Coach Train Learn

Building Employee Confidence - Is This a Clue?

One clue to recognizing a shortfall in employee confidence, might be if they sometimes becomes withdrawn or silent, especially when in a group setting, like meetings, or other team gatherings.

This can also indicate that you have employees who are not confident working as they are right now.

And another clue might be how an employee proposes their ideas to you?

If they start by saying that it may be a stupid idea, or that it won’t work, well, yes they are most likely lacking the confidence they need to help out to their full potential.

By giving constructive feedback and focusing on those things that your employees do well - and telling them - will help build confidence.

And just how much you need to build them up will vary from individual to individual, so you have to be very flexible with your approach too.

You may have absolutely no clue what could be wrong, so sitting the employee down for a one-to-one chat may help you learn.

If it seems like something is so wrong that they will struggle to carry on with their role, there may be a more serious problem and a bigger conversation to help them find the right solution might be of benefit to them and you.

If their issues are something that you are able to help them with, really do take the time consider it. Because your business is only going to run as well as your employees can deliver for you.

Employees who are lacking confidence or are unhappy will not bring the success you seek.

By building up employee confidence, you will see improved happiness (and with it, fun and joy) around the place, not to mention performance improvement too!

So, as you make sure that you let your employees know when they are doing something well, it really can make the difference and build confidence significantly.

When Employees Doing Their Best Is Good Enough

Managers always want the best from their people and that means that they expect them to deliver results to the criteria agreed.

Where their people fail to show up with the outcomes they want, that can mean that failure is so often the only way to describe what happened.

Savvy managers understand that when things don’t go to plan, there are opportunities to learn and grow for those involved, because most employees want their actions to deliver successes, yet they are keenly aware that there will be times when this simply does not happen.

Depending on their experiences, individuals have varying comfort levels with their line manager, such that they will fear failure or appreciate an opportunity to improve to achieve the standards and results expected.

It’s important for managers to understand that however an individual performs is likely to be their best shot this time round. Most employees want to succeed, if not for their manager, for their own sense of pride of achievement too.

Not meeting the desired outcomes can be a painful experience for an employee, so it’s vital that managers recognize their efforts, even where they have fallen short. Failing to do this is likely to heighten an employee’s sensitivities and confidence such that they may freeze in future, creating even worse performance.

One key action a good manager will take will be to investigate whether they themselves might have done anything differently to help their employee become successful. By accepting that they can learn and sharing that with the employee who has not achieved the standards required, will help that employee too.

No-one is perfect. Everyone tries to be. Individuals need support to understand that imperfection is allowed and ultimately, doing their best and then learning to be even better is often the best we can hope for.

And doing their best and growing in a fertile learning environment is often enough.

Employee Motivation - Why It Makes Sense

There are many different ways that you can motivate the people in your business.

It is worth trying a few different activities (some formal - others less so), to ensure that you are responding to the needs of as many of your staff as possible.

Another tactic may be to present your staff with a few different motivation ideas and get them to give you their feedback on what they think would motivate them the most. In fact, just asking them will motivate them in itself!

Sending employees to training sessions outside of the business can be very good for them, as well as benefiting your business through better trained staff. It shows your employees that you believe that they are worth investing time and effort in.

You can consider and try out different sorts of incentive schemes in your business, to encourage your staff to perform better. These incentives can be changed every couple of months to maximize engagement and maintain staff morale and hence performance.

Another great way to get employee motivated is to be as open and honest with your staff about the direction of the business and allow them to have a say and give their opinions.

You might not realize this, but they are likely to have given their workplace some thought too and will have useful ideas to share on different aspects of the business.

Being a good listener and being approachable is a very personal way to build engagement and motivation. A good flow of communication throughout your business also helps maintain efficiency and effectiveness too.

Regular staff meetings in which your staff get to communicate openly with you is essential for you to keep a gauge on staff sentiment and for them to share their ideas and feelings with you.

Above all, employee motivation is a great, fun and productive area to spend some time on, collaborating with those involved directly where possible.

Many of the ways to motivate involve little or no expense, and, where you develop this focus and skill will stand you in good stead as you grow and develop your team and business.

The Art of Managing Exceptions

It’s vital for any manager to create a disciplined approach to the way they manage their team.

Discipline enables a focused approach with employees and the deliverables that are their required goals.

Team and individual discipline includes a number of rules and protocols by which every member of the team knows what is and isn’t acceptable. This is good for everyone, because each knows where they stand.

With the rules of the team being understood by all, this can be very freeing, actually enabling much more creative work, because the boundaries of acceptability are clear.

So, with all this in mind, what happens when someone on the team wants to behave in a manner which is normally beyond the agreed way of working? What does a manager do when what one of the team feels is quite acceptable as an exception to the rule?

In fact this can be the ace up a manager’s sleeve in how they build the team and it requires a secondary set of ‘unwritten’ rules that allow for exceptions. The key to this is that these unwritten rules are applied absolutely equally amongst the team.

Let’s say you are a retailer with a peak of business at Christmas. The written rule is that no-one has any vacation in the month of December. That’s a reasonable expectation for any employees who choose to work in that sector.

But what happens when a member of your team has a personal reason for asking for the rule to be overridden? What happens if their daughter wants to get married in the Caribbean on Christmas Day, with a few days beforehand to prepare for celebrations too? Is that permissible or not?

In these situations, smart managers allow an occasional exception to the rule in special, one-off circumstances, to show they care and understand what’s so important to their people. In fact it’s common sense, because any parent is going to attend whatever their employers says, so to lose a valued team member because they ask you to bend a rule is simply illogical.

Much better in such circumstances to allow it to happen, with strict controls and also with a strict management of any other people who choose to test this ‘rule’. After all, you could not manage the business if everyone chose to ask the same year.

That is, of course, quite unlikely, so where common sense prevails and you wave them of wishing them a great time, you will do much to create goodwill.

Of course, the rule within a rule needs to apply to everyone and needs to be seen as such.

But to deny your people reasonable, if exceptional occasions in their work environment is most likely a battle that will not see the organization as a winner, especially if those rules are not flexible enough to allow exceptions.

Time Management - The Final Frontier?

Those who are successful with managing their time often discipline themselves, especially at the start, sometimes by setting up their own time management goals.

This helps to change unproductive behaviors to be much more valuable.

By initially focusing on getting rid of the most time wasting activities and then setting very specific goals on being constructive with time, effective managers often create much more space for themselves.

Reviewing progress towards effective time management goals will help track how successful the efforts have been.

There are plenty of tools to use for effective time management these days, from precise software or other proprietary tools. You could even simply just write down what you want to get done and what you are going to do with your time and see what that brings you.

By prioritizing goals and tasks for the day the most important tasks are likely to be done properly. Determining which tasks are crucial to be accomplished and which ones can be done another time - or even better, delegated, it’s possible to make much more out of the available time.

Once a routine for tasks is established, sticking to it becomes very productive indeed for managers.

Try setting time limits for certain tasks such as reading and answering e-mails during your day and using organized office systems, because by being able to access information easily, it will become easier and easier to save plenty of time.

And if you find yourself waiting for an appointment, there’s always time to catch up with your Blackberry.

Then again, now that you are so organized with managing your time, maybe you could just relax, safe in the knowledge that for once, at last, you really do have a little time to spare.