Think Growth! Blog

Decision Making – On Autopilot or On the Case?

31 May
by Bridget DiCello
We’ve all seen the steps to decision making:
1.      Identify the objective
2.      Define the situation
3.      Generate alternatives
4.      Gather information
5.      Weigh the pros and cons of each
6.      Develop an action plan
7.      Implement
8.      Evaluate the results

How many decisions did you make in this way in the past week?  Who in the world has time to? But, if we don’t how can we get out of a routine that may be unproductive?

We run into two main types of decisions that I believe we solve with two distinct solutions:  Intuitive Solutions and Investigative Solutions

Intuitive Solutions: This is where experience counts, and a good memory, attention to detail and ability to pick up cues and logical patterns is important.  These are problems, issues and situations where we really want to call on the experts in the business, the key employees who have been through it all, and the person who loves their job and knows all the ins and outs.  These situations cause us to say, “We must have faced situations like this before, what have we done in the past?”

Those people who are valuable resources run through past situations in their heads, compare them to this present dilemma, choose the best course of action and share it with the team to implement.  The decision is made quickly about how to proceed.  If the proper people with experience are consulted, there is rarely an error in carrying out this decision.

Do you have these people in your organization? Those who have the experience to be a great resource and can be trusted without weighing all the alternatives in a lengthy process?

What do you do to develop more of this ability in your team? These people are developed when after decision is made, a problem is solved or a situation is handled, there is routinely a debrief, an autopsy if you will, to look at what happened, what was decided and the success or failure experienced.  The lessons learned will enable those with the ability to learn the patterns that work.  This ability must be practiced and consciously developed especially because you don’t want to wait years for someone to develop it, and often turnover rates are high enough that something takes a good employee away before they fully develop.

Investigative Solutions: This is where those decision-making steps above make sense.  This decision steps into unfamiliar territory, requires the input of many experts, and is complicated to the point that past experience is helpful but must be pieced together in order to be most useful.

Do you have people who are good at this process in your organization? These need to be individuals who have the patience to work through the process, yet not someone who gets so bogged down in detail that it takes forever to come to a decision.

What do you do to develop more of this ability in your team? Even though you won’t need them to use this long process every day or even every week, the ability to move through the process is a mental exercise that can be applied to overall logical thought processing.  So, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to spend some time next time you need an investigative solution to work through it as a team, and systematically map it out in order to help them to understand this process and make it second nature.

What occurs most often on your team?  What “type” of decision makers are in your organization?

You Can Talk, but Can You Communicate?

24 May
by Bridget DiCello

Eloquent.  Intelligent.  Clever.  Articulate.  It’s a pleasure to listen to a well-spoken person.

Communicating, as opposed to speaking, requires that a message is sent and that a message is received.  Do you ever feel like you are just not getting through to someone?  You may try to rephrase what you are saying, say it again or remove distractions.  All these tactics work on the speaking end, but fail to take into account that in order for the message to be received the person on the receiving end must be ready, willing and able to be communicated to.

The ability to hear and understand is often the easiest to ensure – is the person intelligent, educated on the topic and experienced in the area being discussed?  It is the “ready and willing” that can be missing.  Are they worried, upset, offended, personally distracted, colored by their experiences, their successes, their failures, and their interactions with you that have gone well or badly in the past?

You communicate with a variety of people on a variety of topics every day.  However, I would guess that there are a few key interactions that are most important.  Maybe you:

-          are trying to ease tension between two team members

-          are working with a particular employee in whom you see great potential

-          are developing leadership skills within your middle managers

-          are trying to decrease turnover in your sales team or front line employees

-          wish to access the creative potential of all your employees to improve your bottom line results through increased efficiency or new product development

-          desire to improve the customer service offered by your organization

These are the situations where you may wish to spend a bit more time evaluating your effectiveness in communicating:

  1. Is your message clear?  Are you sure what you wish to accomplish?  Have you outlined it to the extent that someone else can grasp your full message?
  2. Are you communicating to the right people?  Are they able to lend their expertise, assistance or suggestions in this area?  Are you leaving anyone critical out?
  3. Are they ready and willing to listen and respond?  Where are they coming from?  What is important to them?  How do they see the situation?  What is on their mind right now?

To get your message across the best thing you can do is get the other person talking about it.

  1. What questions can you ask to get them involved in conversation so you can listen to how they view the situation, the options and possible solutions?
  2. How is this communication making them feel?  Worried?  Inadequate?   Overconfident?  Overall, are the two of you communicating or are you talking to a wall?

You can do a lot of talking and very little communicating if you aren’t speaking, asking questions and listening purposefully.  Who is it that you find it most difficult to get through to?

Do Your Managers Handle Diversity Well?

14 May
by Bridget DiCello

When I search the internet for workplace diversity, results include avoiding discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, and religion.  Multicultural workplaces and the global marketplace are also popular discussion topics.

Should managers treat people differently because of their race, gender, age, religion or country of origin?  I say, “Of course!”  People are all unique and the qualifiers that have been pulled out in the legal world are only the tip of that iceberg.

Managers have the challenge of dealing with a group of individuals.  If they all look alike, that only serves to provide a false sense of security and comfort for the manager.  Truly that group can be just as challenging to manage since they are all individuals with their own experiences, beliefs, and histories.

Leadership is about interacting effectively with members of the team to accomplish business results.  Plain and simple, leadership is about people, people are all different from one another, and similarities often only delude you into thinking you are effectively communicating with another person.

A leader’s success level results from their ability to genuinely connect with all the individuals on their team to the level where they are able to access their potential and enable that person to become the best employee they can be, while keeping each person focused on their role in achieving the business goals.

In order to connect well, a manager must:

  1. Listen to the employee with genuine interest and be acutely aware of any assumptions they are making about an individual, both positive and negative.
  2. Engage the employee in conversation to learn where the employee is coming from in order to lead them in a productive direction.
  3. Encourage creativity and innovative solutions while diligently pursuing a strong and clear set of goals, within a defined way of doing business (values and culture).
  4. Provide a structure of accountability that is fair but demanding, enforcing this company culture through a series of productive conversations to address employees’ concerns and varying approaches.
  5. Take this aggressive and discerning communication approach to each and every employee to avoid the legal headaches, but also because it is the right thing to do if you want to bring out the best in each and every employee!

Many hard-charging, driven managers who experience a great deal of success will eventually hit a wall because of challenges with their effectiveness in motivating their team to higher levels of productivity and effectiveness.  Upper management often has been trained, mentored or self taught to be more effective, where middle managers may be limited unless their ability to listen, communicate and hold people accountable results in concrete business results.

What does your management team look like?  Do they have the skills they need to take the team members in your company to the next level of performance and motivation?  Are your managers able to embrace the diversity inherent in every team, no matter how much they look alike?

New Beginnings

12 May
by Bridget DiCello

I guess it’s only natural to start thinking about new beginnings in business when one has a baby!  Typically, I see business owners and managers fall somewhere in between constant newness and staleness in their business.

Are you the type of owner or manager who needs newness just for the sake of newness?  Are you trying new ideas, strategies and processes because they are exciting but don’t check if they are needed?  If you are, you might spend unnecessary dollars, experience limited return on your investment and use a lot of employee energy for limited success.

Or are you the type of owner or manager who believes that if it isn’t broke, we should not spend our time trying to fix it? If you are, your processes, systems and strategies may get a bit stale and work, but fall short of their potential.

Is there a happy medium? I think there is and it is found in the answers to these two questions:

1.       What is it that we are trying to achieve?  What does our vision of a successful company look like?  What do we want to be known for?  How do we want to do business (our values)?

2.      What do our metrics tell us about how well we are achieving our desired vision, results and values with how we currently do things?

Any exciting new idea should be tested with, “What do we hope to achieve with this change?” and “What is the probability that the benefits will occur?” and “What resources will be needed to test and implement this new idea?”  In other words, what are the good reasons to implement this change, and how do they weigh against the costs and probability of success?

Every process, especially when there is a problem or issue, should be met with, “Do we need to revisit this process overall?” and “What do our metrics tell us about how well we are doing?” and “When’s the last time we looked critically at how we run this process?”  If the issue is an anomaly, there is no reason to spend time analyzing the whole process, but if the issue is in fact a warning sign of a larger problem, it is time to revisit the process before it crashes.

What is something new and exciting that you decided to implement?  How did you make the decision to put energy in that area?  Do you have a process that needs to be revamped that you are avoiding?

 

Top 5 Mistakes Leaders Make when Promoting from Within

04 May
by Bridget DiCello

He was a great employee.  He was the perfect choice for the management opening.  His talents and skills, his focus on results, his expertise with customers and systems – all made him a great choice for the promotion.  Why then is he doing such a terrible job as a manager?  Did you make the wrong choice?

Too often, leaders forget that a promotion to management requires a major transition.  From being great at what they do to taking on a whole new set of tasks, to measuring their own success in completely different ways, to losing their peers who they knew and liked and gaining employees from whom they need to keep a distance, it is a traumatic experience.  Are you there to help them through it?

Here are the Top 5 Mistakes that you might have made in the transition:

1. Assumed their tactical expertise would directly translate into management expertise. Many leaders have their own story of how they were thrown into a management role and had to figure it out the hard way.  Some survive that way and some don’t.  Internal promotions also assume that the person has more knowledge about the bigger picture or that the expectations from above are clearer than they are.

Create a training outline. Every new role, whether it be for a new employee or a promoted employee, should be prefaced with a training outline – the list of things that they need to know in order to be successful in the new position, when they will be taught or expected to know/master each area, and what mastery looks like.  If there are things that they already know, they can be quickly checked off.

2. Failed to teach them the management skills necessary to thrive. Managing people requires they understand how to create and communicate expectations, connect with their direct reports, inspire them to do well, and engage them in productive accountability discussions.  These are not natural skills to most individuals and must be learned and then coached by their supervisor.

Do an honest inventory of these skills, and plan to help them to learn more in the areas which they are weak. Provide them books and resources, the opportunity for a mentor and key leadership relationships, classes or a leadership coach, and teach them yourself the areas in which you excel.  Don’t ignore a lack of skills that you have noticed from their time as an employee!  Use that information.

3. Did not set your expectations clearly. There is an incredibly long distance from what is in your head to what comes out of your mouth.  Your new manager cannot read your mind. There are many things you may expect that you have never clearly outlined or discussed, even if you have worked with them for some time. “Improve morale” may mean one thing to you and something quite different to the promoted manager.

Clarify your expectations. Ask yourself:

§what the most important tasks are that they will do

§what results you hope they will achieve

§how you’d like them to do the job – detailing only necessary details to keep them focused but giving them room to do it their way

§what other managers have done that you do not like and wish the new manager not to do and

§what deadlines you would put on each of these expectations and how you will measure whether or not they have been a success.

4. Offered no accountability. Even the best employee who takes initiative and tries their hardest will not thrive without some degree of feedback.  This step is critical and is often seen as unimportant – especially if you already know this person to be a start employee.  In order to meet your expectations and company goals, they must receive input as to what they are achieving and where they are falling short.  If delivered along the way, they have time to tweak their performance, not just to fail or survive in the end.  If you don’t provide feedback, yet let them continue to under-perform, shame on you!  If you don’t provide feedback in the areas they are doing well – don’t expect that behavior to continue!

Provide routine, expected, conversational feedback. Set a routine conversation, with a set agenda (of focus areas, new skills to learn, tasks to perfect, action items, successes, challenges, etc.).  The conversation is scheduled, the appointment is kept and the new employee is expected to be the one to prepare for and report on the agenda you have set.

5. You never asked them to think. Transition to management can be a traumatic one.  Suddenly, they are in charge and powerful, yet they’ve lost their peers and their comfort zone.  They are no longer rewarded for doing the tasks they are good at, but expected to think strategically and develop other people as well.  There are very few right answers and very few set processes in management.  Management and leadership are about getting to the results, using processes in place, improving them as necessary, solving problems and developing people. If they are not thinking – you’re in trouble.

Get them to think. Getting them to think requires that you set the direction, ask questions and get them talking about how they see the situation, possible solutions and approaches and why they will choose the avenue they choose.  Too often managers of managers still want to be the one to solve the problems even though they have a manager to lead their team to solve a problem.  Thinking through a situation can be facilitated greatly by a manager who asks the right questions instead of giving the solution.  You want your new manager to be independent, so ask them the questions and get them to think!

What mistakes have you made when promoting someone to management?  What have you done right?

Top 5 Mistakes Leaders Make when Promoting from Within

03 May
by Bridget DiCello

He was a great employee.  He was the perfect choice for the management opening.  His talents and skills, his focus on results, his expertise with customers and systems – all made him a great choice for the promotion.  Why then is he doing such a terrible job as a manager?  Did you make the wrong choice?

Too often, leaders forget that a promotion to management requires a major transition.  From being great at what they do to taking on a whole new set of tasks, to measuring their own success in completely different ways, to losing their peers who they knew and liked and gaining employees from whom they need to keep a distance, it is a traumatic experience.  Are you there to help them through it?

Here are the Top 5 Mistakes that you might have made in the transition:

 

1. Assumed their tactical expertise would directly translate into management expertise. Many leaders have their own story of how they were thrown into a management role and had to figure it out the hard way.  Some survive that way and some don’t.  Internal promotions also assume that the person has more knowledge about the bigger picture or that the expectations from above are clearer than they are.

 

Create a training outline. Every new role, whether it be for a new employee or a promoted employee, should be prefaced with a training outline – the list of things that they need to know in order to be successful in the new position, when they will be taught or expected to know/master each area, and what mastery looks like.  If there are things that they already know, they can be quickly checked off.

 

2. Failed to teach them the management skills necessary to thrive. Managing people requires they understand how to create and communicate expectations, connect with their direct reports, inspire them to do well, and engage them in productive accountability discussions.  These are not natural skills to most individuals and must be learned and then coached by their supervisor.

 

Do an honest inventory of these skills, and plan to help them to learn more in the areas which they are weak. Provide them books and resources, the opportunity for a mentor and key leadership relationships, classes or a leadership coach, and teach them yourself the areas in which you excel.  Don’t ignore a lack of skills that you have noticed from their time as an employee!  Use that information.

 

3. Did not set your expectations clearly. There is an incredibly long distance from what is in your head to what comes out of your mouth.  Your new manager cannot read your mind. There are many things you may expect that you have never clearly outlined or discussed, even if you have worked with them for some time. “Improve morale” may mean one thing to you and something quite different to the promoted manager.

Clarify your expectations. Ask yourself:

§what the most important tasks are that they will do

§what results you hope they will achieve

§how you’d like them to do the job – detailing only necessary details to keep them focused but giving them room to do it their way

§what other managers have done that you do not like and wish the new manager not to do and

§what deadlines you would put on each of these expectations and how you will measure whether or not they have been a success.

 

4. Offered no accountability. Even the best employee who takes initiative and tries their hardest will not thrive without some degree of feedback.  This step is critical and is often seen as unimportant – especially if you already know this person to be a start employee.  In order to meet your expectations and company goals, they must receive input as to what they are achieving and where they are falling short.  If delivered along the way, they have time to tweak their performance, not just to fail or survive in the end.  If you don’t provide feedback, yet let them continue to under-perform, shame on you!  If you don’t provide feedback in the areas they are doing well – don’t expect that behavior to continue!

Provide routine, expected, conversational feedback. Set a routine conversation, with a set agenda (of focus areas, new skills to learn, tasks to perfect, action items, successes, challenges, etc.).  The conversation is scheduled, the appointment is kept and the new employee is expected to be the one to prepare for and report on the agenda you have set.

5. You never asked them to think. Transition to management can be a traumatic one.  Suddenly, they are in charge and powerful, yet they’ve lost their peers and their comfort zone.  They are no longer rewarded for doing the tasks they are good at, but expected to think strategically and develop other people as well.  There are very few right answers and very few set processes in management.  Management and leadership are about getting to the results, using processes in place, improving them as necessary, solving problems and developing people. If they are not thinking – you’re in trouble.

Get them to think. Getting them to think requires that you set the direction, ask questions and get them talking about how they see the situation, possible solutions and approaches and why they will choose the avenue they choose.  Too often managers of managers still want to be the one to solve the problems even though they have a manager to lead their team to solve a problem.  Thinking through a situation can be facilitated greatly by a manager who asks the right questions instead of giving the solution.  You want your new manager to be independent, so ask them the questions and get them to think!

What mistakes have you made when promoting someone to management?  What have you done right?

Playing Nice in the Sandbox

27 Apr
by Bridget DiCello

“I can teach people skills. I can’t teach them how to play in the sandbox.”

–Caryl M. Stern, president and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, as quoted by The New York Times

Yes you can! This mindset that is voiced by Ms. Stern is a common way of thinking for many managers and leaders.  However, I am living proof that you can learn these skills as a valedictorian in high school and college who thought the world revolved around book knowledge.  Needless to say you would not have described me as one who knew how to play in the sandbox when I entered the workforce.  Without the mentoring of several important figures in my life, I would have continued to reach a certain level of success because of my competence, but would have been limited in the area of bringing out the best in myself and in others.

The fact is that playing well in the sandbox requires a set of skills just like any other job task.  However, they tend to be a set of skills that many managers and leaders do not have themselves, so they find it very difficult to teach others.

Here are just a few of the skills that are essential to “play nice in the sandbox” that are not inherent in everyone’s personality, but can be taught:

§ Building self awareness – Most individuals do not have a high degree of awareness of why they act and react the way they do, especially to the point where they can change their reaction as necessary.

§ Identifying common goals – Focusing more on daily tasks, many people never take the time to identify goals, much less what goals are universal to their team or organization, and how each person’s contribution is essential.

§ Earning trust – There are a variety of ways people describe trustworthy behaviors.  One of the most common is that people Do What They Say They will Do.  Try this:  in a group of 10 people, ask them for a definition of that phrase, you will get a huge variety of responses.

§    Communicating effectively – Talking to one another is something that seems like it should be really simple, but based on the enormous volume of resources available on the topic, skills such as listening are on the forefront of what people need to learn more about how to do well.

§    Engaging in productive conflict – Rarely more than 5% of the room ever responds that they enjoy conflict when I ask the question.  Yet so much productive conversation, innovative thinking and utilization of creative and unique approaches are never seized without a productive discussion that may stem from or be full of conflict.

§ Interacting with those very different from you – Not only do many individuals not have a firm grasp on their own style and how they come across, but seeing the strengths and benefits of others’ approach is challenging to do without some good tools in your toolbelt.

§    Increasing confidence by improving one’s own performance – There is only so much that we can improve without continually asking and challenging ourselves with what we will do differently.  Consistently doing a great job often feels like enough to us, since our lives are so busy or stressful, and is considered enough by our supervisors who may not wish to challenge us or rock the boat if we are doing a good job already.  Without incremental and continuous success and improvements the confidence of any member of the team can erode, which may result in increased defensiveness.

Share your insights!  Agree or Disagree.  What other skills have you learned that make you a better sandbox member than you were years ago?  What skills have you taught your team that make them easier to get along with – resulting in better business results?

Are you Happily Married to Your Business?

20 Apr
by Bridget DiCello

People say that there is no difference between ‘finished’ and ‘complete’.

I say there is…..

Marry the right person, and you’re ‘complete.’

Marry the wrong person, and you’re ‘finished.’

From aJokeaday.com.

This joke immediately made me think about business ownership.  Owning your own business has some parallels to marriage.  So does your business complete you or finish you?

A few secrets to a business that completes you are:

- Your tasks ‘fit’ you.

- You have a passion for what you are doing.

- You are using your talents and strengths where there is demand and profitability.

Your tasks ‘fit’ you. Do you enjoy the tasks you do on a daily basis?  Do you look forward to going to work and tackling your things to do list?  Granted, most business owners jump in and do whatever needs to be done, whenever it needs to be done, given their dedication and investment.  However, you can enjoy jumping in when needed, knowing that your primary roles and tasks are those you enjoy.  And depending on the stage that your business is in, you may need to do some things that you don’t particularly enjoy until your business matures in certain areas.  For example, you might need to spend more time selling than you would prefer until the level of sales supports hiring that next salesperson.  However, if sales are not your favorite thing to do, you at least know that delegating those tasks is on the horizon.

You know you’re ‘finished’ if most of the tasks you do on a daily basis, you really wish someone else was doing, you’re not that great at them, and there appears to be no end in sight to this dilemma.

You have a passion for what you are doing. What energizes you?  What is it about your business that is incredibly exciting to you?  Or is it just a job?  Is your business something that you have a great deal of enthusiasm about and desire to dive in to, build, nurture and grow?  Are there multiple moments throughout the day and week where you feel totally fulfilled?

You know you’re ‘finished’ if you see your business as simply a job that has great potential to make you money.  But, on a daily and weekly basis, you feel more tired and overworked than you do energized.

You are using your talents and strengths where there is demand and profitability. Being passionate is only part of the picture.  I might be passionate about riding horses, but my talents and strengths are not nearly enough in this area to create a demand for my riding abilities.  There may be a demand for what you are passionate about, but are people willing to pay what it takes to be profitable in this area?  If you have no profit, you do not have a viable business, no matter how massive you can make your revenue numbers.

You know you’re ‘finished’ if you enjoy your work and do things that energize you, but selling the product or service is incredibly difficult, both because people are not real interested and those who are interested are not willing to pay a price that you must command in order to realize a profit.  If you cut your prices to extremely minimal or no profit margins to get the business going, you are definitely in trouble later as you try to turn a start up into a viable and profitable business.

What else is important to determine if your business completes or finishes you?

Does Customer Service Increase in a Bad Economy?

07 Apr
by Bridget DiCello

Have you been treated any better as a customer over the past two years?

I was wrong to assume that in this economy, with less money being spent and businesses going out of business, that the survivors would be incredibly focused on customer service.  My experience may be atypical, but I have found not only a decrease in attentiveness from vendors, but a decrease in their desire to make the customer incredibly happy.

I sense that many workers and leaders are tired, mentally exhausted and worried about their business and their job.  I have personally been disappointed by companies both large and small with the service they deliver, and their lack of concern about addressing or resolving issues.

What does this mean to you as a leader or owner?

1.      People are tired. Even in the businesses that are doing well, there is a general concern about their family and friends who may not be employed, there is a hope that things in general will get better, and yet despite the publicized numbers, the average person does not at all feel that the worst is over.  If your business is struggling, your employees know it, and they may even have had to take a pay cut or a cut in hours.  They may be asked to do more with less help or less resources.

2.      People may have lost focus. It’s tough to stay focused on work when life is tough, but one of the greatest things that you can do is provide your employees an environment where they work towards something important and can feel successful on a routine basis.

3.      Refocus yourself and your team on your goals, your mission and your way of doing business. Give them something to identify with, be proud of and work to achieve.  This means you have to set the destination and then hold them accountable to it.  Recognize their successes and push them to achieve their potential.  When you ask them to act more strategically, and focus on “how”, not “if”, you give them the opportunity to do more with less, in less time.  You are not necessarily asking them to work more hours.

4.      Define your customer service standards. There are extremes of customer service.  At the Audi dealership where I have my car serviced, Jeff in Service is fantastic, never says no, and always does just a bit more than he said he would.  Compare this to the post office where I was told that even though my mail was not being delivered properly, there was no one I could talk to, and when I found a customer service phone number on my own, she took my name and number, told me that if I did not get a call in 48 hours, to call back and then hung up before I could ask a question.

We all want to believe we look more like Jeff’s customer service than the USPS, but what are your specific standards?  How do your employees know what you expect?

This economy provides an opportunity, but you must provide concrete focus, direction and accountability to enable your employees to stay focused on the customer and the desired results, and work with you to make your business a success.

What Not To Do

24 Mar
by Bridget DiCello

Are there things that you would like your employees to stop doing?  Do you tell them to stop doing those things?  Do they hear you?  Do they change their behavior?

It is critically important to pinpoint specific behaviors that you wish would stop.  “You better change your bad attitude!” is a personal attack and not specific enough.  Instead, “When you are in the staff meeting, I see you roll your eyes, exude an audible sigh and cross your arms at an idea you do not like.  This is not an acceptable response from any member of the team.”  The employee must be confronted about behaviors you see an unacceptable.

However, it cannot stop there.  As critical as it is to pinpoint what the unacceptable behavior specifically looks like, you must do more than that!

You must tell them what you wish for them to do instead.

Can’t they figure that out on their own?

·         Maybe, but if they knew what to do or how to act more professionally, they might be doing it already.  “Really, boss, when Sam brings up such an outrageous idea, I just react that way naturally.  What do you expect me to do when he is saying dumb stuff?”

They know what to do. They are just being difficult and not doing it.

·         If this is the case, then when you given them specific behaviors you wish to see instead, you can hold them accountable to these firm expected behaviors.  Otherwise, instead of them not doing annoying behavior #1 (eye rolls, sigh, crossed arms), which you asked them to stop, they do annoying behavior #2 (laugh and start texting).

I don’t have the time to explain every little thing they need to do!

·         Then teach them to think.  Ask them a question or two, get them thinking and next time, you can expect them to think a bit more about what they are doing.  “How do you think it affects the rest of the team when you roll your eyes, sigh and cross your arms?”  “What could you do to control your reaction and your outward appearance?”

There are times when a small situation may simply require that you communicate to the employee that a specific behavior was unacceptable and they should not do it again.  But chances are that there are more chronic behaviors employees exhibit that you do not like, and those will never be corrected without a conversation about what they are to do instead.

“If you think an idea is not credible, take a second to think before you respond, stop and take note of what you are doing with your eyes, voice and arms.  Keep your arms open and on the table, your voice silent and your eyes on your notepad.  It may also help to jot down in your notes why you think the idea is crazy and address those situations with me (your supervisor) later or with the individual themselves.”

What do your employees do that you wish they would stop?  Do they know what to do instead?  Have you held them accountable to specific alternative behaviors?

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