Getting the best out of your employees is key. That's where performance reviews and other tools come to your aid. Plus, thinning out those who can't succeed is more difficult, but necessary. These posts will help you stay abreast.
No matter how talented you are, having to have a difficult conversation with an employee is not something you look forward to.
Not only does it cause anxiety, such conversations can be morale-sapping and are full of legal minefields.
So it is key not to make mistakes when having those conversations. Here are the 10 biggest mistakes you can make.
“To give (the boss a present) – or not to give.
That is the question!”
(With apologies to William Shakespeare.)
For many in the office, this is a HUGE mind-blowing decision: Do they or don’t they buy their boss a present for Christmas?
Well, if you want my opinion, and you probably don’t, but since I am writing this I’ll give it to you anyway:
DON’T DO IT!
You have no idea how very dangerous office gift giving can truly be.
Go ahead and look it up!
There are a slew of “what not to buy your boss” stories out there, and even more stories of innocent gifts that went horribly wrong!
So if you’re the boss, do the humane thing and politely tell your staff that while this is the season of perpetual giving, you’d rather see them buy for their family and friends or give to charity — in lieu of you.
However, if you work for a company where everyone buys holiday presents for the boss, here’s a list of gifts you should avoid like the plague!
It may seem harmless, but avoiding telling an employee the truth during a performance evaluation can be a really expensive mistake.
Yet many managers do just that – sugarcoat performance reviews.
They give a pablum review, steer clear of giving the employee an honest appraisal. And stamp it “Satisfactory, meets requirements.”
In the long run, they pay for it — one way or the other.
Get the full picture with this ResourcefulManager SlideShare.
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.
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.
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.
Some people are naturally confrontational. It’s just how they roll.
And most managers’ first thought is how to avoid them!
That’s impossible all the time. But we can adopt an approach that at least lessens the pain of engaging them – without turning into an argument.
Salespeople are probably the most adept at dealing with combative people. They’re the ones who hear the complaints about a product or service (whether it’s their fault or not), so they come to expect some level of confrontation with almost every encounter.
They’re prepared, so they know how to respond. So you might want to use these tips from seasoned salespeople the next time you face a confrontational person:
When you see an employee do something wrong, your instinct most likely is to call it out and show how to do it better.
And unless the employee has done something egregiously offensive, pointing out the mistake can turn into a good coaching opportunity.
But if it’s not done right, it can demoralize the employee and usually won’t lead to a better outcome. Worse, it could work against you.
So deftly correcting employees requires a little bit of subtlety.
Here are six tips on how successful managers pull it off:
So, you’ve decided to call an employee in to talk about his performance. Maybe you’ve noticed the employee seems disinterested about taking on new tasks. Or that his work is regularly late when it used to be prompt.
Regardless, you know you have to have “the talk.”
How you approach the performance chat will affect the response you’ll get – and the turnaround you’re hoping for.
But even though your main goal is to improve the employee’s performance, your chat might backfire if you have an underlying motive going in.
