Coach Train Learn

Management By Buns

The simplest behaviors can make a manager. Sometimes those behaviors don’t even need to be regular; they are allowed to be inconsistently regular in fact.

Take the experience of buns. Once in a while, even the most senior – or junior – of managers, can do something that to them seems so ordinary, yet to their people it signifies in a small, yet profound way, an extraordinary respect that it is hugely important in how they lead their team.

The unexpectedness of something can show how much a manager cares for their people.

In was a quiet afternoon in the business when he brought the buns. They weren’t expensive, but they were unexpected. Not that he’d never done it before, he had. Yet it was almost as if today was a great ‘nothing much happening’ sort of day that he recognized the opportunity to do a little more.

Now whilst some managers might have had their people screaming down the phones for more business; or wanted to chivvy their people along on a flat day catching up with the boring stuff that so often got left, this guy was different.

Reflecting on the successes of a good couple of weeks (bun reward has to have a context; be for a reason), he took a time-out to share a few minutes to thank the team with the buns. Buns that cost a couple of pounds.

He also took time to accept the offered cup of tea and to chew the fat about well, anything. It was being what he was good at. Taking the time to listen to his people be passionate and share their lives a little bit, for a few minutes on a flat day.

A small thing? Sure. And it’s the sum of small actions that create a relationship that employees value.

Just a few buns and a few minutes.

3 Tips for Dealing with Difficult People

Difficult people are challenging for anyone. When you manage employees, this can be one of the biggest issues you have to overcome. Yet it is so critical that you do.

After all, even the best online MBA can’t always prepare a manager for working out problems with difficult employees.

Managing individuals in a team is one of the most vital activities for a manager. As you move from a role where you are actively hands-on involved in dealing with ‘things’ to organizing people, it can be a big step to handle.

Dealing with difficult people can be a test for even the most experienced of managers and those who have made it, have survived tricky situations and lived to tell the tale. Managing difficult people can be tough, but it’s much tougher not to.

Here are three simple tips to help you when you are dealing with difficult people which, in the long run, will make it much easier for you to lead a great team to success.

Be Interested

As you create relationships with those you manage and lead, the issues of difficult people are often minimized because they see that you are interested in everyone, including them.

When you ask questions and listen attentively, it’s important that you show that you are interested in what they have to say, because it reduces the possibilities that they feel you are against them.

This changes their leverage because when they don’t think you are another of those bosses that are ‘against them’, much of the sting is taken from their response. Being interested shows them that you value them and takes the sting out of them.

Be Clear in Your Own Mind

You need to work from a position of inner confidence and strength. This will give you the peace of mind to ensure that you are fully able to handle these individuals.

Dealing with difficult people can be very challenging and it’s important to be clear what you want from them as their input into the relationships that you have with them and, very importantly, those they have with others (which includes customers and other members of the team too).

Show You Want to Help

Many times, difficult people have a chip on their shoulder because of past experiences where they we treated badly. In this respect, they are the result of other people’s behaviors and are in defense mode.

Their behaviors are a lot less likely to be generous when they’ve had poor experiences from managers in the past.

So it’s important to actually let them know you want to help them, by paying full attention to their needs and, where possible and without compromising your own management position (or giving them treatment different from anyone else), you start to make a difference to them.

Dealing with difficult people is a stretch for many managers.

By showing that you are disciplined, fair and consistent in your approach to all of your people, you will find that difficult people are much easier to manage and may well become some of your best employees.

The Creative Value of Order

The greatest growth in our world has come through the imaginative genius of some of those memorable individuals in history.

Those who set out with a glimmer of a dream, worked and cajoled it until it became a sort of reality that made some sort of sense.

In history, these ranged from geeks who worked in their garage on a kitchen table to the merely curious who wondered just why things fell downwards rather than up.

The workplace is different, because we have made it so. If you look at the wonder in a child’s eyes as they investigate new objects or activities, time takes it’s toll and we, well, grow up.

That wonder disappears.

As we manage, it is invaluable to create the freedom for our people to step back and recapture that inquisitiveness in an environment that acknowledges that to let them be free to explore is a good thing.

Being clear on the corporate, team and individual ‘rules of engagement’ that they need to fulfill as a minimum within the organization might seem restricting.

Yet intriguingly, once people know what’s in and what’s out before they start, they feel freed up to use their curiosity to ensure new and radical opportunities can be explored.

And it’s OK to.

Creativity comes from knowing that the blank sheet you have in front of you, is OK to splash your paint on. Then you can explore to your fullest dreams.

Everyone benefits.

No Time For Excuses

Maybe I’m a bit late for this, but I do need to revisit the demise of the England football team in the world cup.

There are no excuses. Perhaps many would say that overpaid superstars ought to have fared better and that there was no appetite for the game in our players.

The Spanish players, after their victory last night, might have something to say about that.

Ask every one of our players and they would tell you that they went all out for success – that their focus was entirely on bringing that 5Kg 18 carat gold cup back home.

As for the manager, there seemed to be times when he was completely perplexed in the outcome and then every opportunity to find some excuse for the failing – the ones that weren’t down to him, of course – were rolled out.

Sometimes it’s about bad luck.

Ever the optimist, I’m of the opinion that bad luck had it’s part to play at a particularly critical moment in the game we lost to Germany.

Frank Lampard’s ‘goal that never was’ came just a time where we could easily have clawed our way back into the game and with Germany’s precocious young team hauled back from a 2-0 lead, who knows what might have happened then.

Indeed many worthy winners of the World Cup have had extraordinarily poor starts.

Yet as manager, the buck stops with us.

There is no place for excuses that we try to hide behind. We get paid to be successful and when we aren’t, we have to stand up and say that we, ourselves weren’t good enough and we must do better. Then our people trust us, bond better with us and we get up another day to learn and grow and achieve more next time.
Even if the linesman and the referee are the only two people in the ground who didn’t go to Specsavers.

Time to be Honest and Real

Review Time for Managers

As managers, our lives are busy enough. The work comes at us in an ever-increasing flow and sometimes we take the eye off the ball.

In fact, it’s quite surprising how we can gradually, day-by-day, month-by-month, change our behaviors in an attempt to avoid being swamped by ‘stuff’.

Such that we lose sight of what we are really there to do, which is lead and manage our people, as well as deliver the bottom lines demanded of us.

Time to test our perspective against a benchmark of a point 2 years ago.

What have you stopped doing?
What have you started doing?
What do you do more of?
What do you do less of?

And here’s the acid test for you. Which of these adds value to the bigger picture of your management? Which leaches away your performance?

When you have a better picture of how you have changed (and it may be for the better, don’t forget!). you will start to understand how you have shifted – almost imperceptibly – and what you need to revisit. What you need to reclaim.

It’s a fact of life that our behaviors shift over time and it’s vital that we notice and adjust too.

The sign of great managers is that we have this capacity – without self-criticism or blame – as well as the vision within ourselves, to make the differences to what we do, as we go.