week and see what a difference it can make.

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to sign up to the Every Tuesday Club with MBE (Management & Business Education), then do so today by going to www.buseducation.com.

This week let’s talk about how you can boost the performance of somebody in your team.   

This week let’s tackle the tough message – when you have to tell an employee that you are not happy with their performance, about what they are doing wrong and how you would like it improved.

Work place surveys around New Zealand that I’ve seen consistently show that managers in New Zealand are not good at dealing with poor performance.  In fact, they avoid it.  I’m not sure why, it could be because of the employment law, people are scared that they’ll get a personal grievance.  It could be just because we’re reluctant to tell people that they’re not going well.  But it’s not only about losing the investment you’re making in that individual it is also a de-motivator for good workers to see someone performing poorly and getting away with it.

So let’s look at some principals that might help you to deal with poor performance.

1.     The first principal is P= SC²  or Performance = Skill x confidence ²

That is confidence has more to do with improving performance than skills.  Thus, in giving feedback about improving performance we need to make sure that we maintain or boost that individual’s confidence and do not undermine them.

2.     The second principal to remember is to maintain the confidence we need to focus on giving feedback and talking about the event or the performance and its impact on the business not their traits or the individual.

Depersonalise the language you use.  Say “When our monthly reporting figures are incorrect, we provide poor information to management and that leads to …” and so on.  Rather than “You made a mistake on the reports again.  It was so embarrassing.  You are really not paying attention to your work, are you?”

We need to be aware of blame culture.  Blame culture can stem from when leaders start giving feedback which is personalised and makes the person feel guilty about their performance or work.  This is actually going to undermine their confidence and lead to worse performance.

3.     The third principal is to make sure that we focus on the employee owning the solution not the problem.  What this means is that they’ll take responsibility for the change in behaviour that you require rather than feeling bad about what went wrong.

4.     The fourth and final principal is 2 to 24.  What I mean by that is give the feedback at least 2 hours after the poor performance and within 24 hours.  Two hours allows you to cool down and 24 hours means it’s still relevant.

Let’s not forget that the most import part of success in our role as a manager or leader is the people that we work with and how they perform.  It’s the most difficult part of our work and I hope these tips will be useful this week in boosting someone’s performance in your team.

Don’t forget to let me know how you get on.

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to sign up to the Every Tuesday Club with MBE (Management & Business Education), then do so today by going to www.buseducation.com.