Keith Tatley

Manager Foundation

Did anyone show you how to manage and motivate your employees?

Managing employees is time consuming and difficult because people are complex.

And when your people don't perform - it's you the manager who has to pick up the pieces.

Find out the Essential Management Skills so that you can get results in less time.

Be a better boss to accelerate your career success and happiness.

How to make sure that you get the most from this module

Hi,

The objective of this course is to show you how to be a better boss because when you improve your management skills, you will:

<ol><li>Save yourself time with efficient management skills,</li>
	<li>Save yourself time by engaging your employees to carry more of the workload,</li>
	<li>Have confidence in your management abilties,</li>
	<li>Gain the respect of your employees and</li>
	<li>Accelerate your career for better work and earnings </li>
</ol>This course has got the content you need to achieve this but there's one single thing that makes the difference between those who succeed and fail.

And that's because the honest truth is that online learning is difficult. It's difficult to make time to invest in yourself. Every day is a busy day - putting it off to the future without a plan doesn't work. Business doesn't go away. People get distracted. People forget. Life changes.

But here is a simple plan:

<ol><li>Book a repeating appointment with yourself every week to invest in yourself.</li>
	<li>What usually happens that gets in the way of you investing in yourself? How will you overcome this?</li>
</ol>If you struggle with your own Self Development then there is a little more in how to do this over <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course/2562376/overview?" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here.</a>

Do you want to do this Course?

This course will take a few hours of your time to go over the material and put it into practice. But after that the returns are:

<ol><li>You'll be able to reduce your workload by improving the productivity of your team</li>
	<li>You'll engage the internal motivation and skills of your employees so they produce great work</li>
	<li>You'll help your employees to find more meaning and value in their work and</li>
	<li>You'll be improving your happiness, earnings and success by being a better boss</li>
</ol>If that sounds like it's worth investing in then there's no better time than now to:

<ul><li>Book at least an hour a week with yourself and</li>
	<li>Make a plan about what you're going to do to make sure you have a valid backup plan</li>
</ul>...and because you've already started, carry on going to keep your momentum

If you feel like you don't have the time to learn new management skills, the truth is that this is a sign because better management skills will save you time. 

The best time to invest in saving yourself time is right now.

Do This First

Welcome to Management Essentials,

This short course will show you what they didn't teach you in school about managing people. My name is Keith - I call myself a reformed Chartered Accountant. The reason I started Manager Foundation was because 20 years of professional experience showed me that there was a major problem in the workplace making people unproductive and unhappy at work. People are complex and managing isn't easy so when bosses don't get trained how to manage staff you end up with unhappy, stressed out bosses trying to do everything themselves. Not to mention unproductive and unhappy employees.

This is why I wanted to show people what I've learnt about managing after studying this discipline for almost a decade. I wish I knew this at the beginning of my career because it would've helped me avoid a lot of mistakes and done wonders for my happiness and success.

The Good

Now don't get me wrong, I'm extremely grateful for the experience I got and the jobs I had. I know very few people get the chance to work with the smart industry leaders that I did. Not many people get a chance to work in so many different countries with the opportunities that I had. I got a great qualification that really took me places from small startups to working with the most senior leaders of some of the biggest firms in the world. I also got a chance to work in professional firms consulting for a range of interesting clients. And at every job I was privileged to see what few people get a chance to see. I got to see the inside, top level information about how the companies worked. 

But it was this experience that also showed me the bad side which is that almost every business has a problem that is like a hidden cancer that is eating business profits, it's making unproductive, unhappy employees and leading to stressed, overworked managers. 

The Mistakes the I Made:

So I worked hard and invested a lot of time in my education, which got me into a management position early in my career. I was good at my job but I sucked at managing employees, worse still, I didn't even realise that I sucked because I didn't know what being a good manager was. I knew some people in my team weren't performing but I blamed their work ethic or their lack of skills. I didn't even know where to start to fixing this. On the few times I spoke about performance it ended in disaster. And I found it easier and faster to do it myself rather than try to teach them skills. In the end my management style was that I expected my people to do their jobs while I got on with mine. I then worked extra hard to cover for any shortfalls.

A Lack of Role Models

And it wasn't just myself - one of the reasons I didn't learn how to manage employees was because of a lack of role models. I was lucky enough to work with some great leaders but managing people is a different skill. And well educated, hard working people with the best of intentions end up being  bad managers purely because of a lack of manager skills training. 

Be a Better Boss:

So what I've done is researched and tested to bring you the best of the best management techniques so you don't have to. I've seen what a difference manager skills make to company profits, employee productivity and work satisfaction. But it goes deeper than that because I've seen when managers improve their skills, they become more effective, manage their stress better and gain confidence. 

I'm making this available online to share what I wish I had known at the beginning of my career. Don't worry it's never too late to learn. Even if you have years of experience, I will show you effective, time saving management techniques. And if a Chartered Accountant like me can learn these "people" skills then I know that you can too.

What I do to help you develop these skills is:

<ul>
	<li>The exact words you say make a difference: I provide you with proven, step by step, scripts (similar to a sales script) so all you have to do is say the words</li>
	<li>I provide you with explanations for why these words work and what words to avoid. Soon you will be able to customise these scripts because you will understand why they work</li>
	<li>I provide you with practical exercises so you can put these skills into practice to realise the benefits plus start to develop your practical skills</li>
	<li>I graduate these exercises from easy and low risk to progressively more difficult so that you can develop your skills in a safe and easy manner</li>
</ul>

Introduction

Managing is Hard

People are complex, what works for one person, doesn't work for everyone, this makes managing hard.

The typical manager studies a technical skill, proves they are good technically and then gets promoted into management without any training or experience. 

The combination of difficult job without any training, practice or help is a set up for a perfect storm. If you're anything like the typical hard working manager, you end up working harder to cover the shortfalls in your employees performance. This leaves you stressed about quality while working hard and neglecting your health.

There is a Lack of Practical People Management Training

"Management Courses" like MBAs are more about business and the theory of management. They do not give you the practical skills you need to manage people. Leadership courses are very good but they teach you about high level concepts such as values, vision and culture. These are excellent topics but don't tell you what to say to employee Dave when he's late for the third time that week.

Managing isn't Bad - Bad Managing Gives Managers a Bad Name

The result is that the words manager, boss, supervisor have got bad associations. The truth is that most employees hate their jobs and don't respect their bosses because of bad boss skills.

For example: The term "Performance Communication" has got a bad connotation. We associate this with mistakes, punishment, conflict, an unpleasant message but this is purely down to bad performance communication. Performance communication done properly is a very good thing because this is how we provide acknowledgement to the employee. This is how we let our employees know what we want, this is how we grow our employees and build better relationships. If your employee does something right then let them know, if your employee does something wrong, it's only fair to them to let them know, rather than let them live in ignorance. 

Being a Boss isn't Natural

Being a boss requires a delicate balance of being both demanding and supportive. Some personality types are extremely demanding - these are usually the angry shouty bosses who get their way with aggression but end up losing staff. The opposite personality type is to be supportive but supportive people are not assertive enough to get results and usually end up working harder to compensate for this. Supportive people may be liked by their employees but their employees don't respect them.

This is why we need to wake up to find a better way of managing, so that people can be successful and happy in their jobs.

A great manager is a manager who can produce results while still retaining people. A great manager knows how to be demanding and supportive at the same time.

What is the Problem With Managing

Secrets to Management Success

This is an Essentials Module and as such it's going to give you a super sharp focus on the most important techniques for manager success. But there is one manager skill to rule all others and that is Self Leadership.

"Before you can lead others, you must first lead yourself"

Congratulations because by reading this you are already starting to lead yourself. Self Leadership is:

<ul>
	<li>Self Responsibility: Taking charge of your own destiny by accepting the responsibility to make a difference and setting a course to be a better boss, rather than continue to suffer bad performance from employees</li>
	<li>Self Knowledge: Finding out your own tendencies, strengths and weaknesses as a manager and</li>
	<li>Self Development: Investing time in developing your manager skills</li>
</ul>

Far too many managers make the mistake of stopping learning once they finish their formal education. Unfortunately this leaves them without having developed their manager skills and this dooms them to a cycle of failure - repeating past mistakes.

That's why the single most important determinant of your success will be whether you can be disciplined enough to stick to your self development even in the face of other work and life demands. Leading yourself means coming up with a plan to stick to your development that works for you. 

If you don't have your own plan then I favour the simple technique of booking an hour a week with yourself so that you can work on being a better boss. What you do in this time is improve your manager skills by learning better technique and think about your employees and how you can find the right people for your team and encourage them to better performance. Preferably this should be somewhere where free of other distractions. 

What you will find is that when you become a better boss, your employees will start to perform better.

"Managers success when their employees succeed"

Tip: This is what "YOUR Power hour" is all about - if you have not yet booked an hour a week to work on yourself, see the <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2562376/overview?">video in this course</a>.

What Successful Bosses Do:

To become a great boss, all you need to do is look at what other successful bosses do and copy this. What great bosses do is that they hire the right people for the job and then they focus on:

<ul>
	<li>Relationships: Build great relationships with their employees. So that they understand each other well and have a solid basis of communication.</li>
	<li>Communication: Inspire their employees to better performance, by motivating their employees. They let their employees know when they are off course and guide them back. They take on active role in promoting better performance. Including listening and coaching their employees to solve their own problems,</li>
	<li>Growth: Grow your employees capabilities and skills. The key techniques are developing your staff and delegating work to your staff</li>
</ul>

The rest of Management Essentials will give you the Essential information that you need on these topics.

Overview - The Secret to Manager Success

Making the Transition from Individual Contributor to Manager

"What got you here is not going to take you there"

Most managers study a technical skill (anything from Accounting, engineering, IT, law, to cooking) and if they are skilled and work hard at their job they get promoted into management. These are hardworking, ambitious, diligent, well educated people. But the problem is that managing people is a very different skill to your technical skill set. And being promoted for being good at technical skills doesn't prove that you can manage employees.

Managing is hard because people are more complex than any machine. And so it's no surprise that managers struggle.

"Sure you can prepare a set of consolidated, annual financial statements, but good luck getting employee Dave to care about his work!"

The problem is what many managers then try to do to compensate.

"To the man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail"

You see we tend to play to our strengths and stick to familiarity and so when things go wrong, we double down and work harder. We do the same things we've always done, instead of using a new set of skills to solve a different problem.

Stepping up into your manager shoes means that you're going to have to learn a new set of skills.

<ul>
	<li>Are you working evenings doing work your employees should've done? Perhaps you should learn <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2630961/overview?">how to delegate effectively</a> instead.</li>
	<li>Are you working weekends fixing mistakes your employees made? Perhaps you should learn how to give <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2823195/overview?">effective performance communication</a>, or <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/3172699/overview?">coach your employees with active listening skills</a>,</li>
	<li>Are you neglecting your priorities because you're doing work that "only you can do"? Perhaps you should learn <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2837651/overview?">how to develop your employees skills and abilities</a> or learn how to hire the right skillset.</li>
</ul>

Manager Economics - The Sum of the Parts

You see when you become a boss, simple manager economics means that your contribution means less than the combined contribution of your whole team. For a boss in charge of a team of 5, there's no way that you can do the work of 5 people who aren't performing. Improving everyone's result by just a few percent is worth so much more than anything you can do yourself.

Stepping into Your Manager Shoes

Managing is hard because people are complex and diverse. One size fits all management advice isn't always helpful because every employee is different and every manager is different. So what works for one person doesn't always work for another.

For example Steve Jobs has a very different leadership style to Richard Branson, yet both are highly successful, respected leaders. But Steve Jobs was a very difficult person to get along with and so you should not make the mistake of trying to copy him. People who try to copy other leaders will invariably fail because they will just make a poor imitation of the person they're trying to copy.

The secret to manager success is awareness of what your own management strengths and weaknesses are. And then working to build on your strengths and avoid problems that come from your weaknesses. There is no such thing as a perfect boss, successful bosses know what they are good at and how to work with this.

The first step to becoming a better boss is becomming aware of what your management strengths are. To help you, I have a "personality model" type quiz. It uses humour to make it more engaging and memorable and only takes a few minutes for you to get results. This model is based on the scientifically validated DISC behaviour model which means the results are reliable but it's simple enough to understand and apply in every day life.

<a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/8906587/overview">You can access the quiz in this GO1 training module "Discover Your Boss Superpower"</a> 

Instead of trying to be a bad copy of someone else, find out how to be the best version of yourself.

Finding Out Your Boss SuperPower

Welcome

The Management Foundations - Introduction

A lot has been said about how you should lead instead of manage. The general perception is that management is bad because people don’t want to be managed but they do want a good leader. Now I agree that being a leader sounds “sexy” and the words manage, boss &amp; supervise have all got negative associations. The reality is that you have to do both and you will be a manager before you are a leader. Here is my version of the difference between the two terms and why I think manager skills have been sorely neglected which has given them a bad name. I believe that if managers had better manager skills then we would have better relationships with our employees.

 

Firstly let’s be clear, there is a lot of overlap between the two terms and they are often used interchangeably. 

 

<h2>Leadership Skills:</h2>

In organisations leadership is more about leading the entire organisation, including people who you don’t directly manage or even know exist. The important skills here are things like:

<ul>
	<li>
	Having a clear vision and making sure everyone knows about it,
	</li>
	<li>
	Having a defined beneficial culture that will support the organisation to achieve its vision and making sure employees buy into this culture,
	</li>
	<li>
	Having a healthy set of values set for the organisation.
	</li>
</ul>

Now all of these are great things, but they’re not going to help you with having the right words to say when employee Dave has arrived late for the third time this week and it’s only Wednesday and the last time you spoke to him he got defensive and made a bunch of excuses.

 

<h2>Manager Skills:</h2>

To me, manager skills are those day to day things that you do to be a good boss. Some you do every day, some once a week, once a month or as needed. These include:

<ul>
	<li>
	Giving frequent performance communication so that your employees know when they are on the right track, they feel acknowledged and valued or are promptly guided back on the path when they stray,
	</li>
	<li>
	Building a functioning relationship with your employee and staying informed about what they are doing by conducting regular one on one meetings with your employees,
	</li>
	<li>
	Coaching your employees to solve their own problems,
	</li>
	<li>
	Growing your employees to improve their skills and abilities,
	</li>
	<li>
	Delegating work to your employees and
	</li>
	<li>
	Hiring the right person for the job by having good interview skills
	</li>
</ul>

 

<h2>Leadership is Important, But Here are a Few Things That Only Managers Can Do</h2>

Now while leaders get all the glory, it’s the managers who are often more important because:

<ul>
	<li>
	It’s the manager who embodies the relationship between the employee and the organisation,
	</li>
	<li>
	Managers are the people who deliver the day to day grind that delivers results,
	</li>
	<li>
	Employees join organisations, but leave bosses,
	</li>
	<li>
	It’s impossible for leaders to care about every employee in the organisation but it’s the manager who can support and grow the individual over time
	</li>
</ul>

 

So while leaders sit on top of the organisation, it’s the managers who have the personal touch and direct relationships with employees. If you are a leader of an organisation can you be confident that your managers know how to engage &amp; retain your employees?

The Difference Between Leadership & Management Skills

The Essential Manager Skills

Self Leadership

This is an introduction and overview for you to create a simple Self Leadership Plan for yourself:

One definition of Self Leadership is:

“Self-leadership is the process by which you influence yourself to achieve your objectives.”

The rest of this section on Self Leadership is to help you to create and execute your own Self Leadership Plan to become a better boss.

The video covers three main focus points of Self Leadership. As a reminder, these are the three main topics and how they relate to the modules in the rest of this section:

<ol>
	<li>Taking charge of your own destiny by accepting the responsibility to make a difference and setting a course to be a better boss, rather than continue to suffer bad performance from employees: Covered in "Self Leadership: Vision"</li>
	<li>Finding out your own tendencies, strengths and weaknesses as a manager. This is covered in the section "Self Leadership: Know Thyself" and</li>
	<li>Investing time in developing your manager skills: Covered in Self Leadership: "Developing Yourself"</li>
</ol>

Starting with Self Leadership will set you up for success in the rest of the course.

Your Self Leadership Plan

Self Leadership Starts with a Goal

It's difficult to get somewhere if you don't know where you are going. Having a clear idea of the problems you want to solve, what you want to achieve and how you are going to get there will give you clarity to work towards. To help you, I'm supplying you with a generic vision appropriate for someone doing this Management Essential programme. I'm describing the sort of typical management problems that I see. I provide suitable objectives and a high level plan to get there. If you identify with this, you can adopt this as your own vision or adapt it to give yourself something to work towards.

The Problem:

<ul>
	<li>Managing employees is stressful, difficult and time consuming</li>
	<li>Managers get given a lot of responsibility without help or training</li>
	<li>This means the average manger is doing a lot worse than they would with some basic training</li>
	<li>Managers end up stressed and overworked when they aren't successful at getting their employees to take ownership for their own jobs</li>
	<li>Most employees are unhappy at work, they don't respect their boss, they are disengaged and have low productivity. This is why companies fail or have low profits</li>
</ul>

The Goal:

<ul>
	<li>Find out how to "Make Managing Easy" to reduce your stress, get results without sucking up all your time on management</li>
	<li>Gain confidence in your management skills by improving them</li>
	<li>Leverage your employees to achieve your goals of workplace happiness and success. Earn better promotions, increases and bonuses</li>
	<li>Create a productive and happy workplace that leads to better profits</li>
</ul>

The Plan:

<ul>
	<li>Acceptance: Your problem may be poor performing employees, but you can't change them, you can only change yourself. Self Leadership means accepting that it's you who has to change to make a difference. Self Leadership means putting aside the blame and excuses to focus on solutions. Self Leadership means taking action to do what is necessary to achieve your goals.</li>
	<li>Commit to improving your management skills, make this a top priority, because if it's a low priority, other things will get in your way</li>
	<li>Make a realistic plan to achieve your goals by setting aside an hour a week to work on them</li>
	<li>Finish the rest of this Management Essentials module</li>
</ul>

Quantifying Goals:

Having a measurable goal to work towards is a great way to know how you are progressing towards your goals. The challenge with management is that every situation is different. It's good practice to set some goals and so here is some guidance you can use if you would like to set quantified goals. The main topics are time, money and happiness.

Time Goal:

Being a better manager will save you time in three ways:

<ol>
	<li>You will have time efficient management techniques. You'll need to spend less time managing employees,</li>
	<li>You will spend less time because of poor employee performance. You'll spend less time following up, fixing mistakes etc. </li>
	<li>You will be able to better manage your own workload. More capable employees give you the capacity to delegate your work to focus on more important priorities.</li>
</ol>

Your time goal: How much time do you think you can save with better manager skills and more capable employees? Write this down because achieving your goal is going to require investing time to save time later on. You are busy and committing to doing the work means understanding that it's worth the time you will have to invest. 

Other time goals can be as simple as leaving work on time, putting your children to bed, having time to exercise.

Money Goal:

Company profits: The profitability of every organisation is directly related to the performance of the people because people are responsible for everything. It's employees who: Sell to customers, design new products, manufacture products, control costs and do company administration.

More productive employees produce better results. And you need fewer people to do the same job. Multiple studies confirm that:

<ul>
	<li>Employee performance can make the difference between a loss and a profit</li>
	<li>Employee productivity is around 40% - one of the most under utilised resources with a huge upside for improvement</li>
</ul>

Your Financial Goal: How does your department contribute to company profit? 

<ul>
	<li>Direct Revenue contribution: Better sales performance will contribute more margin. Write this down. </li>
	<li>Indirect Revenue contribution: For example: Sales support, new product development, business development. How much extra margin can your department contribute? Write this down.</li>
	<li>Headcount: More productive employees mean you can do the same or more with fewer employees. What would improving productivity by ten percent look like in your department? Write this down.</li>
	<li>Costs: Do you administer significant cost items. For example capital investment, maintenance, external spending on contractors etc. More engaged employees manage costs better and are more creative at doing more with less. If your employees managed costs better or were more creative with problem solving, how much money could they save? Write this down.</li>
	<li>Employee turnover: Losing skilled employees don't just cost you money on hiring and re-training but also results in lost customer / market knowledge. Every replacement hire also comes with a risk of going bad. Do you have a high employee turnover risk / cost? Write down how much you think this is costing you.</li>
</ul>

All the above considered what do you think is your money goal that you would like to achieve with better employee performance? Write this down somewhere visible where you can see it.

Your personal remuneration: Your success is dependent on the performance if your employees. Increasing employee performance will make you stand out as a manager which will give you better bonuses, promotions and increases. Good managers have good transferrable skills and can find better jobs more easily. Conversely managers who struggle with management end up stuck.

If you improved the performance of your team, how would that improve your own earnings and career prospects? Write this down.

Happiness Goal:

Employee performance problems aren't just time consuming and expensive, they can suck the life out of work and make work a place everyone would rather avoid. Conversely good management skills give you the confidence that you know what you're doing and can fix any problem.

<ul>
	<li>Is there an employee performance problem that's bugging you? (Eg. bad attitude, conflict, punctuality, repeated mistakes). What employee behaviours would you like to change? Are these causing distress? What improvement would lead to a better life for you (in terms of reduced incidents, better confidence etc.)? Write this down.</li>
	<li>Is work creating personal distress? For example: Damaging your personal relationships, taking time away from your good nutrition and exercise, stopping you from doing what you want to do? Write down any of these issues.</li>
</ul>

Summing up:

Self Leadership starts with setting a vision to work towards and making a realistic plan to get there. Improving your manager skills is going to give you more time, money and happiness. This exercise will help you to know what you are working towards. And you can use these goals to track how well you are doing against these objectives. 

This is also a good time to have a look at what you want to achieve against the cost of getting there. You might be able to do anything but you're not able to do everything. Your success will come from choosing goals that are right for you and then prioritising working on those goals. To achieve the above goals you should be prepared to set aside around an hour a week. It's not going to all happen in the first week, it's going to require steady progress. If you're not prepared to invest the time then you can save yourself any further effort.

There's another key to for using Self Leadership to achieve your goals and that is accepting the responsibility to make a difference. And tied in with that is adopting a mindset that you can make a difference which is called self-efficacy and that is the topic for a separate section.

Self Leadership: Vision

Self Leadership Starts with Self Awareness

Action: <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/8906587/overview?" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Find out what other people think of you and what your strengths and weaknesses are by taking the Boss SuperPower Quiz</a>

A core concept of Self Leadership is self awareness because this will help you to:

<ul>
	<li>Know your strengths:
	<ul>
		<li>Which tells you where you can add value</li>
		<li>Know what management style works for you</li>
		<li>Gives you confidence in your abilities</li>
	</ul>
	</li>
	<li>Know your weaknesses:
	<ul>
		<li>To know topics to avoid or where you should look to other people (for example your employees) for expertise</li>
		<li>Know what management techniques you are lacking in</li>
		<li>To know where you have gaps that need to be developed</li>
	</ul>
	</li>
	<li>Know your trigger points:
	<ul>
		<li>Managing is stressful, knowing your triggers allows you to control your stress</li>
		<li>Emotional reactions weaken your management because your employees don't respond well to emotional (eg. angry or demotivated) bosses</li>
	</ul>
	</li>
</ul>

Knowing Thyself also Means Knowing how Other People See You

Management is extra complicated because people are different. This means that what works for one employee won't necessarily work for another employee. Unsuccessful bosses apply a one style fits all approach and expect their employees to adapt to them because they are the boss.

While it's true that you have role power and your emotionally aware employees will adapt to you, the facts are that you will get better results when you adapt your management style to each employee.

The way we view ourselves is different to the way our employees perceive us. Self awareness allows us to close the gap between who we think we are and how we come across.

Successful bosses know who they are and how to adapt their management style to their employees.

You Are Unique - Be Careful of One Size Fits All Management Advice

The fact that people are different also means that what works for one boss won't work for every boss. This means you should be cautious of one size fits all management advice. Knowing your boss strengths and weaknesses will make you a better boss.

How to improve your Self Awareness:

The challenge with Self Awareness is that it's difficult to see yourself from an external perspective. To get an unbiased assessment of your manager style, take the Boss Superpower Quiz, this uses a scientifically validated behaviour model to identify your management strengths and weaknesses. It also gives you insight into how other people perceive you and recommendations on what behaviours you have that are holding you back.

What to expect: Under 10 minutes to take the quiz. This will give you an immediate high level report. Additional information will be emailed to you in bitesize segments

Action: <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/8906587/overview?" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Find out your Boss SuperPower by taking the online assessment in this GO1 course: </a>

Self Leadership: Know Thyself

Wellbeing

<h2>Being a Boss is Stressful: Be a Better Boss by Managing Your Stress</h2>

Work creates a lot of pressure in our lives through deadlines, conflict, mishaps and more. But being a boss is even more stressful because you’re also responsible for the work of all of your employees.

 

Now pressure isn’t a bad thing, for example deadlines help deliver results. But we all have a limit and pressure can build up to cause distress with serious performance &amp; health consequences.

 

And stress can make you a worse boss. For example: When your employees do something wrong which causes you distress, if you engage your employees in an emotional state, you will be less effective as a boss. The classic example is if you give feedback when you are angry, instead of listening to what you say, your employees will go into fight/flight mode

 

Before you can manage others, you must first manage yourself. This includes managing your stress and emotions.

 

The first step to managing stress in the workplace is to find out what your stress levels are. Take this quick online assessment to find your stress score and get recommendations for managing stress.

 

Please note that stress can cause serious health issues. If you feel like you are suffering from stress then it's advised to consult a medical professional.

 

PS: This interactive assessment may take a few seconds to load

 

To find out how to use meditation to manage your stress right at your desk then look at Desk Meditations: <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/7153095/overview?">https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/7153095/overview? </a>

Exercise: Discover Your Stress Score

Some employees perform well under pressure while others seem to be on stress leave at the first mention of a deadline. What makes the difference is your employee’s ability to manage pressure. It’s obvious that employees who are better able to manage pressure will produce better results and be much easier to manage. A proven method for managing stress is using Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.

 

Exercise: Help your employees to manage pressure better and avoid stress by using the GO1 feature of assigning courses to assign them <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/7153095/overview?">Desk Meditations</a>.

 

Dealing with different people is one of the complexities that makes managing hard because different people respond differently to the same stimuli. Pressure in itself isn’t a bad thing because pressure can produce a growth in response. That’s how exercise works, that’s how we grow personally, this is called eustress or healthy stress.

 

The problem is when we suffer unhealthy forms of stress, such as trauma, or don’t have effective methods to deal with everyday stress. That’s when stress turns into distress and has disastrous effects on health, productivity and work.

 

<h2>Your Role as a Boss for Stressed Employees - Support them to Seek Help</h2>

It’s not your role as a boss to be your employees therapist or counsellor. After all you are not a professional, nor are you independent. There are many excellent resources inside and outside of organisations to help people suffering from distress. What your role is:

<ol>
	<li>
	Keep an eye on your employee’s mental state and energy levels in regular <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2676815/overview?">One on One Meetings with your Employees</a>,
	</li>
	<li>
	In your One on One Meetings, show employees that you care for them by asking how they are doing and making it clear that they can ask you if they need help,
	</li>
	<li>
	If you feel they are stressed then encourage them to seek the help they need, because often people are unaware or unwilling to look after themselves and a little direction can make all the difference,
	</li>
	<li>
	Encourage your employees to increase their knowledge about stress and make sure they know how to spot the signs of stress. Helpful Resource: Ask them to take the Stress Evaluation in the <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/7153095/overview?">Desk Meditations course</a>,
	</li>
	<li>
	Encourage them to develop resilience to stress. There are different ways to do this but one way is by having a regular meditation practice. Helpful Resource: <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/7153095/overview?">Desk Meditations</a>: See the Stress Release Meditations.
	</li>
</ol>

 

<h2>Don’t Avoid Pressure - Be Demanding and Supportive</h2>

Some managers try to reduce stress by avoiding pressure. This is not a good way to manage because managers need to be demanding and supportive to produce results. Managers who avoid pressure:

<ul>
	<li>
	Don’t achieve results and miss deadlines,
	</li>
	<li>
	End up doing employees work for them,
	</li>
	<li>
	End up losing the respect of employees because of a lack of backbone,
	</li>
	<li>
	Don’t develop their employees ability to deal with pressure,
	</li>
	<li>
	End up with more pressure in the end as things go wrong and unaddressed issues snowball
	</li>
</ul>

Now being demanding is an effective way to get results. Every high performing athlete has a coach that pushes them to be their best. My personal belief is that we should be demanding in an ethical, consent based manner. That’s one of the theories behind “<a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2823195/overview?">The Power of Positive Feedback</a>”

 

<h2>You Can’t Avoid Stress </h2>

It’s impossible to avoid stress because pressure is a fact of life. Some people are good at managing stress but the reality is that we all have a limit on how much pressure we can deal with until it overwhelms us and things fall apart. You can be guaranteed that at some point your employees will go through significant life events such as family trauma, significant conflict or life challenges.

 

<h2>You Can’t Ignore Stress Either</h2>

And as a boss, you cannot afford to ignore the negative consequences of stress. Stress is a significant issue with serious business costs such as:

<ul>
	<li>
	Employee stress leave &amp; sick leave,
	</li>
	<li>
	Decreased productivity,
	</li>
	<li>
	Worse decision making,
	</li>
	<li>
	Increased conflict in the office (and unpleasant working conditions)
	</li>
	<li>
	High employee turnover,
	</li>
</ul>

Bosses who are too demanding cannot achieve sustainable results and end up being hated by their employees. Managers will be more effective when they combine pressure with support.

 

<h2>Create Good Employees by Helping Employees Deal with Pressure</h2>

You can help your employees deal with the day-to-day pressures in life by assigning them the <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/7153095/overview?">GO1 Course Desk Meditations</a> and encouraging them to take the Stress Evaluation which provides customised feedback and recommendations on how to manage stress.

Exercise: Your Role in Managing Your Employees Stress

Wellbeing at Work

Managing Diversity

Managing Diverse Teams

Hiring for Performance

Recruitment

Employee Integration & Setting Expectations

New Employee Onboarding

Functional Work Relationships Through 1 on 1s

Two Quick Questions:

<ul>
	<li>
	Did you ever have a boss who taught you how to have best practice One on One Meetings with Your Employees?
	</li>
	<li>
	Have you had formal training how to have One on One meetings with employees?
	</li>
</ul>

If the answer to these questions is no, then this section will help you to improve your manager skills.

 

Did you know that the ability to conduct effective One on One Meetings with your Employees is actually a manager skill? This is because there is so much difference between:

<ul>
	<li>
	Good meetings that achieve results in a time efficient manner and,
	</li>
	<li>
	Ineffective meetings that achieve a fraction of their potential. Having said that - it’s better to have a “bad” one on one meeting with your employee than none at all. My goal is to help you have the best outcomes,
	</li>
	<li>
	I call One on One Meetings one of the Foundational Manager Skills, because this is the meeting that you do most of your other managing in.
	</li>
</ul>

 

If you are a new manager who has never had a one on one meeting with your employee, or if you are an experienced manager who has hundred, it’s never too late to learn some best practices.

 

Exercise: This content comes from “<a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2676815/overview?">3 Steps 2 Easy 1 on 1 Meetings” if you are serious about being a better boss then you can enrol here</a>.

 

<h2>Some Best Practices For Better One on One Meetings:</h2>

<h3>1. Book a standard, repeating time slot.</h3>

<ol>
	<li>
	Reduces organisation overhead.
	</li>
	<li>
	Both you and your employees know in advance that there is a meeting to “bucket” everything into.
	</li>
	<li>
	Super User tip: Save time during the week by training your employee to reserve all non-urgent discussions for this time slot.
	</li>
</ol>

 

<h3>2. Don’t cancel meetings, reschedule them.</h3>

<ol>
	<li>
	If you cancel a meeting, then your employee won’t save their questions &amp; communications for your meeting and will instead disrupt your workflow with numerous interruptions. And we all know how annoying and disruptive these interruptions can be.
	</li>
	<li>
	Of course you will have to cancel the odd meeting but remember that cancelling a meeting sends a signal to your employees that you don’t value them or their work. (Think how dejected you can feel if your boss won’t make time for you).
	</li>
	<li>
	Super User Tip: Best days for meetings are Tuesdays / Wednesdays because this gives time to prepare plus time to reschedule within the week
	</li>
</ol>

 

<h3>3. Keep a standardized, best practice meeting template</h3>

<ol>
	<li>
	Keep it simple and
	</li>
	<li>
	Ensure that you cover everything quickly,
	</li>
	<li>
	A template for download is in <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2676815/overview?">3 Steps 2 Easy 1 on 1s</a>
	</li>
</ol>

 

<h3>4. Agree priorities for the week ahead as last part of meeting wrapping up actions:</h3>

<ol>
	<li>
	Always check in with your employees priorities for the week ahead to make sure they are focussed on what you need them to be focused on,
	</li>
</ol>

 

<h3>5. Stick to a regular One on One Meeting Practice:</h3>

<ol>
	<li>
	You can’t boil the ocean in one go and you can’t build a relationship with your employee in a single meeting. It takes time &amp; regular communications to get to know each other and build respect. Every employee you have is different and successful managers learn their employees strengths, weaknesses &amp; idiosyncrises.
	</li>
</ol>

 

<h3>6. Be a pro-active manager instead of a reactive manager.</h3>

<ol>
	<li>
	Many bosses only schedule one on one meetings when something has gone wrong in an attempt to fix the mistake.
	</li>
	<li>
	Prescheduled meetings where you ask the right sort of questions will help you stay ahead of issues.
	</li>
</ol>

 

<h3>7. Frequency is quality.</h3>

<ol>
	<li>
	Spend the same amount of time but get better results by increasing your meeting frequency and reducing the time. This is because half an hour every week is better than an hour every 2 weeks.
	</li>
	<li>
	Being economical with your time forces both you and your employee to be time efficient. This is good time management.
	</li>
</ol>

 

<h2>Bonus:</h2>

Some employees are not informed or engaged about the one on one meeting process. Train your employees <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2632357/overview?">how to have one on one meetings with their boss</a>.

 

<h2>Just Like Yoga - One on Ones are a Practice to Stick to</h2>

A single one on one can do wonders to fix things. But the real benefit of one on one meetings comes from sticking to them over time because you will build a better working relationship with your employee. Your first one on ones may not go very well. You will get better and faster over time, especially if you approach it with the attitude of improvement.

 

<h2>Exercises:</h2>

 

<ol>
	<li>
	Become a better boss by Improving Your One on One Meeting Practice by enrolling in <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2676815/overview?">3 Steps 2 Easy 1 on 1s</a>.
	</li>
	<li>
	Book One on One Meetings with your employees as a regular repeating time slot
	</li>
</ol>

Exercise: How to Improve Your One on One Meetings

Have you ever had a One on One meeting with your employee but been frustrated because they did one of the following things:

<ol>
	<li>
	They wasted your time or seemed disinterested and resistant,
	</li>
	<li>
	They did not seem to know what they were doing in the meeting,
	</li>
	<li>
	They did not arrive prepared,
	</li>
	<li>
	Important topics were neglected such as they didn’t tell you what you needed to know or find out what they needed to know,
	</li>
	<li>
	There was a lack of follow up?
	</li>
</ol>

Argh! Managing would be so much easier if we didn’t have to deal with people :-) Managing employees can often sap your energy because sometimes it seems like you’re herding cats. The smarter thing to do is to stop trying to do everything yourself and turn it around like a judo flip where you use your opponent's momentum against them.

 

You see I’m going to challenge you and tell you that your problems are your fault because the typical boss makes some of the following mistakes:

<ul>
	<li>
	Failing to tell employees what they want,
	</li>
	<li>
	Failing to educate employees about the one on one meeting process or
	</li>
	<li>
	Failing to secure the employees buy-in to the one on one meeting process
	</li>
</ul>

 

If you are having an “aha” moment then I suggest that you fix those mistakes. It’s as simple as:

<ol>
	<li>
	Telling your employees what you want in a one on one meeting (like don’t be late &amp; arrive prepared!)
	</li>
	<li>
	Educating them about the purpose and content of One on One meetings and
	</li>
	<li>
	Secure their commitment to sticking to the One on One Meeting process and making it work (OK - that one is a little less easy, unless you know how to change manage One on One Meetings into your team)
	</li>
</ol>

So apologies for switching into critical parent mode for a while. Let’s talk about more exciting ways forward.

 

Action: Now you can spend time training your employees or a quicker (and I like to think better) way to get your employees to do world class one on one meetings with you is to use the GO1 feature of assigning course to assign them the course <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2632357/overview?">One on One Meetings with your Boss</a>.

 

<h2>Tips for change managing better one on one meetings with your employees:</h2>

<ul>
	<li>
	Follow up the assignment with a face to face chat. Tell them that they are important and one on ones are an important communication channel between you and them to keep work running harmoniously,
	</li>
	<li>
	Give them a deadline when they need to finish the course by, or else things will drift,
	</li>
	<li>
	After the training do a “review” asking your employee:

	<ul>
		<li>
		What they learnt,
		</li>
		<li>
		What they thought was helpful and
		</li>
		<li>
		Solicit their input on how you can both run the one on one meeting process better,
		</li>
	</ul>
	</li>
	<li>
	If there’s any special requests that you have, now is the time to voice them, And
	</li>
	<li>
	Make it clear that things don’t have to be set in stone. The idea is to find something that works for your unique situation but the important thing is that you “commit to giving it a proper try”
	</li>
</ul>

 

<h2>What you need to know about your Employee and One on One Meetings</h2>

<ol>
	<li>
	Meetings with the boss can be stressful for many employees. Especially when employees are unclear about the purpose of the meeting or what they are meant to do. (Can you remember your first meeting with your boss?).
	</li>
</ol>

 

<ol>
	<li>
	Few employees have had good role model managers to show them the ropes. And even fewer still have had any meaningful training in what to do or say in <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2632357/overview?">One on One Meetings with their Boss</a>. Bonus Tip: If none of your managers ever trained you in one on one meeting skills, it’s never too late to learn some more best practice - see what you can learn about having a better functional relationship with your own boss.
	</li>
</ol>

 

<ol>
	<li>
	A little investment in best practice and setting clear expectations will vastly improve your one on one meetings. And if you are the boss that invests in them and shows them how this is done they will never forget you for that. Being a boss comes with the opportunity to change your employees' lives.
	</li>
</ol>

 

<h2>Summing Up</h2>

Now you can sit waiting for your employees to do what you want. Or you can tell them what you want. Instead of trying to do everything yourself, successful bosses know how to engage their employees to support them. Instead of trying to do everything yourself do a “Secret Ninja Manager Skills judo flip and turn things around by training your employees <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2632357/overview?">how to have One on One meetings with the boss</a> (you!).

 

<h2>Supporting Skill: How to Develop Your Employees</h2>

Improving the way your employees do One on One meetings with you is just one example of developing your employees. It’s obvious why improving your employees skills &amp; abilities will lead to better results, time savings and more boss bliss :-). Developing employees by coaching them is an effective &amp; time efficient way to improve employee engagement and performance. If you want to improve your employees skills and abilities then <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2837651/overview?">see this resource</a>.

 

<h2>Supporting Resource: One on One Meetings with Your Boss</h2>

The One on One Meeting with your Boss is your most important work meeting. Learn best practice meeting skills with the course <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2632357/overview?">One on One Meetings with your Boss</a>. Includes:

<ul>
	<li>
	What to do and say in One on One meetings
	</li>
	<li>
	A best practice One to One Meeting With Manager template,
	</li>
	<li>
	A Meeting agenda to ensure you cover all the important topics,
	</li>
	<li>
	Questions to Ask During One-on-One Meetings With Manager,
	</li>
</ul>

Exercise: Secret Ninja Manager Skill: Assign One on Ones with Your Boss

One on One Meetings With Staff

Active Listening

<h2>Introduction</h2>

The idea with active listening to encourage employees to solve their own problems is that first you have to “catch” what they are saying and then turn the problem around to give it back to them. Below is a step by step example dialogue from <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/3172699/overview?">Active Listening Skills </a>that you can use. The scenario is that your employee Dave has come to you with a problem: Dave and Jo are not getting on well and he believes she has made some unreasonable demands of him. Dave has asked you to step in to fix the (his) problem.

 

<h2>Successful Managers Don’t Fix Employees Problems: They Train Employees to Fix Their Own Problems</h2>

The first thing to remember is to fight the urge to fix people’s problems for them. Perhaps you have a natural caring tendency to jump in and help people, but remember that this does not work in the long term. Because of these reasons

<ul>
	<li>
	Your employees will not own the solutions that you come up with and they will be less invested in making it work “See, I told you it wouldn’t work”,
	</li>
	<li>
	It’s not your problem - it’s Dave’s problem that he can’t deal with. Sure there are times when you can and should help your employee, but you have your own problems to deal with. Imagine if needed your boss to solve all of your problems,
	</li>
	<li>
	You don’t have the time to deal with all of your employees problems,
	</li>
	<li>
	When you solve employees problems for them, all that you are doing is that you are training them to bring you their problems,
	</li>
</ul>

Instead a better solution is to train your employees to solve their own problems. And this section contains some example dialogue you can use.

 

Note these are the complete 8 steps that I cover in the course. Chop and change it to suit your situation.

 

<h2>Step 1: Catch it:</h2>

“So you’re asking me to speak to Jo about her unreasonable demands.”

 

<h2>Step 2: Listen:</h2>

“Yes I understand that you’re having problems with Jo, she can be very demanding. She means well but can come across as brash. Can you give me the 1-minute summary?”

 

Remember there is a large difference between talking and feeling heard. Make sure your employee feels heard.

 

<h2>Step 3. Turn it around</h2>

“You have to work with Jo a lot in your role and this is why it’s important for you to learn how to have a functional relationship with her.”

 

<h2>Step 4. Buy-in/ Check-in:</h2>

“Do you understand why it’s important for you to have a working relationship with Jo?”

 

<h2>Step 5. Give it back:</h2>

“Can you please tell me your ideas about how you can smooth things over with Jo?”

 

<h2>Step 6. Support:</h2>

“I’d be happy to give you feedback on your plan. Or I’m happy to sponsor you for a course on setting boundaries?”

 

<h2>Step 7. Set deadline and report:</h2>

“Please don’t let this issue fester because I can see it’s causing distress. Let me know before lunch tomorrow what you have done”

 

<h2>Step 8. Follow up:</h2>

“Well done on speaking to Jo. What have you learnt from this?”

 

<h2>Secret Ninja Manager Skills:</h2>

OK so what has happened is that your employee has brought you a problem to solve, but instead you’ve turned it around and given it back to them and even given them a deadline to fix it. Bam - that’s why I call this one a secret ninja manager skill because you are doing a judo flip.

 

<h2>Summing up:</h2>

What I’ve learnt is that when I jump into my natural problem solving mode then my employees don’t feel like I’ve listened to them and they don’t take ownership for my solutions. But when I can remind myself to operate on a higher level and guide them to find their own solutions then I get much better outcomes.

 

Those are the 8 steps that I cover in the course <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/3172699/overview?">Dealing With Employee Problems Through Active Listening</a>. Clearly the full 8 steps are too much for you to use every time, especially as a beginner.

 

Exercise: If you want to develop your own active listening skills with step by step examples and practice exercises, then <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/3172699/overview?">enrol in the course</a>

Listening/Coaching Example Dialogue

Solving Employee Problems Through Active Listening

Inspiring Performance Communication

Performance Communication

The unwritten responsibilities of your job as a manager include:

<ul>
	<li>You are responsible to correct employee underperformance and mistakes</li>
	<li>You are responsible to guide your employees to produce better work</li>
</ul>

And how you do this is that you use Performance Communication. Put another way, Performance Communication is how you get your employees to do what you want them to do.

But it's more than that because Inspiring Performance Communication is motivational to your employees. Successful bosses know that frequent, high quality Performance Communication doesn't just improve performance in the topics that you communicate about but rather helps to improve performance as a whole.

This is because there are several benefits of Performance Communication for you, the organisation plus your employee, when you do performance communication the right way.

The first step to better performance communication is finding what is wrong - take the Performance Communication Checkup which is later in this section to find out your own personal score.

Introduction to Performance Communication

Deleted: See The quiz lower down

PS this checkup has been moved to lower down. 

The diagnosis is pretty straight forward to give you a feeling about whether your Performance Communication is working or not. Don't be concerned if you get a lot of "wrong" answers because these are just opportunities to fix with better Performance Communication.

There is a further insight about this analysis:

Odd Numbered Questions:

 The odd numbered questions relate mostly to whether or not you're giving enough Performance Communication. When you have a fast, effective technique it's easy to give Performance Communication in seconds and there is no excuse for not doing this every day. As a manager you will get better results if you do more Performance Communication.

Even Numbered Questions:

The even numbered questions relate to your technique - Is it easy, is it effective, is it non-emotional etc. As a manager you will get better results when you improve your Performance Communication technique.

In my experience the two tie together. Managers don't have good technique which puts them off giving the amount of Performance Communication that they should.

Performance Communication Score Interpretation

Creating Mutual Value

Unskilled managers treat management as a zero sum game where they can only get what they want at the cost of others. But effective bosses know how to create mutual value so that managers get what they want by giving employees what employees want.

Just try asking your employees: "Can I give you some feedback?" what do you think they will feel? What would you feel if your own boss said that to you? Performance Communication has a bad name because it's done badly. But this is just a management myth because Performance Communication done right has a lot of benefits for your employees listed below:

<ul><li>Your employees need to know if they're doing something wrong or doing something that you don't like</li>
	<li>Your employees want to have their contribution acknowledged: Performance Communication is how you let them know that the hard work they do is appreciated</li>
	<li>Your employees want to do meaningful work: Performance Communication is how you help them to find value and meaning in the work they do</li>
	<li>Your employees want to learn and grow: Performance Communication is how you help your employees to learn things they don't know and encourage them to perform at a higher level</li>
	<li>Your employees want a good relationship with you, their boss: Relationships are built on communication. Performance Communication is how you prevent small issues from becoming major problems</li>
</ul>The truth is that your employees love and crave high quality Performance Communication. 

And the magic multiplier effect is that Performance Communication isn't just about the topic you speak about. When you show your employees that performance is important, that you keep an eye on what they do, that you appreciate their contribution, that you are helping them to learn and grow and why the work they do is important, then your employees will become more engaged in their work. Your employees will get more work satisfaction and they will do better work.

Performance Communication - Benefits for Your Employees

This section is about the benefits of Performance Communication for you the manager. But it these benefits come from effective Performance Communication because doing Performance Communication badly doesn't produce the same benefits and in the worst case can be damaging.

<ul><li>Less manager stress because of lower conflict</li>
	<li>Less manager stress because of you'll have more competent &amp; engaged workers</li>
	<li>Less work for you the boss</li>
	<li>Delivery of results increased, leading to better remuneration and career prospects</li>
	<li>Better relationships with your employees</li>
	<li>More confidence in your skills as a boss</li>
</ul>Clearly there is a lot of alignment with company interests because this leads to happier and more productive companies. Obviously more productive employees means lower costs, higher revenues and better profits. Plus employees who take ownership for their jobs help to ensure the continuity of their companies.

Performance Communication - Benefits for You the manager (and Companies)

Are your employees performing?

Is your performance communication working?

Take this short assessment to find out and get customised management advice so you can achieve better results in less time.

PS: This interactive assessment may take a few seconds to load.

Performance Communication Checkup

Performance Communication is an Essential Manager Skill Because this is how you provide direction and encouragement to your employees.

<ul>
	<li>
	When your employee is off course it’s your duty as a boss to correct it.
	</li>
	<li>
	And bosses who reward good performance with recognition and promote higher performance with encouragement will have better results and retention than those bosses who do not.
	</li>
</ul>

 

To be a better boss improve your performance communication technique by:

<ol>
	<li>
	Researching what works and what doesn’t (Hint the sandwich feedback technique is actually a bad idea),
	</li>
	<li>
	Establish consent with your employees to give them feedback (change manage &amp; get buy-in),
	</li>
	<li>
	Practice your performance communication as a discipline to get better at it over time.
	</li>
</ol>

 

Here are some techniques for you to practice for more effective Performance Communication. These come from the course “<a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2823195/overview?">The Power of Positive Feedback</a>”.

 

Exercise: If you want to develop your performance communication skills so that your employees listen to what you say and take action then you can enroll <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2823195/overview?">here</a>.

 

<ol>
	<li>
	<h2>Don’t delay your performance communication for the performance evaluation:</h2>

	<ol>
		<li>
		If your employee has done something that you do not like, they deserve to know about it, in time to do something about it,
		</li>
		<li>
		When you “hang on” to feedback, you make it a big deal,
		</li>
		<li>
		Delaying feedback means it festers in your mind. Either give prompt feedback or let it go,
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>
	<h2>Make your feedback quick:</h2>

	<ol>
		<li>
		Feedback is unpleasant for both you and your employee, don’t drag the process out by spending a long time on it,
		</li>
		<li>
		The longer your feedback is, the more emotional it’s likely to get and the more likely it is to degenerate into an unpleasant experience with defensive behaviours
		</li>
		<li>
		Note: Feedback really only needs to be a sentence or two and can be done in under 10 seconds. See “<a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2823195/overview?">The Power of Positive Feedback</a>” for an example
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>
	<h2>Always end on something positive:</h2>

	<ol>
		<li>
		This isn’t the sandwich technique because that is largely ineffective and time consuming,
		</li>
		<li>
		This works because people have a recency bias in their memories. This means they are more likely to remember how they felt at the end of the feedback than during the middle,
		</li>
		<li>
		So when you give negative feedback, don’t finish at the part that seems critical. It’s best to move past the criticism and talk about the future. Hint: Ask for what you want instead. And
		</li>
		<li>
		End your feedback with positive body language such as a smile and friendly eye contact
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>
	<h2>Give frequent (mostly positive) feedback:</h2>

	<ol>
		<li>
		This desensitizes your employees to receiving feedback,
		</li>
		<li>
		It keeps you on top of what’s going on and responsive to address issues before they snowball,
		</li>
		<li>
		Only intervening when things go wrong (parachute management) means your interactions with your employees are only negative. And you need 5 times as many positive interactions as negative interactions for healthy relationships. (Think: no one likes being managed by a critical, negative boss)
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>
	<h2>Keep your feedback as factual &amp; unemotional as possible:</h2>

	<ol>
		<li>
		Sticking to incontrovertible facts avoids disagreements,
		</li>
		<li>
		Don’t speculate what your employees intentions, because only they know their intentions,
		</li>
		<li>
		Don’t speculate or what their character is (ie. lazy or careless) because that is non-factual and highly personal which will lead to disagreements, defensiveness and alienation
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
</ol>

 

<h1>Next Steps: Diving Deeper to Become a Better Boss</h1>

Knowing how to give effective performance communication is an essential manager skill. If you find that:

<ul>
	<li>
	Feedback is stressful for you or your employee,
	</li>
	<li>
	Feedback takes up your time,
	</li>
	<li>
	Your employees don’t listen to what you say, or get defensive, or don’t change their behaviours,
	</li>
	<li>
	You would like your employees to improve results,
	</li>
	<li>
	You are not sure exactly what to say and not say during performance communication
	</li>
</ul>

Then these are signs that you need to improve your performance communication skills to be a better boss.

 

Exercise: enrol in the <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2823195/overview?">Power of Positive Feedback</a> for:

<ul>
	<li>
	Step by step performance communication dialogues, telling you exactly what to say and why,
	</li>
	<li>
	Guidance on change managing performance into your team and obtaining their consent and buy-in,
	</li>
	<li>
	Exercises to develop your performance communication skills, graded from easy to hard
	</li>
</ul>

Exercise: Ways to Improve Your Performance Communication

Performance Communication

Delegation

Delegation is Tool to Motivate and Grow Your Employees

Successful bosses don't just use delegation as a tool to manage their own workload. That's because the Secret Ninja Manager Trick is that you can use Delegation as a tool to Motivate and Grow your employees.

Traditional management is a zero sum game where managers and companies only do well at the cost of their employees. Ethical management is where you create mutual value by working in partnership with your employees.

How you do this is by working out how Delegation is beneficial to your employees. Here are some of the ways that your employees can benefit from delegation:

<ol><li>The opportunity to learn and grow</li>
	<li>The opportimity to use underutilized skills</li>
	<li>A chance to do the stuff they are good at</li>
	<li>A chance to build their network</li>
	<li>An outlet for creative expression and problem solving</li>
</ol>These motivators drive work satisfaction and therefore happiness too.

Delegation - Benefits for Employees

Delegation is an Essential Manager Skill, because delegation can be used to:

<ul>
	<li>Manage your own workload,</li>
	<li>Give work to the employee who will achieve the best results,</li>
	<li>Grow your employees,</li>
	<li>Engage your employees,</li>
</ul>

and more.

 
How well you delegate will determine your success as a manager. Take this short assessment to check up on your delegation skills and get customised feedback on how to delegate better.

PS the interactive assessment may take a few seconds to load and takes under 5 minutes to complete.

Delegation Checkup

Here are some best practices to improve your delegation results. These come from the Ultimate guide to Delegation.

 

Exercise: Improve your delegation skills to become a better boss. Relevant resource: <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2630961/overview?">Ultimate Guide to Delegation</a>.

 

<ol>
	<li>
	<h2>Don’t try to do everything yourself because you’re not an expert at everything and nor do you have time to do everything. Instead:</h2>

	<ol>
		<li>
		Delegate what you don’t have time to do (or attend to immediately) because your employees will be able to attend to most tasks before you even get a chance to start them (Done is better than perfect),
		</li>
		<li>
		Delegate parts of your job that you don’t like. Remember what is boring to you can represent an exciting growth opportunity to your employees,
		</li>
		<li>
		Delegate parts of your job that you are not an expert at. Hint: Find an employee who has an interest or aptitude. You’d be surprised at the latent talents in your team,
		</li>
		<li>
		Delegate lower importance tasks so you can concentrate on your top priorities,
		</li>
		<li>
		Delegate parts of your job that take up excessive amounts of time,
		</li>
		<li>
		BONUS: Start with delegating tasks that are easy to delegate,
		</li>
		<li>
		If you want to follow a process to identify what to delegate, see the section “How to Identify What to Delegate” in the <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2630961/overview?">Ultimate Guide to Delegation</a>
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>
	<h2>Secure your employees commitment to the responsibility BEFORE giving them the responsibility, not after.</h2>

	<ol>
		<li>
		Always secure your employees explicit agreement whenever you need them to do something. But in delegation, doing this before you delegate will improve the delegation,
		</li>
		<li>
		It makes it clearer that they need to pay attention because they have already committed,
		</li>
		<li>
		They pay attention with the intent to remember and understand, instead of the intent to find an excuse to avoid the responsibility, Trust me - people listen a lot better when they know they are responsible!
		</li>
		<li>
		This means you don’t waste time explaining things if they don’t accept the work
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>
	<h2>Use delegation as a tool to grow the skills and capabilities of your team:</h2>

	<ol>
		<li>
		Better employee skills equals better results for you as the boss. Better skills = faster &amp; more output, better quality and more capabilities,
		</li>
		<li>
		Growth &amp; challenge motivates your employees &amp; retains your top talent,
		</li>
		<li>
		Improves resilience and back up cover for you
		</li>
		<li>
		Before promoting employees, test whether they can do the job by delegating them parts of the job
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>
	<h2>Delegate in your One on One Meetings with your employees:</h2>

	<ol>
		<li>
		Saves time because you’re already meeting them,
		</li>
		<li>
		Good place to work out what to delegate to your employees to match their skills, wants and career goals,
		</li>
		<li>
		Good place to keep track of progress,
		</li>
		<li>
		Helpful resource: Conduct kick butt <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2676815/overview?">One on Ones with your employees that get things done</a>. 
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>
	<h2>Don’t expect, accept</h2>

	<ol>
		<li>
		Plan for a transitional period of disruption - expect that some things will go wrong and accept this
		</li>
		<li>
		When you first did parts of your job, you made mistakes. Don’t expect your employees to be perfect on their first time,
		</li>
		<li>
		Delegation has long term benefits. A single delegation may not work out the way you hoped but is still an investment that will produce future returns
		</li>
		<li>
		If/When things go wrong resist the urge to take tasks back because this is a write off off your investment. Instead find ways to stick to the delegation,
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
</ol>

 
 

<h2>Bonus: Avoid reverse delegation by using coaching skills</h2>

Reverse delegation is when you delegate a task to employees but then get it back. Clearly this is a massive waste of your time, effort and is a source of frustration. If you experience too much reverse delegation and you will be discouraged from delegating in the first place.

Realising the benefits of delegation, sometimes means sticking to your plans even when the going gets tough.

 

Rather than taking back a responsibility from your employee, use active listening skills to coach your employees to solve their own problems.

 

<h2>Improving Your Delegation Skills:</h2>

Like any skill it will take dedication and sticking to a process to improve your skills. If you want to improve the results you get when you delegate here are some steps to follow:

<ol>
	<li>
	Set a Goal &amp; Commit: Understand that you will have to invest some time in yourself because getting better requires study &amp; practice. Pick a goal and set time aside to work towards that goal. Hint: Suggested Goal: Delegate 3 responsibilities to your employees within 6 weeks. Suggested time: Set aside 1 hour a week to work on this just like the process described in “YOUR Power Hour”,
	</li>
	<li>
	Learn best practice, what to do, what to say and what to avoid. See <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2630961/overview?">The Ultimate Guide to Delegation</a>,
	</li>
	<li>
	Start simple and practice: Just like any practical skill, you actually have to put it into practice. And you will have better success by starting simpler and building. Follow the process,
	</li>
	<li>
	Stick to it: Expect &amp; accept that things will go wrong and it won’t always be easy. But if you keep on coming back to that hour a week to stick to your practice, then you will continue to make progress
	</li>
</ol>

 

<h2>Exercise: Enrol in The Ultimate Guide to Delegation:</h2>

If you feel like delegation takes you too much time and doesn’t produce the results you like then you can enrol in the <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2630961/overview?">Ultimate Guide to Delegation</a>. This includes:

<ul>
	<li>
	A proven delegation script,
	</li>
	<li>
	How to change manage delegation into your team,
	</li>
	<li>
	How to address delegation objections &amp; get your employees commitment to the process,
	</li>
	<li>
	Delegation theory, best practices and common mistakes to avoid,
	</li>
	<li>
	How to choose what to delegate,
	</li>
	<li>
	Step by step exercises to develop your delegation skills
	</li>
</ul>

Exercise: Improve Your Delegation Skills

Employee Growth - Delegation

Employee Development

Right now by following this e-learning, you are investing in your skills which is going to make you better at your job. This is awesome news for you and your boss. But the question is: Are your employees also investing in their skills so that they become better at their jobs?

 

When you are a manager the results of your team as a whole are more important than your individual contribution. This means that when you become a boss you can’t just focus on your own skills and results. As a boss achieving results means encouraging and supporting your team to maximise their skills to improve their results.

 

Of course you need to manage your employees plus still do all of your own work and so you need time efficient methods to improve employee performance. This section will detail a method that you can use to develop your employees in less than 10 minutes per employee, per week.

 

<h2>Developing Employees Doesn’t have to Be Time Consuming: Coach don’t Train</h2>

One proven method to improve employee engagement and results is to invest in your employees skills and capabilities by developing employees. But most bosses think that employee development is time consuming because they don’t have the time to train employees. And you are 100% right because training employees is where you do the time consuming part of teaching. Instead a much more time efficient way to develop your employees is to coach them instead of training them.

 

<h2>What is Coaching? And how is this Faster than Training?</h2>

The difference with coaching is that when you coach, you don’t spend time teaching employees new skills. What you do instead is that you guide employees through their own skills development process and you use experts to do the time consuming part of training.

 

Exercise: <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2837651/overview?">Find out how to develop your employees in under 10 minutes per week by using coaching</a>

 

<h2>Some Coaching Responsibilities:</h2>

Here are some things for you to do when you coach employees:

<ol>
	<li>
	Secure your employees’ consent and buy-in to improving their skills and abilities. Engage them to be motivated to develop their skills,
	</li>
	<li>
	Help your employees select the right skills and abilities to develop,
	</li>
	<li>
	Ensure your employees pick a learning resource that is appropriate for them and the skill. (eg. Online learning, practical experience, training, experts, support groups etc.)
	</li>
	<li>
	Support your employees by giving them the time, resources and stakeholder support that they will need to develop their skills,
	</li>
	<li>
	Support your employees with a learning environment that allows for experimentation and failure,
	</li>
	<li>
	Set measurable goals &amp; timelines with your employee and agree these as a training contract,
	</li>
	<li>
	Regular and frequent follow up with your employees to encourage them to stay on track and to coach them through solving any problems that need solving,
	</li>
	<li>
	Support your employees with practical opportunities to develop their skills and practical applications where you can realise the benefits,
	</li>
	<li>
	Recognise and reward your employees and promote future skills development
	</li>
</ol>

PS: These are extracted from the guide How to Develop Your Employees. If you want to find out HOW to do each of the above steps then enrol <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2837651/overview?">here</a>.

 

<h2>Some Benefits of Coaching vs Training/Teaching</h2>

<ul>
	<li>
	<h3>Access to unlimited knowledge:</h3>
	</li>
</ul>

When you train an employee, you are limited to the knowledge of what you know. You are not an expert at everything. Instead you can use experts in different fields to expand the skills and capabilities of your team beyond what you know personally.

<ul>
	<li>
	<h3>Coaching allows the learning to be customized to participants needs:</h3>
	</li>
</ul>

Coaching allows your employees to select a learning modality &amp; source that suits their learning style.

<ul>
	<li>
	<h3>Coaching motivates &amp; retains employees</h3>
	</li>
</ul>

Coaching provides the human touch that shows managers that they care about their employees and are invested in their futures. Coaching fulfils the human need to learn and grow and this means your employees get more job satisfaction.

<ul>
	<li>
	<h3>Coaching secures return on your training investment</h3>
	</li>
</ul>

Coaching delivers real world business benefits because coaching provides goals, accountability and support that teaching doesn’t.

<ul>
	<li>
	<h3>Time efficient</h3>
	</li>
</ul>

Obviously coaching is time efficient for you :-) This often makes the difference between doing something and not doing something.

 

<h2>What to do when you are the expert?</h2>

Of course there are times where you have to train because are the (only) expert. For example you may be the only person who knows how the company CRM system works. This means that coaching won’t save you training time. In these cases I recommend the following three strategies to be time efficient:

<ol>
	<li>
	Avoidance / delay / re-prioritization: Do you really have to train that skill? There are so many other skills you could potentially coach instead or before,
	</li>
	<li>
	Shadowing: Have your employee shadow you while you do the activity because you were going to have to do it anyway,
	</li>
	<li>
	Building a best practice resource: When you train your employees, get them to create a reference guide set of instructions as part of their learning (GO1 is an excellent resource to host &amp; deliver internal training). Consider delegating the responsibility for being a technical expert in the matter concerned to an employee. In this way you only need to train the bare minimum.
	</li>
</ol>

 

<h2>Wrapping up</h2>

Think back on a time when you’ve had a coach in your life. A person who helped you to see things you couldn’t see yourself. A person who pushed you beyond your comfort zone when you needed extra encouragement. And a person who supported you by opening doors and showing you the way.

 

What difference this has made to your success? Think how important the people are who invest in us and help us to be a better version of ourselves.

 

Imagine for a moment that you could be this person to your employees. You have an opportunity to change your employees lives for the better. But you don’t have to do it just because it’s a nice thing to do for someone else because:

<ul>
	<li>
	When your employees succeed, you also succeed,
	</li>
	<li>
	Developing your employees will help them meet their desire for growth and self-actualisation. These are higher level Maslow hierarchy needs. This will improve retention because your employees will be less likely to leave even if they are offered more money elsewhere,
	</li>
	<li>
	Your life as a boss will be easier and you will be able to delegate more of your work,
	</li>
	<li>
	Your will gain confidence in your management skills and satisfaction from helping and watching your employees grow.
	</li>
</ul>

This is why developing your employees is an essential manager skill and you can improve your employee development skills <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2837651/overview?">here</a>

Exercise: Improve Your Employee Development Skills: The secret to time efficient employee development

<h2>Super Ninja Manager Skills</h2>

This section is going to cover two shortcuts that you can use to improve your employees skills. Clearly most bosses want employees who:

<ul>
	<li>
	Improve their skills to produce better results in less time,
	</li>
	<li>
	Develop their capabilities to take on new responsibilities (for example so you can delegate more of your work to your employees) and
	</li>
	<li>
	Improve their knowledge to support innovation, creativity and problem solving,
	</li>
</ul>

But sometimes managing employees feels like pushing your employees up a hill and developing employees takes your boss time and effort. Instead use these two shortcuts to kick off your employee development with the absolute minimum of manager time.

 

<h2>Shortcut 1 - Ninja Flip to Turn Employee Development Around</h2>

Instead of doing the hard work of developing / coaching your employees, do a ninja flip to turn this around and help your employees to help themselves.

 

How you do this is that you improve your employees self development skills. And how you do that is that you use the GO1 course assignment feature to assign <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2562376/overview?">Self Leadership: Developing Yourself</a> to your employees. It will help your employees with common issues such as:

<ul>
	<li>
	Finding time for development,
	</li>
	<li>
	Choosing what skills to develop,
	</li>
	<li>
	Asking you, the boss, for your input on what to develop,
	</li>
	<li>
	Putting their enhanced skills into use at work to realise the benefits of training,
	</li>
	<li>
	Working with mentors and more
	</li>
</ul>

The problem is that school doesn’t teach us the real world skills we need to be successful at work. Plus the modern world is a rapidly changing environment. This is why it’s essential to your employees success that they learn how to take ownership for their own skills development. And the secret to managers success is that you succeed when your employees succeed.

 

<h2>Shortcut 2 - Make a Wish and Use the GO1 Course Assignment Feature</h2>

Imagine for a moment that I’m a genie here to grant you a wish. I’m not a proper genie and so I’m only going to grant you a very specific wish:

 

What do you wish your employees would get better at? Think about each of your employees separately:

<ul>
	<li>
	Is there something they are consistently weak at? Or
	</li>
	<li>
	Are there things they don’t know that are holding them back? Or
	</li>
	<li>
	On a more positive note: What are their top 3 deliverables that you want from them? What skills would help them to do better?
	</li>
</ul>

 

Now use the GO1 search feature to find a course that looks appropriate and start by assigning one course to each employee. Give it a due date.

 

Tip: Don’t just assign a course without any explanation or motivation. Follow up with a conversation in your <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2676815/overview?">One on One Meeting with Your Employee</a> about why you think the course can help them in their job.

 

<h2>Looking for somewhere to start?</h2>

I’m also going to take this opportunity to reference a few of the GO1 Academy courses that may help your employees. If you are searching for somewhere to start then consider starting by assigning one of these courses to your employees:

<ul>
	<li>
	Help your employees have better One on One Meetings with their Boss (You!): Assign: <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2632357/overview?">One-on-Ones With Your Boss</a>
	</li>
	<li>
	Improve your employees focus, stress management and mental health: Assign <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/7153095/overview?">Desk Meditation</a>
	</li>
	<li>
	Improve your employees communication skills: <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/3073731/overview?">How to Communicate with Everyone</a>
	</li>
</ul>

 

<h2>Note: What this shortcut isn’t:</h2>

This is a great way for you to quickly kick start employee development. And this is a quick way for you to start developing your employees before you learn <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2837651/overview?">how to develop employees by coaching</a>. Just be mindful that this shortcut is not as effective as coaching because:

<ul>
	<li>
	It’s missing the human touch of coaching,
	</li>
	<li>
	You’re not engaging your employees by involving them in the process of selecting training, methodology and goals,
	</li>
	<li>
	It lacks goal setting, accountability,
	</li>
	<li>
	There’s no link to a business benefit as an outcome,
	</li>
	<li>
	There’s a lack of follow up and encouragement
	</li>
</ul>

 

Assigning your employees courses is a quick shortcut. So if you find that your employee development is not effective at converting training courses into real world business benefits, then use the techniques in <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2837651/overview?">How to Develop Your Employees</a> to fill in the missing gaps.

Exercise: Employee Development Shortcuts

Now most people think that employee development is a Human Resources (HR) responsibility. Obviously that looks like a natural fit because it’s got to do with people and HR is the people department. Plus HR often has Learning &amp; Development professionals where most managers come from a different background. Now the thing is that HR does play a very important role in employee skills &amp; development. But managers also have an important role to play in their employee development which, all too often, is sorely neglected. And I know that the reason for managers neglecting their employee development responsibilities is simply because they haven’t been trained <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2837651/overview?">how to develop employees</a>. So let’s answer the question of who is responsible for what, when it comes to the responsibility for employee development.

 

<h2>Managers and employee development</h2>

If you’re a boss here are 5 reasons why you can’t afford to leave employee development solely to HR:

<ol>
	<li>
	You are responsible for the performance of your employees and the skills and abilities of your team have a massive impact on their performance.
	</li>
	<li>
	Developing employees is a proven way to motivate and retain employees. Employee development is one of the few things that you can do as a manager to increase employee engagement &amp; retention,
	</li>
	<li>
	One of your responsibilities as a manager is to ensure that your team has the necessary skills and abilities that you need. The two ways to do this is to hire for missing skills, or, upskill/reskill existing employees,
	</li>
	<li>
	As a manager you are responsible for the continuity of your team. You need to ensure that your team is resilient enough to handle employee turnover and other employee absences. Employee development is how you can build cross competencies and resilience, AND
	</li>
	<li>
	You should also develop your employees skills for your own stress and workload management because managing workers who lack skills is stressful. Plus developing employees skills is how you can delegate work to your employees to manage your own workload.
	</li>
</ol>

 

But essentially these all boil down to the same thing. It’s tempting to leave Employee Development solely in the hands of HR but it’s you, the manager, who is affected the most by employee development. Regardless of how good (or not!) your HR is:

<ul>
	<li>
	HR are not the people who have to deliver your departments results,
	</li>
	<li>
	HR are not the people who have to manage unmotivated employees who are bored because of a lack of growth,
	</li>
	<li>
	HR are not the people who have to work overtime because your employees lack capabilities they need and
	</li>
	<li>
	HR are not the people who suffer when you lose an important member of your team.
	</li>
</ul>

You are!

 

If you want to have control over your destiny as a manager then <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2837651/overview?">invest ten minutes a week to coach</a> each of your employees.

 

<h2>HR’s role &amp; the answer to the responsibility question</h2>

HR does have an important role in employee development. Such as:

<ul>
	<li>
	Procuring / conducting / making training,
	</li>
	<li>
	Setting up corporate learning management systems (such as GO1),
	</li>
	<li>
	Making skill specifications,
	</li>
	<li>
	Doing skills audits etc.
	</li>
</ul>

 

So to answer the question of whether employee Development is an HR or manager responsibility, the answer is both. And HR are your best partners to assist you with employee development.

 

<h2>What’s wrong with the current model?</h2>

The main reason why employee development is done by HR and not by managers is because managers haven’t been trained how to develop employees. And managers are not aware of their responsibilities and how much employee development directly affects their results. So for managers to carry their share of employee development, managers will need to be upskilled in <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2837651/overview?">employee development</a>.

 

<h2>One more thing: The most valuable thing you can do as a manager that HR can’t</h2>

There’s one final thing I’d like to share on the matter. You represent your employees relationship to the company. What you can do that HR cannot do it that you can provide the human touch. For employee development, this means:

<ul>
	<li>
	Getting to know your employee (in those <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2676815/overview?">One on One Meetings</a> I keep on talking about),
	</li>
	<li>
	Understanding where your employee wants to go in their career,
	</li>
	<li>
	Understanding your employees strengths &amp; weaknesses,
	</li>
	<li>
	Encouraging your employee when they need a push and
	</li>
	<li>
	Supporting your employee when they need a hand
	</li>
</ul>

Making yourself invaluable means doing what only you can do. Being a responsible boss means doing what no one else can do. Be a better boss by knowing what your role is when it comes to developing employees.

 

<h2>Employee development supports your delegation and time management</h2>

I’d like to leave you with a thought. If you feel overworked because you have too much to do and if you feel like you cannot delegate work to your employees because you are the only one who knows how to do your job. Then this is potentially your own fault, because this is a sign that you need to develop your employees more so that they are more capable. When they are more capable they will be able to do more work in less time and they will be capable of doing work that you delegate to them. Now I know that this can be a critical message and I know how difficult it is to achieve “manager nirvana” but employee development is one of those things that can take you closer to nirvana. And this is why you can’t afford to leave employee development solely to HR because if you do, you will always be stuck.  

 

Less experienced managers don’t develop their employees because of a lack of time. Successful managers invest in their employees skills and capabilities to save time.

Employee Development: Human Resources or Manager Responsibility?

The problem with employee development is that it sits in the important but not urgent category and most managers think that it’s time consuming. This means that it’s far too easy for employee development to get knocked back by more urgent but less important activities.

 

Knowing how to deal with the challenges faced in employee development will help you to stick to a regular employee development practice.

 

Managers aren’t trained how to develop / coach their employees. People are complex and expecting to succeed at coaching without any skills development is not reasonable. Here are some supporting skills managers need to develop to improve their coaching:

 

<h2>Supporting Manager Skills for Employee Development</h2>

<h3>One on One Meetings with Your Employees:</h3>

Of course you can coach your employees in specific meetings booked for employee development. But this is cumbersome and who’s got the time for that. Being successful in your employee development means removing as many barriers as possible.

 

One of the barriers is time. That’s why it’s more efficient and effective to use your One on One Meeting to develop your employees.

 

The other reason why your One on One Meetings are an important part of your employee development is because it’s in the <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2676815/overview?">One on One Meetings</a> where you will get to know your employee better which will guide you to pick the right skills to develop.

 

See how and improve your <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2676815/overview?">One on One Meeting skills here</a>

 

<h3>Self Leadership: How to Develop Yourself</h3>

This is less a skill for you and more a skill for your employees. As a boss it’s painful when it seems like you have to push to make everything happen. It’s so much easier when your employees know what to do and are motivated to take their own initiative. <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2562376/overview?">This course shows people how to develop themselves</a> so that you need to spend less time and effort developing them. If you get your team to do this then you will have a team who is better at autonomously improving their skills and capabilities.

 

<h3>How to Develop Your Employees:</h3>

This includes securing employee buy-in, agreeing training contracts, setting meaningful goals, obtaining stakeholder support and a script for you so you know exactly what to do and say. <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2837651/overview?">Get the course here</a>.

 

<h3>Performance Communication:</h3>

Performance communication is how you:

<ul>
	<li>
	Encourage your employees to higher performance,
	</li>
	<li>
	Reward them with recognition and
	</li>
	<li>
	Guide them back on track when they go astray
	</li>
</ul>

in their skills development. <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2823195/overview?">You can find out more here</a>.

 

<h3>Active Listening Skills to Coach Your Employees to Solve Their Own Problems:</h3>

Your employees will never grow if you solve their problems for them. <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/3172699/overview?">This technique</a> allows you to build rapport with your employees at the same time as setting boundaries and expectations for their performance. It includes a script that you can use to coach your employees to solve their own problems. This is a useful technique for you to use to guide your employees through the inevitable, difficult parts of growth.

 

<h3>Developing a culture of learning in your organisation. Getting Going With GO1</h3>

As they say “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Some organisations have a culture of excellence. Where employees strive to be the best in their field. As you can imagine a culture where employees are actively learning to improve themselves is going to make for a successful and sustainable business. We now have access to an amazing library of everything we need to know - so the problem isn’t access to knowledge, it’s what you do with that. <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/4263354/overview?">This course will show you how to make the most of online learning and specifically cover some tips to the GO1 platform</a>.

 

<h3>Delegation and Employee Development</h3>

Usually employee development is a supporting skill for delegation because you develop your employees skills in order that you can delegate work to them. Also delegation is a great technique that you use to realise the benefits of employee development.

 

But delegating work to employees is also a successful method to grow your employees by giving them the opportunity to do new things and giving them stretch growth targets.

 

If growing your employees by delegating responsibilities to them appeals to you, then follow the process of “How to Identify What to Delegate” to find some appropriate growth opportunities for you employees. You can find this in <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/2630961/overview?">The Ultimate Guide to Delegation</a>.

Dealing with Employee Development & Coaching Challenges:

Employee Growth - Development

Conclusion: Foundations

Conclusion - The Management Foundations

Next Steps to Get The Most From This Module

Congratulations on completing this module. Here are a couple of tips to help you generate benfits from what you've learnt:

<ol>
	<li>Inform your Boss: Want recognition for your achievements? Whether financial recognition, verbal recognition or getting a promotion, your boss cannot give you recognition for what they don't know. Informing your boss that you've completed this module is also a good signal for your boss to know that you're ready to take on more management responsibilities.</li>
	<li>Update your CV / Resume / LinkedIn Profile: Get more senior / higher paying jobs by displaying your new management skills.</li>
	<li>Join the LinkedIn Group: As a graduate of a Manager Foundation module, you are a good match for the LinkedIn group. In this group you can ask your management questions and assist others solve their employee performance problems. Plus this is a good place for recruiting and job search: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/5070496/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.linkedin.com/groups/5070496/</a></li>
	<li>Your Boss SuperPower: Have you found out your Boss SupoerPower yet? If not, this is your last chance at: <a href="https://academy.mygo1.com/p/#/app/course-view/8906587/overview?">Discover your Boss Superpower </a></li>
	<li>PS: If you have any questions about employee performance, please email me at : KeithT@ManagerFoundation.com</li>
</ol>

Thank you and good luck!

Keith

Next Steps

As a participant of one of our online training programs, you are now eligible to join the Manager Foundation Alumni Community.

Click here to apply to join:

<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/5070496">https://www.linkedin.com/groups/5070496</a>

What you will get includes:

<ul><li>Access to experienced managers to find solutions to your employee performance problems</li>
	<li>A chance to share your own expertise</li>
	<li>A place to find trained managers to recruit</li>
	<li>A place to market your own skills to people who appreciate the value of manager skills</li>
</ul>

Joining the Manager Foundation Alumni Community

CPD (CPE) Continuing Professional Development Credits

I run Boss Camp in classes. You can apply to join the next Boss Camp class over here:

<a href="http://www.boss.camp/">WWW.BOSS.CAMP</a>

Bonus:

<ol><li>This will also tell you more about Boss Camp and</li>
	<li>As an application bonus, I'm currently giving away one of my simplest but effective "Secret Ninja Manager Skills"</li>
</ol>

Essential Management Skills

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