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Working out what your most valuable work is and do that work! Everyone has the same amount of time. What you do with the time you have is the most important thing to move from okay performance to amazing performance. Work out you most important priorities at work.

I share 4 crucial prioritisation tips for managers. 

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How to focus on your most valuable work starts with understanding that increasing team performance is the most important goal for a manager. This is easily the best way any manager can add significant value to the business in which they work. There are a lot of options for how to increase team productivity. The most important will be specific to you and your team. Common routes include removing problems, training and teaching, creating a positive work culture and supporting and helping your team.

Prioritisation actions for managers must start with what can I do to increase my team’s performance and output. The bigger your team, the more time and effort you should spend directing and supporting your team.

The next best time management strategies and for setting priorities at work is to solve problems your team faces that stop them doing their work or slows them down. These might be outdated processes, low value work, problem employees, lack of resources etc.

Find and solve your team’s biggest problems – a key for how to organize plan and prioritize your work as a manager. This is also a useful approach for how to prioritize tasks at work.

Next for how do you prioritize your work – think about alignment. What tasks, activities and projects are directly supporting the business reach its goals and which ones aren’t helping as much. Focus as much of your and your team’s time and effort on the work that supports the business reaching its goals. When every team in the business aligns their work well, the business performs much better.

Finally, one of the best time management strategies for managers is to teach, mentor and coach team members to develop management and leadership skills. Doing this takes the pressure off you, gives you personally more time and increases team performance.

If you have any questions on “How To Focus On Your Most Valuable Work - Prioritisation Tips For Managers”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

Managers need to improve team results. The main reason a company employs a manager in the first place is to improve team results by more than the cost of employing them. You, as a manager, are in a great position to help your team get the best results.

I share 4 practical and very effective ways to help your team to their best results.

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There are lots of ways to help your team to get great results. As a manager, you time is precious and working out what actions and initiatives you take to maximise improving team performance from your actions is really important

You are in a brilliant position, as manager, to improve team productivity because you have more influence and power to make changes to what the team works on and the problems team members encounter.

How you serve your team – that is how you help each individual and the team overall – improve skills, remove problems, guide, direct … is critical to your success as a manager. A manager works through their team, not directly, to create value. It is all about your team and not you. I have found adopting this mindset and the actions and behaviours to support your team, is the quickest and surest way help your team to get great results,

Next help your team to improve team results by living your expectations. A well co-ordinated team that is working in a common direction is a lot more effective and produces much higher value than individuals doing what they think is best. Setting and maintaining expectations, standards and goals are essential to help your team to improve team results. Living your own expectations, rule and standards are essential to setting and maintaining expectations. If you don’t live them, why should any of your team?

The third way for improving team results is to leverage your time intelligently. The work you do should be focused on making each individual more capable, effective and productive. Increasing each team member’s performance by 10% creates a lot more value than increasing your own productivity by 20%.

Lastly, to help your team get the best results, help your team be a team. I have worked in many amazing companies and most teams I see are not really teams but groups of individuals working alongside each other. Teamwork includes high levels of communication and co-ordination, high levels of mutual support and help, a lot of trust, clear direction and goals and more. Great managers build teams rather than just co-ordinating individuals.

If you have any questions on “Improve Team Results – 4 Ways To Help Your Team To Their Best Results, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

Managers use power and authority in so many different ways. The power and authority you gain from a position is only one type of power and I would argue, increasing ineffective - on its own - in today’s workplace.

How managers and leaders use power and authority are a huge part of their effectiveness in their roles

I explain how great managers use power and authority for the benefit of their team, not for themselves; including lots of practical tips for how to best use power as a manager or leader and 7 actions for how to build power as a manager.
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Team Management Course

Managing teams well is hard work, even when you know exactly what to do. When you have been left to figure things out by yourself, getting good at your job is ten times harder and slower. 

Learning great management approaches, knowledge and skills make a huge difference to your effectiveness, your enjoyment and your career progress. Invest in becoming a great manager through our Management Skills Accelerator courses – learn more here: https://enhance.training/msa-usp006

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Power itself is not good or bad. How you use power and authority is good or bad. Managing power in leadership is one of many incredibly important leadership skills and a real test of character.

Managers and leaders need power to enable them to do their jobs. Power and authority is part of the job description. There are many types of power, and a manager should aim to build several different types to be truly effective in their role. Some power and authority comes from their position. A key management skills in business is learning how to use this power and build others.

Think about “What is the role of leadership?” and “How should you use power and authority in leadership?”. To build happy, motivated, trusting and high performing teams, I believe you must use as much of the power and authority you have to help the team, to help others improve and perform better. 

As a manager or leader, there are so many ways you can use your power for the good of the team (rather than yourself). I share 10 great uses of power and authority, that will gain you appreciation, respect and loyal followers, not to mention a great performing team. Using power wisely will gain you more leadership power. 

Team member happily follow leaders that use their power to help the team. These team members work hard and intelligently to support the team. Employee reluctantly, grudgingly follow leaders who use their power to help themselves. These employees do the minimum. Managers are assessed on the performance of their teams, which is why it is so important to use your power for the good of the team. 

The power of leader ship comes through all the different ways a good leader builds power and authority. I share 7 practical tried and tested ways to build different types of power in the workplace. 

Power is neither good nor bad. How you use power is critical in building high performing teams.

If you have any questions on “How Great Managers Use Power And Authority – Fundamental Principles”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

How to deal with conflicts at work is pretty scary if you don’t know what steps to take and what to look out for. Conflicts usually have anger, frustration, annoyance and other emotions flying between two or more parties and stepping into the middle of this takes some courage.

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Gain Career Changing Management Expertise

Access over 200 articles, podcasts and videos dedicated to helping you gain people and management expertise to lead any team to their best performance. Get access to downloads, webinars, live workshops, offers and more. Click here to learn more https://enhance.training/management-skills-hub-ulp000/ 

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As a manager it is vital that you manage conflicts at work carefully. Positive conflict can easily and quickly descend into disruptive, damaging, negative conflict if you are not able to manage conflicts within the team appropriately. 

I share 5 ways to deal with conflict at work, and take you through 5 steps to resolve conflicts in the workplace that are disruptive and emotionally charged.

In my view, not all conflict is bad. Heated discussions, constructive challenge, differences of opinion and airing different ideas and solutions can all be very productive – vital even for great team performance - if managed carefully. Know where the line is and constantly look out for individuals or teams crossing into negative conflict and take action immediately.

As a manager you have an important role as an impartial mediator to deal with conflicts within the team. You set the tone and behaviours in the team through your own actions and decisions. 

Many conflicts at work come about because individual or teams are competing for resources or have overlaps of responsibilities and goals. Managers and leaders can resolve conflicts at work before they even happen by taking action to remove overlaps and change operation or processes to minimise and remove reasons for conflict.

Conflicts at work often come about through behavioural problems or incompetent staff. Both increase the pressure and workload on others and/or make being at work less enjoyable. Resentment, anger and annoyance can quickly be created between individuals and teams, leading to open conflict. Tackle these areas to deal with conflicts in the workplace.

A key part of conflict management is to promote understanding between parties. Our emotions often get in the way of taking the time to look at the situation from the other party’s point of view. Understanding often removes the assumption that the other person is being difficult or creating conflict for personal reasons. Promoting understanding is a great way to deal with conflict in the workplace. 

When you have negative, disruptive conflict in a team or at work, there are 5 practical steps that you can take to resolve 95%+ of the conflict fairly quickly. Towards the end of the video, I take you through exactly what these steps are.

Take action quickly to resolve conflict at work.

Creating team accountability makes your job as a manager as lot easier. Creating team member accountability reduces the time and energy you spend in decision making, solutioning and planning out the steps to implement solutions.

 There are many factors that go into creating accountability at work. The first of 10 factors in creating team accountability which we are covering are setting crystal clear expectations. If don’t know what is expected of you, how can a manager be holding employees accountable or how can you deliver against expectations. 

 The second factor for team accountability is show the team the how. Goals are great. If you don’t know or are not sure how to achieve your goals it is pretty hard to deliver. To ensure accountability at work, make sure each team member knows how to achieve the goals they have been set.

 Thirdly when creating a culture of accountability, creating visibility is essential. This is like creating a scoreboard for a sports game – everyone is so much clearer how each team is doing and what progress looks like.

 When driving team accountability, creating psychological safety is a must. Without safety, team members will find it a lot harder to take ownership and take the small risks involved with accountability.

 The fifth factor in creating team accountability is to delegate problems as well as tasks. Delegating problems and providing coaching and mentoring support in tandem allows you to develop a whole host of skills in your team that make you life a lot easier. 

 Sixth, when creating accountability, encourage team level planning. Using the team to problem solve, plan the execution of solutions and spot problems gives all team members a chance to improve relationships and learn about each other. Great to create team accountability. 

 Seventh, always follow up to improve employee accountability. Focus on helping and supporting first which also allows you to check up on progress ad spot issues and challenges that may need intervention. 

 Eighth, leading by example and holding yourself accountable is a great way for creating accountability in a team.

 Another key factor for developing ownership and accountability at work is to resolve conflicts within the team quickly. There will always be some level of conflict. How you manage conflict within the team is crucial. 

 Finally, when creating accountability in a team, celebrate successes together. Everyone likes compliments, praise for work well done and rewards for success. Taking ownership and accountability involves taking some risk. It seems sensible to increase the upside to encourage a bit of risk taking – and praise and celebrating success is one way to increase the upside. 

 Enjoy creating a more accountable team.

Being bullied at work is horrible. Bullying saps confidence, your focus on work, your time, and your motivation. Even worse is not doing anything. This give a bully free reign which is likely to mean the bullying continues or gets worse. This will not help your happiness, nor your motivation nor performance at work.

 You will learn 7 steps to tackle bullying at work, to give you confidence and knowledge of what steps you can and should take.

 Just check that you are the victim of workplace bullying rather than honest mistakes. Bullying at work is the repeated behaviour intended to hurt or control you. If you are being bullied the actions to stop bullying at work include:

 The first step to tackle bullying at work is to check your company policy so you know what processes the company should follow and what protections you are entitled to.

 The second set of actions to tackle bullying at work is to gather examples and evidence. This is crucial to how to stop bullying in the workplace. Bullying behaviour is usually subtle (68% of cases) so being able to demonstrate a clear pattern of bullying behaviour is super important.

 The next step in how to deal with a bully at work is to have an informal conversation. Book a meeting room and invite the bully to meet with you. Showing a bully that you are not going to accept the bullying tactics is a good way to get them to stop. 

 The fourth step to tackle bullying at work is to speak to your manager. Your manager should be a great source of help and support, plus they have greater power and influence within the business and can bring this to bear in stopping bullying in the workplace. 

 Fifth, in how to deal with a bully at work – find allies. Those at or above the level of the bully can be very useful allies. Multiple people pressurising a bully to stop has more impact that one. 

 If these steps have not yet worked, escalate the bullying situation to HR and to Senior Management. This takes how to deal with a bully at work to a much more formal setting, increasing the pressure on the bully to stop.

Finally, you can escalate the bullying at work externally to lawyers and tribunals. This is usually a final stage and can be needed if your manager is the bully.

 If a manager is the bully, which accounts for more than half the bullying cases in the workplace, then these steps still work. Build stronger evidence and work harder at finding allies to help negate a manager’s great influence and power within an organisation.

Good luck!

Knowing how to spot bullying on your team as a manager is super useful. Bullying is very damaging to team motivation and performance. 

 Bullying is very tough for those on the receiving end of being bullying behaviour. Not doing anything about bullying – through ignorance, not knowing what to do or being unwilling to act – is very damaging to your reputation and standing as a manager.

 Many signs of a bully at work are subtle and therefore hard to spot. This makes the job of spotting bullying in the workplace a lot harder. Identifying workplace bullying is even harder because may other issues can produce similar symptoms in employees being bullied.  

 How to spot bullying as a manager is a crucial first step. To help you, this video takes you through 5 symptom behaviours of employees being bullied, and 17 tactics used by those bullying at work.

 One of the most critical things to do for how to spot bullying in the workplace is to make the time to observe what is happening around you and check to make sure there are no signs of workplace bullying.

 Once you have spotted signs of bullying at work and investigated, then knowing how to deal with bullying at work is the next step. It is super important to take action as quickly as possible. 

 At the end of this video, I take you through a few tips on how to tackle bullying in the workplace. 

 Bullying is a horrible thing to have to suffer at any point in your life. Make it as hard as possible for bullies to successfully bully other team members.

 Unfortunately, many bullies at work are managers. Managers hold positions of responsibility and have more power and influence within the business as a result. It is easier for them to overstep the mark and engage in bullying behaviour. 

 Keep an eye on your team members to make sure that they are not being bullied by other managers in the business. Having regularly one-on-one meetings gives you a great platform to discuss these types of issues and demonstrate your support for them. 

 Do your best to stop bullying in the workplace. 

When you manage older team members it can be pretty nerve racking and intimidating especially if there is a large age gap. You might be a new manager or have a new team to manage when you first manage older workers. 

 Your confidence in yourself and your ability to treat older employees in exactly the same way as you treat younger team members is really important. Confidence makes a huge difference to you and to older team members.

 When managing anyone – younger or older – relationships matter. When the age gap is large, building trusting relationships is harder so you have to put a little more effort in. 

 Get to know your older workers. Find out what they like, what challenges they have with their job, what their ambitions are – just like you would with all the other team members. Build good trusting relationships. 

 Secondly, it is so important to treat everyone equally. Make consistent decisions and take consistent actions. Do this and the older team members won’t worry that they are being treated differently or worse. 

 Third, when leading older employees, remind yourself of the value you bring to the team. Managing older employees is great because they have depth and possible breadth of experience that you can draw on. Don’t forget that you have different skills and experience that they do. You are manager of the team for a reason. Demonstrate what you bring in a natural and relaxed way. Be confident of the value you bring. 

 Fourth, keep an open mind and respect the differences. Don’t assume when managing older employees that they don’t have good energy levels or they don’t have a desire to learn. Find out what each individual wants by asking lots of questions and paying attention to what they tell you. Keep an open mind. 

 Also be respectful that everyone is at a different point in their lives, with different ambitions, interests, and motivations. Work with the team members you have so that you can get the best out of the team.

 Fifth, when you manage older employees than you, look to leverage older team members’ experience and knowledge. They should have depth and / or breadth to their experience. The old employees should have seen plenty – what has been tried and not worked for instance. Use this knowledge and experience in how to manage older employees.

 The workforce is continuing to age. The fastest growing age group in the workplace is the over 65s. When you manage older team members you have access to great knowledge and experience – make the absolute best use of this. 

 Enjoy having older team members in your team!

Working out how to manage lazy team members and taking the right action to reduce or remove the issue is a challenge most managers’ dread.

 If you ignore lazy employees at work, laziness has a way of spreading into the rest of the team. Taking action quickly is a must.

 I am sharing 6 tried and tested ways to deal with lazy employees so you can deal with lazy team members effectively and fairly.

 When you are managing lazy employees, the first action is not to ignore the lazy behaviour. If you do, you are sending a message to the lazy team member and the rest of your team that being lazy is okay. Then laziness starts spreading through the team, and your management ability starts being questioned. 

 The second action to manage lazy team members is to find out why the employee is being lazy. There are lots of reasons, and once you understand why, then you can work out how to deal with lazy team members much more easily and successfully. Your approach should be tailored to the employee and the situation.

 When motivating lazy employees, setting expectations is really important. Add clear goals to be achieved, ideally agreed with lazy team member, so that both parties know when expectations have been met or exceeded. 

 Next when working out how to manage lazy employees in the workplace, listen to all their excuses as to why they are not delivering. Note them down and then go away and go your homework. Demonstrate that all the spurious excuses are not valid and work to remove the valid ones with training, resources, and mentoring.

 When managing lazy staff, providing honest feedback is very helpful to them and reinforces your expectations with them. To manage lazy employees monitor their improvements through tracking their measurable output. 

 Finally, after going through these ways to manage lazy team members and you are seeing limited or no improvement, take formal action with the lazy employee. Put them on a Performance Improvement Plan, involve HR and finally use the disciplinary process of your company.

 Don’t let lazy team members carry on being lazy. Take fair and corrective action quickly.

 Good luck!

Time management for managers is a real challenge. The demands on your time and workload only seem to increase. Time always seems to be against you.

 I have 5 ways for managers to gain more time plus share 8 time management techniques for managers. 

 As a manager you never have enough time and always want to get more done.

 So the first action to gain more time for managers is ruthlessly prioritise. Prioritise for you and your team members. Everyone tells you to prioritise. How to prioritise is the real challenge. 

 I share 8 different ways to prioritise covering how to manage your time and get more done.  These time management techniques are specifically aimed at managers, though can be used by all.

 The second time management technique is to delegate problems not tasks. Delegating problems means that you are asking others to do the solutioning and planning parts, rather than just asking them to do the tasks or activities to implement the plan. This saves you time and more importantly develops the problem solving and planning skills of your team.

 The third of five time management skills is to make meeting valuable or bin them. Everyone spends a lot of time in meetings, and managers particularly so. Per Forbes, around 50% of time spent in meetings is not used well. Therefore, make the meetings you control and influence as valuable as possible and I share ways of doing this. 

 The fourth of my time management tips is to encourage decision making across the team. Everyone makes decisions every day. Provide the right frameworks, confidence and support to ensure your team are making decisions (within their remit) rather than coming to you for you to make the decision. This will save you a lot of time and develop your team.

 The fifth of my ways to gain more time as a manager is to create more leaders in your team. Every team member can act as a leader, can practice leadership skills, regardless of their job title. Creating more leadership skills in the team through mentoring and coaching reduces the pressure and burden on you as their leader. It also saves you a lot of time and gives you great succession planning.

 Be Proactive. Take action to give yourself more time at work!