5 Actions for Bad Staff Members at Work to Build Trust, Not Fear

Delivering bad news to staff is definitely one of the hardest jobs of being a manager. There is nothing nice about delivering bad news to employees and team members

I explain exactly what to do when giving bad news to employees - during and after sharing bad news.

Delivering bad news to your team at work is going to provoke an emotional response from multiple people. Before delivering bad news get your own emotions under control and rehearse how you are going to handle emotional outbursts. 

How to deliver bad news starts with what not to do. Don’t go through pleasantries, take time for small talk, or take ages building yourself up to deliver bad news. 

Research from the medical profession shows that the number one factor to how your message will be received is the news-giver’s attitude. Focus on making giving bad news to employees all about them not about you.

Exactly how to deliver bad news to employees I explain in the video in three simple steps. A critical part of communication skills is how you manage your tone of voice and body language. To have effective communication skills, you must be aware of these and be able to control them appropriately. 

Before you give bad news understand why you are giving the bad news. Then you are able to answer questions effectively, openly, and honestly. All key when having difficult conversations.

Another big part of how to deliver bad news at work is to manage the emotions of the receipts of the bad news. Allow them to vent and show their emotions. Be empathetic by showing your emotions but stay neutral. Don’t allow those you are giving bad news to start debating decisions they can’t change or influence. 

Another vital part of giving bad news to staff is what happens after the bad news. Bad news usually creates uncertainty. How are you going to create as much certainty in the situation going forward. What is your vision for future and how are you going to share this.

If  you have any questions on “Delivering Bad News To Staff - Make Difficult Conversations Easier”, please eamil me at enhance.training and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

Good teamwork at work is hugely valuable for both manager and company. Teams significantly outperform groups of individuals, in my experience. Signs of great teamwork point to a good manager leading the team.

I share 6 signs of good teamwork at work and how to improve teamwork in your team.

Teamwork in the workplace is hugely beneficial for the manager who’s personal performance is assessed on the performance of their team. Great teamwork at work is great for the manager because:

1. Teamwork enables better problem solving
2. Teamwork unlocks potential for innovation and sparks creativity
3. People are happier in teams with good teamwork
4. Teamwork increases personal and professional growth
5. Working in a team lowers stress and the risk of burnout
6. Individuals working as a team are a lot more productive

 All of these drive higher team performance. 

The power of teamwork starts with every team member understanding and believing in the team goals. Goals give the team shared purpose and direction, which is one of the characteristics of great teamwork.

Another of the signs of great teamwork at work is an environment of trust. With trust you don’t have a team, just a collection of individuals. Collaboration and knowing that colleagues will do what they commit to is a sign of great teamwork at work.

The third of the signs you have a great team is that team members will put the team first. All team members know that when the team does well, they individually do well. Good teamwork at work is doing the right thing for the team even if it costs you personally in the short term. 

The fourth of the signs of great teamwork at work is each team member will do their part. They will work through lunch, stay late, ask for help … anything they need to do to deliver what they have committed to. They won’t let their teammates down.

The fifth of the characteristics of teamwork is that open, honest and lively communication is the norm. Good teamwork at the workplace is noisy. Good teams are constantly asking for ideas and solutions and giving their own. They are asking for help, debating the best next step - all of which you can’t do in silence. 

Lastly, the power of teamwork always shows in how results focused the team is. Team performance is measured on outcomes produced not activity undertaken. Team work makes reaching goals and outcomes a lot easier, quicker and more fun. 

Throughout, I share tips and tactics I have used for decades to improve team performance and what I view as critical teamwork skills.

If you have any questions about “Unlock the power of Teamwork! 6 Signs of Good Teamwork At Work”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

Building responsibility in teams increases team performance and makes working in the team much more enjoyable. A win for everyone. 

The manager has the biggest influence to encourage employees to take responsibility and knowing what to do makes a massive difference to your effectiveness as a manager. 

I share 5 actions for building a culture of responsibility in teams to increase performance.

How to encourage employees to take responsibility starts with how to give them permission. Taking responsibility can be scary as an employee, particularly if there are likely consequences if something goes wrong. 

Setting out what employees can do and can’t provides security and confidence, which encourages employee responsibility. Focus on your actions, decisions, and behaviours as much as what you tell your team. 

Next, to make employees more responsible visibly and actively ask for and value team member input. Responsible employees will jump at the change to be more involved in the direction of their own work. Everyone will be more motivated when the goals and plan are partly their own rather than just the managers. 

To build responsibility in teams stop telling and start coaching. When you tell a person what to do, the responsibility stays with you. When they tell you what they are going to do, the responsibility is theirs. Give team members responsibility by asking questions (coaching) rather than telling. 

When you get team members taking responsibility, you also have to protect them from external forces and criticism and ensure you don’t punish errors. Use learning errors to teach and improve, while not accepting errors caused by laziness or lack of attention etc.

Getting the team environment right to build responsibility in teams is a key leadership skill and super important to increase team performance. I share 10 factors to build responsibility and accountability.

If you have any questions on “5 Actions for Building Responsibility in Teams to Increase Performance”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

Learning safe ways to challenge at work can be career defining. Challenging at work is a crucial element of building better ideas and solutions. Being comfortable and skilled enough to challenge your boss without upsetting is one of the secrets to stand out at work.

Learn 5 safe ways to challenge at work and giving feedback to your boss.

How to give feedback to your boss can also be one of those difficult conversations at work. So few managers get useful and constructive feedback from team members. When you are good at giving feedback to your manager – it’s a great for how to stand out at work.

Firstly, try to challenge others at work in service of reaching business goals rather than for personal reasons. Most bosses support those trying to do good for the group and don’t support those challenging to be difficult, to annoy others, to avoid their fears etc.

Secondly when challenging your boss or others avoid being right. Positioning what you are proposing as being right, the best or the right way is very confrontational. You are implying the other person is wrong. Much better is to offer alternatives, improvements, and options. This is even more important when giving feedback to your manager.

Asking questions is a great way to challenge more subtly. Use questions to lead the other person to the problems, to the alternative routes, to better solutions. Using questions is great when safely challenging your manager.

Always seek to provide alternatives and options rather than highlighting only a problem or adding to the problem. This is always received better and also portrays you in a stronger way.

Lastly, seek to raise up rather than put down. Choose your words carefully and always aim to help, improve, build. This is key part of effective communication in the workplace.

If you have any questions on “5 Safe Ways To Challenge At Work And Giving Feedback To Your Boss”, please email me at support@enhance.training  and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles

Enhance.training 

Managers … put your team before yourself to gain rapid promotion. This may sound a little counter intuitive, yet your performance is judged on your team’s performance. 

Learn 4 compelling reasons for why putting your team first will make you a much better manager and help you get rapid promotion. Plus get practical tips on HOW to put team before yourself.

Become a better manager by putting your team first. Management principles of give before you take is a compelling way to rapidly improve your management results which gets you promoted faster.

There are a lot of skills to develop to become an effective manager. Skills alone are not enough. How you use those skills defines great management. 

Your attitude towards your team is a crucial starting point. Managers and leaders create the most value through their teams. Their teams are a vital to that manager or leader’s success. View them with the importance they deserve. 

Mentally view you team with admiration and respect. Once your attitude and mindset are positive and respectful towards your team, your decisions, actions, and behaviours will communicate your positive attitude very clearly to your team. I view your management attitude a key part of your personal development in a management role.

Using power well is another crucial skill for manager success. One of the most important leadership principles is to use power for the good of others, for the good of the group rather than for your own personal gain. Look at any classic story in any culture for confirmation of this vital leadership principle.

Next, focus on helping your team before pleasing your boss. Doing both is vitally important for getting on the fast track for promotion. Your teams results and output are going to have a biggest impact on your boss’s appraisal of your performance. Put your team first to get promotion quickly.

Using 5 ways to leverage your time effectively is also essential as a manager, to do a great job and to get promoted. Get tips on how to put each of these ways to leverage your time into practice and gain a big jump in your and your team’s performance. 

If you have any questions on “Managers Put Your Team Before Yourself & Gain Rapid Promotion”, please email me at support@enhnace.training and I will get back to you.

 Jess Coles

Enhance.training

What great managers do that okay ones don’t affects us all. Great managers create more than 8 times the value average managers do – that is a huge gap. 

Learn 5 key principles or approaches and become a better manager.

How to be a great manager starts with how you view your job as manager. Managers create the most value through their teams. Your team is critical to enable you to do a great job. Great managers know this and work hard to make their team as good as they can be.

How to be a better manager starts by putting the team before yourself. Working in service to your team is the best way to work in service to yourself as a leader. This is more important than great manager skills.

What makes you a good manager is how much the team trusts you. Without trust there is no team, only a collection of individuals. Teams outperform groups of independent individuals. Working for the team is a brilliant way of building trust.

For how to be a better manager and leader, focus on the environment you are creating. A lot of management skills go into creating a great trusting team environment – most important are what your decisions, actions and behaviours communicate to the team. How to be a good manager is partly about how well you can manager yourself. 

How to become a better manager at work – learn to be comfortable with conflict. Every organisation will have a level of conflict. Resources are limited, different teams have different objectives etc, PLUS every person is different. Conflict is guaranteed. How well you manage conflict – both constructive and destructive is essential for team success.

Partnering with and valuing team members is vital for how to be a good manager and leader. Managers depend on their teams. You don’t have a job without a team. Admire each person’s strengths. Support them to develop further. Value what they bring to the team. Your beliefs about the team will be obvious through your actions and behaviours. Get your mental approach right – one of the key manager skills you need.

How to be a good manager at work must include being unfailingly results orientated. Results is what your company need your team to deliver. Team results is what you are personally being assessed on. Great managers always focus their teams of delivering results.

If you have any questions on “What Great Managers Do That Okay Ones Don’t – 5 Secrets To Become A Better Manager”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

Making decisions reality at work or getting a decision implemented by others to achieve a desired result - is far harder than making the decision itself. Improve decision buy-in from your boss, your team, and others, to make the implementation of decisions quicker, easier, and more successful.

I share the steps and tactics I use in persuading others to buy-in to the decisions made and work to make them a reality. 
---

How to Execute and Make Things Happen - Podcast
https://enhance.training/how-to-execute-and-make-things-happen-tm0050/

--- 
Being persuasive with team members is essential to be an effective and good manager. There are so many decisions made by others that you have to work with your team to put into practice. 

Gaining buy-in at work, particularly with those implementing difficult decisions or complex decisions,  is essential to make those decisions effective and get implemented. There are four useful decision making routes I suggest you use when making decisions which help with decision implementation. 

These are:

1.      Unilateral

2.      Consult and decide

3.      Build consensus

4.      Unanimous 

I explain exactly how to use each route when making decisions at work. Matching the route to the decision type is a key skill to get decisions implemented quickly and successfully. 

To persuade others quickly and effectively, I use a 5 step process to plan how I am going to gain decision buy-in commitment. These steps are:

1.      Who are the influencers

2.      Understand their position

3.      Work out the impact

4.      Explain the benefits

5.      Gain the right support level

I go through how I use each step to gain commitment and make decisions a reality at work. 

Finally, I use a ReCODE model for communicating decisions and recommendation to get buy-in and the action I need from bosses, team members and other stakeholders.

When making decisions, always think about the quickest route to getting the result you need rather than the quickest way to make a decision.

If you have any questions on “Improve Decision Buy-In - Making Decisions Reality At Work”, please leave them in the comments section and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

Learn how to give an effective performance review and you have a great tool to motivate and develop team members alongside giving them realistic feedback about their performance.

With the right preparation, you won’t feel nervous conducting a performance review. I share 12 vital tips for how to run a performance review meeting really well so your team member get loads out of it.

--

--

The employee appraisal process starts when you set goals and objectives for your team members at the start of the year. How can you run an performance evaluation if you or the employee is not clear about what is good, okay and poor. 

The performance appraisal should be a summary of all the feedback conversations that you have already had. There should be no surprises coming out in the employee appraisal.

3 additional preparation steps for the appraisal meeting that I think you should do well in advance are:

1.                Book out plenty of time to think through what you want to bring up in the performance review

2.                Write down all the achievements, wins, successes plus add in the misses and what to improve on, so you have a balanced employee evaluation

3.                Ask peers, bosses, and team stakeholders for their feedback before the employee review

Taking these steps gives you a lot to talk about and share with the team member. Make sure most of what talk about is focus on how they can improve what they are doing, regardless of the current performance level.

How to conduct a performance review meeting starts with working out your agenda for the annual performance review meeting. I suggest using:

1.            Intros and communicating the Agenda

2.            Ask the employee to talk through their performance 

3.            Give your specific feedback on performance and invite discussion

4.            Talk through the employee’s career plans

5.            Discuss the employee development plan and the opportunities

6.            Jointly agreed the goals and actions for manager and employee

 During performance reviews, go through each of these agenda items. In the video I talk through each agenda item in more detail.

A key part of performance review tips for managers is to make sure that you follow up after the performance review has been finished. There is so much you can do to help your team member get better quicker. 

For example, I suggest you book in weekly one-on-one meeting every week or every other week to teach, mentor and coach your direct reports. You have so much knowledge and experience to pass on plus you will learn loads in these meetings. The more you know about what is going on in the team, the better job you will do, and the quicker team performance will improve.

If you have any questions on “How To Give An Effective Performance Review – 12 Vital Tips To Action”, please leave them in the comments below and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

----- Example of Specific Feedback

 Rather than saying “you have done a great job - well done” 

 say 

 "I have been really impressed at your attention to detail as evidenced by the quality of your work. I and many others I have spoken to continue to be delighted with the skill you have displayed when managing difficult customers and how you leave them feeling listened to and taken seriously. You have been just as good at supporting your team members, taking the time to help them resolve problems. You have done a great j

The more visible to your bosses you are, and the more you make your work visible, the faster you will be promoted and the further your career will progress.

To get promoted you have to be good AND be more visible to your bosses than your competition.

I share six key tactics for you to increase your visibility at work making getting promotion at work easier.

---
Free Resources
For more tips and advice on how to raise your profile and tips on how to market yourself internally in your organisation, I have a free downloadable booklet available:
https://enhance.training/lm-lp/market-internally-booklet/

---

The six tactics and a ton of tips to make you more visible at work start with finding your authentic voice. To increase your workplace visibility, you must share your ideas, views, and solutions. If you don’t have a considered and thought through view, you won’t be noticed at work.

When you are good at your job, you will have ton of views, ideas, and solutions to share. Be more visible at work by communicating intelligently with your boss, peers, colleagues and stakeholders and sharing the value you are adding to the business.

When you have ideas and solutions, there are so many ways to become more visible, to get noticed at work. Start small. Consistently keep your boss and stakeholders up to date with your progress against goals.

The next of my secrets to increase your visibility at work is to diplomatically stop others taking credit for your work. Don’t talk negatively about colleagues that try to take your credit. I talk though exactly what to do.

Another great way for how to increase your visibility at work is to regularly, and publicly, celebrate your team’s success. This has so many benefits in addition to increasing your visibility.

For getting promoted at work, I suggest you work at helping your colleagues be successful. I know this sounds counter intuitive yet being a team player is so important. You must also communicate what you have done to help and the impact of that help regularly to your boss and stakeholders. This is another great way to stand out at work. 

To increase your visibility at work, I suggest you work on becoming your boss’s most valuable supporter. This is much easier than you think and gives you a ton of benefits including raising your profile at work for all the right reasons. 

How to increase your visibility at work is a challenge everyone must tackle in today’s workplace. Make sure you know exactly how to get noticed at work and get promoted faster.

If you have any questions on “How To Be More Visible To Your Bosses – Get Promoted Faster & Progress Further”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

It is scary to disagree with someone more powerful than you at work. Learn to disagree respectfully and you are more likely to stand out, create more value and earn faster career progress.

Learn 7 ways to respectfully disagree, 5 thought processes for WHEN disagreeing with your boss is the right thing, and 4 actions to improve how you communicate your disagreement.

How to disagree with your boss is a skill. Voicing your disagreement should only be done after considering the impact of speaking up. If the impact of any change is small, it is probably best to stay quiet. Picking your battles is important. 

When disagree respectfully at work make sure there is a clear business reason why you are disagreeing. Do not disagree for purely personal reasons.

Always take into account of the culture, situation and person when you respectfully disagree. All should factor into the risk versus benefit though process before disagreeing. 

Before disagreeing with the boss consider the risk of saying nothing. What will be the impact on results and how will staying silent impact you in the future. 

The first of the steps to follow when disagreeing with your boss is to agree the guidelines or process for which your boss is okay with your disagreeing.

Next for how to have a respectful disagreement with those more powerful than you, is to ask permission to disagree. This gives them power and puts them into listening mode. 

Next when thinking about how to disagree respectfully, restate the other person’s original position, idea, or solution. This confirms your understanding and that you have considered their perspective. 

I always think it beneficial to explain the purpose of you disagreeing with them. You can confirm the business goals or reasons behind your disagreement. 

Set out your structured argument. When disagree with someone more powerful you want to present yourself as professional and competent. The more compelling your argument, the more likely you will get a change. 

The next of the steps to disagree with your colleagues or boss is to invite their input and feedback. This promotes collaboration and teamwork. 

Finally, to disagree respectfully with someone more powerful than you, state that the final decision is theirs to make. 

There are many ways to disagree politely without upsetting or damaging relationships. How you disagree and how you communicate your disagreement are both very important. 

Don’t avoid disagreeing. Do avoid disagreeing badly.

If you have any questions on “How To Disagree With Someone More Powerful – 7 Steps To Respectfully Disagree” please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles

Enhance.training