Storytelling isn’t just for the office gossip anymore. It has real leadership advantages.
Managers can more effectively sway people with stories than with logic. A well-delivered tale can win hearts and minds.
Here are the keys to effective storytelling:
Let’s say you have two employees who are struggling and need to change course:
Darlene is quiet, sensitive. Carla is abrasive, defiant.
Neither is easy to deal with, especially when you need to have a difficult conversation.
And doing that in today’s workplace makes it even more complicated.
Is there a middle ground – a way to deliver tough feedback to a wide variety of employees?
Or must you scream, rant and rave with some and sandwich it with niceties for others?
Describe the best manager you’ve ever had.
What qualities in that person did you most admire? Why did you like working for them? What did they do to make a positive impact on you and your career?
While everybody has different criteria for what makes somebody a great manager, there are typically some consistencies. I bet the person you’re thinking of helped you play to your strengths and work on your weaknesses. They celebrated your successes and guided you through failure. They listened to you, developed you, empowered you, and trusted you.
In other words – they were more like a coach, and less like a boss.
Dorothy Parker, the satirist, is famous for saying, “If you have nothing good to say about someone, sit next to me.”
Someone like Parker is likely employed at your organization. These are the folks who live for the scraps of information – negative or positive – that are traded day in and day out in most workplaces.
Office gossip and the office grapevine are as old as the workplace and as difficult to manage as the people and processes in them.
People can rarely resist “spilling the beans” when they hear a juicy tidbit of information, whether it’s about work or a colleague.
Managing people is a continual improvement process.
Master a skill, grasp new knowledge, achieve a higher goal – then move on to the next. It’s your job and privilege to take employees to that next level.
Here are the seven best, research-proven ways to help employees improve performance – plus two tactics that don’t work.
Your boss has a really good idea – at least she thinks so – and you hate it. Awkward, isn’t it?
On the one hand, you owe it to your company to point out the problems. On the other hand, you don’t want to hurt a good relationship.
Fortunately, you can disagree with the boss – or anyone – when necessary and still maintain the relationship, plus accomplish goals.
As a leader, you want to be a straight-talker. No sugarcoating, exaggerating or minimizing. But there’s a fine line between straight talk and a toxic tone.
Some seemingly innocent phrases can have a negative impact on everything from morale and productivity to the bottom line.
So, you want to avoid phrases and mindsets – like these seven – that can pollute a positive work environment.
Even the most confident bosses can stumble when it comes to delivering difficult messages.
In fact, business leaders are slower to share bad news than good news, a study in Social Science Research Network found.
That shouldn’t be a big surprise. It’s simply easier to deliver a positive message.
But there’s more at stake at getting the difficult message right.
Ever feel like employees just don’t listen to you?
Well, you aren’t alone – for two reasons.
There are a lot of managers feel the same way you do.
The second reason? Many employees actually don’t listen.
And it comes at a big cost: Studies say companies lose more than $25,000 per employee each year because poor communication hurts productivity.
You might have a great team already.
But inevitably, you will have a few model citizens or “rock star” employees that stand out. You wish all your team members would be like them because that would make your life as a manager so much easier.
You know you can depend on your best employees. They consistently deliver great results and at times are willing to go above and beyond the call of duty.
But the results of comparing employees to each other can be disastrous.
Here’s why you shouldn’t play the comparison game.
