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.
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.
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):
When you manage people, sooner or later you find yourself in a situation where you need to have a conversation you’d rather not have.
In fact, more than one-third of managers admit to shrinking away from giving bad feedback when they anticipate a negative reaction.
We’ve all been there. A project blows up and people are pointing fingers. There’s a conflict between two employees that’s getting destructively personal. One of your employees dropped the ball so badly even your boss noticed.
It’s definitely not the most enjoyable aspect of leadership, but difficult conversations are part of the job. So we can’t avoid them.
Part of the problem with employee performance reviews is that they are frequently repetitive, bland, and time-consuming.
They’re seen as obligations, not employee development tools.
Yet we know that thoughtful reviews make a big difference when they focus on how an employee can improve in the coming year.
Sure, every review has to have the nuts and bolts – listing the employee’s duties and responsibilities and rating how well they did them.
But while the employee’s ability to do the job is essential, there are other valuable traits that generally don’t make it into reviews. And they’re just as important if the goal is to help your employee blossom.
So what have we been leaving out?
“Don’t stoop to their level.
Turns out that common-sense advice is right – especially when it comes to supervising the whiners, bullies and cynics in your workplace.
Like irritating neighbors who always let their leaves blow into your lawn, it’s not easy to get rid of them – so you learn to live with them.
Problem is, so do the other employees who work for you.
My ideal work environment is sitting at home in my comfy clothes with my dogs lying at my feet while I write and edit in total peace and quiet.
In reality, I work in an office full of people. And while most of my co-workers are great, a few of them – to put it nicely – are a bit annoying.
But it’s pretty much unavoidable that someone’s going to annoy you when you’re in an office 40 or more hours a week, and you combine a bunch of people with different personalities and backgrounds.
In fact, one in eight people will leave their job due to incivility and never report it.
Most managers dread giving negative feedback, and most employees hate hearing it.
Our brains tend to go on the defensive the instant anyone launches into corrective feedback.
But good managers still know they have to do it.
When employee feedback is done well, you end up with a better performing and even happier employee.
As it turns out, even bad employee feedback is considered better than no feedback.
The statistics paint the picture of what’s really going on.
So, after much consideration and hand-wringing, you’ve finally decided you have no choice but to terminate that misfit-of-an-employee who just never seemed to catch on … to anything … ever … no matter how hard you tried.
The training didn’t take. The pep talks fell on deaf ears. The performance improvement plan sputtered — and failed. Now, you’re out of tricks.
But, pro that you are, you’re well-prepared for that difficult final meeting.
What could possibly go wrong?
Lots of stuff.
So brace yourself for one or more of these 11 scenarios.
Michael gets a promotion. Kelly, his soon-to-be-former team member, feels hurt and left behind. How do you handle this as a manager? (Yep, we’re talking about TV co-hosts Michael Strahan and Kelly Ripa.)
Watching this situation unfold in the media took me back to my college TV news internship when a similar situation happened at the TV level.
And, just like the Michael-and-Kelly saga, it wasn’t pretty.
Do you consider yourself an open-door manager?
Well, when you swing your door open wide, you’re bound to encounter some sticky situations.
How you respond to employees in those first moments when they walk through your door says a lot.
Say the wrong thing and, instead of building confidence, you can leave a person feeling shattered and alone.
So when the moment calls for aplomb and a deft touch, how do you respond?
Here are six things employees want to hear most when they come to you for help.
