Face it: Dealing with conflict at work is part of every resourceful manager’s job.
And if you don’t resolve the conflicts quickly, they’ll take a toll on everyone – wasting time, hurting productivity, sapping morale and costing money.
How bad can it get? Managers spend 25%-40% of their time dealing with conflicts. That’s nearly 2 days a week.
This infographic gives you a detailed breakdown of how conflict at work impacts businesses.
Chances are, when you look around, you see a group of people that hardly resembles the pool of folks you were a part of before you became a manager.
They’re likely younger, better educated, less experienced, more tech-savvy and generationally different in many ways.
Part of every manager’s role is to adapt to the dynamics of the team – not the other way around. Knowing how to work with changing demographics requires knowing how to make rules that they’ll be able, and willing, to follow.
Otherwise, people might pack up their laptops and go looking for greener pastures.
A great first step in keeping these emerging up-and-comers happy is to ditch old-style rules that went the way of 8-track tapes and TV vacuum tubes.
Here are a few of the fuddy-duddy rules you can ditch right away.
Anyone who’s ever gotten one of those emails alerts for a “company-wide meeting today at 4 – mandatory” knows the feeling of dread in the pit of the stomach.
You know there’s news, and it’s probably bad news.
And you can tell from the scared-rabbit looks on your employees’ faces that you’re going to have to cope with the panicked fall-out.
Situations like this are inevitable. But we can go into them prepared by adopting some strategies to get our teams through the bad news.
Here are 8 ways to lessen the pain (and the drama that often follows):
You’re great at leading other people, but could you do their jobs?
If not, it’s time to learn.
Before you start thinking, “Yeah, right. I’m busy enough doing my own work. I don’t have time to learn their jobs,” give us a chance.
On the surface, it might not seem important – or even feasible — that the boss knows how to do employees’ work. But new research finds the exact opposite is true.
A manager’s understanding of employees’ work has the biggest impact on their job satisfaction, a study in the Industrial and Labor Relations Review found.
No matter what you think about the Harry Potter novels, you must give it up for J.K. Rowling.
She was at rock bottom when she had the idea for the book series and wrote the first one on a manual typewriter.
It’s now estimated that after taxes, thanks to the books, movies, theme parks and television, Rowling’s earnings are $1.2 billion, according to The New York Times.
Not too shabby for a single mother who was once on welfare.
When it comes down to it, leaders, supervisors and managers can all take a page from Rowling’s book on what it takes to be successful and fulfilled both personally and professionally.
What other life/business lessons can you steal from the world-renowned author? Here are nine that could change your life:
“Ughhh, another meeting…I hate them!”
It’s bad if you hear this coming from an employee.
It’s worse if you’re the one who called the meeting.
Even when you keep them short or as infrequent as possible, meetings can induce both groans and mid-day napping.
It’s up to you to make sure they’re fruitful and not snooze fests or meetings from hell.
Here are eight sure-fire ways to get and keep them on track:
It takes a lot of practice to stay quiet, and just listen, and let the other person talk.
But that is the key to being a good leader.
Just ask Kevin Hancock. He is the sixth generation to head up Hancock Lumber. For him, going into his family’s business was just something you did. As for learning to keep quiet, he didn’t have much of a choice with that, either.
In 2010 Hancock developed spasmodic dysphonia, a disorder that constricts the vocal chords, making it near impossible to talk.
“It felt like it took a major athletic feat to push out just a few short sentences,” he said.
The affliction led Hancock to a greater level of self-awareness – and in the end, that made him a better listener and leader. He even credits it with saving his company.
Feel like you’re spending more time putting out wildfires?
You know, the unnecessary ones sparked by petty employee outbursts.
One minute things are fairly quiet and, next thing you know, something flares up and causes yet another disruption.
You can almost smell the smoke outside your office.
Here are five classic employee fires that, with some deft handling, you can stomp out for good.
It’s easy to point the finger at others when things go wrong. Sports coaches and players are blamed for games lost, deadlines are blamed for poorly executed plans, we even blame the weather when we’re having a bad day.
The blame game isn’t something new. We all know the term “scapegoat.” That term comes from a story in the Bible (if not even earlier) in which the collective sins of a community were placed upon the unsuspecting back of a poor goat.
Too often we get sucked into a pattern of blame and counter-blame, but I’ve got a couple of powerful questions that could alter that pattern and put an end to the question “Who is to blame?”
I’ll let you in on a little secret.
To keep great employees, all you really need to do is … stop creating stupid company rules, AND treat people like professionals!
Yep, sometimes it’s that simple.
A lot of companies, however, create rule-driven cultures that give executives and management a sense of control but crush creativity, enthusiasm, and passion and send the best employees packing.
Sure, you need rules. But you don’t need dumb rules.
Here are nine rules you need to seriously reconsider:
