Paper shuffling?

AVOID THIS BY:

• Touch each piece of paper once
• Clear your desk of piles – remove clutter
• Discard all non relevant documents
• Do one task at a time on your desk

Unproductive meetings?

AVOID THIS BY:

• Make meeting agendas focussed, specific and stick to them!
•  Start on time and finish on time, don’t wait for late comers
•  Circulate a written agenda and make participants prepare before meetings
•  Limit numbers at meetings

    Procrastination?

AVOID THIS BY:

•    Do it then review it – often better than thinking about it
•   Write a master list or action plan
•  Refer to longer term goals
•  Break large tasks into smaller ones 
•  Give yourself a reward for completing tasks
•  Create a deadline and try to stick to it

Poor Delegation?

AVOID THIS BY:

•  Determine what tasks only you can do, and delegate other tasks – don’t be a control freak!
•  If you delegate, give a proper brief and seek confirmation of understanding
•  Focus on the desired outcome, not how they achieve it – “80% is good”
•  Communicate deadlines upfront
•  Praise releases energy, criticism kills confidence

 Phone calls?

AVOID THIS BY:

• Watch the clock, get a timer
• Focus on the purpose of the phone call
• If someone calls, be upfront with the caller as to how long you have to chat. Be polite 
• Summarise the key points to wrap up the call

Visitors?

AVOID THIS BY:

• Be upfront, set a time to start with
• Keep the conversation formal
• Use subtle body language
• More unusual techniques:

o    Ask your visitor if you can get them a taxi

o    Sit close to your visitor and take your shoes off

o    Walk out and just ask them to turn the lights off on their way out

Inability to say ‘No’?

• Saying yes to every request equates to saying no to hours and minutes you need for yourself.
• The inability to say ‘no’ stems from an over keen desire to please or ego.
• If it does not contribute to your goals, why are you doing it – it just fills time!

Email?

AVOID THIS BY:

• Sometimes face to face for phone conversations are quicker
• Keep inbox empty except for current tasks 
• Don’t go near email when working on an important task
• Have a set time to respond to emails

Why not do something about it this week?

Let’s come up with some time effective things that you can do to improve the rapport with someone you work with.  It could be your boss; it could be one team member who’s not really on board, or it could be a client or co-worker.  It’s up to you.

Have you got a person in mind?  Good.

First step is to think about what sort of work and communication style that person has. 

·           Are they a fast talker – get straight to the point?  Do they like to be in control? 

·           Are they someone who’s very talkative and energetic and enthusiastic? 

·           Or are they someone who is very steady, very careful and very conscientious, a good team player and a good listener.

·           Or, the fourth work style, which is someone who’s very careful, asks lots of questions, attention to detail, a good thinker.

What points of their work style are different to yours?  Because sometimes it’s the difference in these work and communication styles that can cause a bit of friction or conflict in the workplace.

Do you know what that person’s strengths and weaknesses are?  What are the things they are good at at work and what are the things they are not so good at?

Chances are it’s the things they are not so good at are the things that might be frustrating you.  Perhaps because you’re good at those particular skills.  This means you could have a good complementary work relationship, but it might be a bit frustrating for both of you at times.  Particularly, if it’s one of their blind spots – things you can see they’re not so good at, but maybe they’re not aware of.  

Finally, the last thing to think about is what are that other person’s priorities? And even what are the things that worry them about work that might keep them awake at night?

If you are aware of these you might be able to start gaining some understanding or perspective of what they have on their plate.

Now, this might sound like a lot of work for you to take on, but the good news is if you take some of these steps in that direction and build rapport most cases you find that other person reciprocates and your work relationship improves very quickly.

So why not give it a try and let me know how you get on.

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.

This week Aleen Bayard talks about Teamwork.

Have you ever been on a team or leading a team and things just weren’t quite right?  You couldn’t really put your finger on what was missing, or what was wrong.

Author Patrick Lencioni’s written a great book called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team that helps all managers better understand and diagnose what might be not quite right about their team.  Here are the five dysfunctions that often occur.

1.     Lack of trust  - Teams with an absence of trust don’t know each other well and they’re unwilling to ask for help or say I don’t know.  This is really important particularly with complex projects or engagements or if you have got new members coming on to a team.  The ability to say “I’m not sure” about something and ask for clarification is very important. So the first thing you want to see is what’s the level of trust among your team members.

2.     Lack of conflict  - We’re talking about the ability to talk about an issue or have an honest dialogue if you’re not agreeing with someone’s position or to ask for more information.

3.     Lack of commitment – Often we agree with each other in public, then we go after the meeting and start gossiping.  If you are unable to have conflict in a team, then you are obviously not going to get to a strong level of commitment and alignment.  One way to do this is to make sure that at the end of each meeting or conversation say “Do I have everybody’s buy-in”, and if not let that person air their grievance or concern.

4.     Lack of accountability – Too often we rely on the leader to be accountable, and to hold us accountable.  We need to hold each other accountable.  That’s something you should be encouraging on your teams.  

5.     Lack of results – We don’t often have a sense of collective win.  We look at individual departments, individual agendas, or individual budgets.  Try and foster a sense of collective win on your team.

These are five elements or steps you can take to ensure a more productive working team that not only get along better and have a better rapport, but most importantly do a better job for the organisation.

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 I discuss how most of us would all like a bit of extra time in our working day.  But as you can’t buy more time, we need to do something else.

I talk about how to work smarter not harder.

1.     You need to know what your goals are to make sensible prioritising decisions to manage your time.

2.     Identify what your time wasters are.  Work out if its emails, phone calls or visitors, and put in place strategies to overcome them.

3.     Manage your work relationships.  Most of us find that the biggest thing that takes up our time is relying and waiting on others.  It’s important that others, your boss, team and other key relationships understand what your priorities and objectives are and make sure you agree on these so that you can work effectively together.

It’s worth spending some time doing this as it will save you time in the long run.

Let me know what you have done this week to work smarter not harder.

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 Steven and Carol show you how to conduct a Performance Appraisal Interview.

Performance Review interviews -  both managers and employees tell us they are nervous about them.  Why is that?  Perhaps it’s because they have had a poor experience previously. 

Whatever the case, as a manager you need to make sure that’s it’s effective and worthwhile for both you and the employee. 

Here’s some tips that can help :

·           Make sure that you recognise the outcome of a performance review interview should be a learning and development plan for the employee for the next 6 to 12 months. 

·           Remember, a review interview is not about a remuneration review or an opportunity to talk about really poor performance and corrective action.  It should be about developing a learning and developing plan for the employee. 

·           Therefore to make it work best, remember that you should do some preparation and make sure you give the employee a few days notice before the interview so they have a chance to prepare as well. 

·           Use documentation, with a few questions that each of you can consider in preparation for the interview. 

·           And when you are in the interview make sure you try and focus on talking about what you like as a manager going forward, rather than a history lesson on what has or hasn’t worked previously. 

To demonstrate some of the key points of the interview process, our HR expert Carol Shepherd will act as the Manager and Steven will act as the employee.  As we pick up the action you will see that Carol is opening the discussion with some key points.

Carol   “Steven just before we go into the appraisal this afternoon I just wanted to go through with you the process that we are going to use.  So what I’d like to do is to ask you how you think you’ve performed in each one of the key performance areas that are on your appraisal form, so I can get your feedback.  Then we can have a discussion around that.”

Carol will now show us how to give some feedback on good performance.

Carol   “I really want to congratulate you on the effort that you’ve put in to bring in those four big key accounts, and especially in the last quarter.  You’ve made a significant contribution to the organisation.  So whatever you’ve been doing there, is working really well obviously for you, and for the organisation.  So, great work there.”

Now Carol will demonstrate how to give some feedback on not so good performance.

Carol   “One of the areas that I am concerned about is the issue that we talked about a few weeks ago with perceived conflict between Jane and Mary, which has now kind of spilled over into the other team members and I know that we agreed that you would deal with that, as their manager.  I just wanted to know how you are progressing with that, and what else we need to do.”

Carol   “OK, so you’ve mentioned that maybe you’re a bit uncomfortable in dealing with that situation.  Would you be interested in some assistance either from myself or perhaps some training.  A conflict management workshop might give you a bit more confidence to deal with that.” 

Steven “Yes, I’d like that.”

Carol   “Have you got any ideas of your preferred way of doing that?  …….Great, I’m pleased that you are willing to go along and get some skills because managing your people is a really critical success factor for the future.” 

A critical part is to sum up and close the meeting well.  Carol is going to show us how.

Carol  “Steven you should be very proud of the year that you have had.  You’ve made a significant contribution to our results and exceeded the budget.  So well done for that.  The other area that we are concerned about is the people management side.  That is perhaps, maybe not your most favourite side, but let’s see if we can work on that.  As we mentioned, you are keen to have some conflict management training.  Let’s meet next Friday and look at the courses that you’ve outlined that you might be interested in attending.” 

Steven “That sounds really good.”

Carol   “Steven what we’d like to do now is, I will make sure that you have got a copy of the documentation on all the points that we have agreed on, so that we can work on the action plan for the next planning period.  I will make sure that you get a copy of that for yourself, and the other copy will go on your personnel file.  Thank you for a great year.”

Steven “Thank you very much, thanks Carol.”

I hope those tips were helpful.  Did you notice that Carol, at each stage, asked for Steven’s input as the employee, as well as having her say as manager. 

If you would like some further assistance on this topic, a ‘how to do effective performance appraisals’ workshop is being help on 25 March (Tauranga) and 29 June (Gisborne).

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 social media marketing for your business.

Many of us are wondering why we need to be so conscious of on-line media and social networks.  It’s no longer just a place for kids to meet on Facebook.    Here are some things you should be thinking about in terms of how to leverage your business on-line.

1.     First of all do you have a Facebook account?

Businesses today are using Facebook as a way of creating Fans to learn more about their business and to connect their customers together to create even more advocacy for their products and services.

2.     Secondly, Twitter can be an excellent way to get out immediate notification about products. Let’s say you are putting something on sale or you’re introducing a new product.  Twitter would be an excellent way to get that out to your market place.

Blogging is important, even if you don’t have a blog yourself.  You want to be checking what other bloggers are saying about your product, your staff, or your services. 

3.     And the third thing you want to think about is Linkedin.  It’s the fastest growing site for professionals. 

So well beyond your website you want to think about how you can use social networking to increase your reputation and your presence. 

One of the most important phenomenon here is that the organisation doesn’t only go to its customers through the website, but you are actually having your customers talk about you and become advocates for your business.  These are really important reasons why you want to think about social media.

Finally, are you effectively using your email?

Think about client alerts, newsletters, even eBooks.  Other things you might be able to put onto a podcast or even  on www.youtube.com     For example your CEO doing an important speech. 

Take a look at some recent research conducted by the Neilsen Company. 

·           Social networks and blogs are the fourth most popular online activity, ahead of personal email. 

·           And over two-thirds of the overall global online community now visit these sites.

That’s why it’s so important for you to have a handle on your online presence and to have an online strategy.   

You can see what MBE is doing on Facebook by going to  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Management-Business-Education/409875285647?ref=ts

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.