Are certain people making life difficult for other people at work? SME Academy offers a solution.

Problem behaviour at work affects everyone. It affects the people on the receiving end and it also affects those who are bullying and argumentative in the first place.

But how do you deal with it?

The first step is to take a pro-active stance, take command and control it in a positive way. It used to be that punishment was the only way forward and indeed some form of disciplinary action may be required. But prevention and support should also be provided, along with a strong and positive management style that will go a long way towards preventing such occurrences happening in the future.

Both coaching and mentoring have led to positive changes in such individuals, as they are offered practical and supportive solutions to change the behaviour that has so affected them and their colleagues. While it will take time to get back to a workplace which is more positive in nature, if you can provide leadership that everyone looks to for advice and support you will be setting the stage for that to gradually evolve.

It can be a tricky balance to present a face of management that is both firm yet supportive in the right ways, but it is vital to do so. You should also keep a close eye on how things are progressing and be prepared to meet with members of staff who have concerns or issues about any kind of detrimental behaviour they are experiencing at work.

Many businesses are now turning to neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to produce better results over both the short and the long term. NLP is designed to help you understand the behaviours of others from both audio and visual signs, and can therefore help in two ways. Firstly the offending member of staff will learn how their behaviour affects others in a detrimental way, and secondly they will also learn how to make positive changes that will help to eradicate the problem behaviour altogether.

As far as your role as a manager is concerned it is vital to ensure that you learn to identify problem behaviour as soon as it arises, rather than finding out about it from staff members. By providing a hands on management style you can learn more about how your team works and thus get to know your team a lot better than perhaps you do now.

By looking at long term solutions to problem behaviour rather than quick fixes, you will find that your team works in a more harmonious way as a result.

SME Academy offers a range of Coaching and Mentoring packages that can be adapted to your needs. Call us on 020 7939 9910 or click here for more information about coaching

© Copyright Hannah McNamara 2010

Small business coach Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) in London talks about what you can do to improve the communications in your business and how to motivate staff.

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Transcript

These days there are so many ways for us all to stay in touch, so why do so many business owners and company directors confide in me that they need to improve communications amongst their staff?

It’s precisely BECAUSE there are so many ways to communicate that we’re in danger of forgetting how to interact face to face. I’ll explain.

In an environment where co-workers email the person sat next to them it can be hard to get your staff to talk to one another. Equally if important company announcements are communicated through a note pinned to the notice board without any explanation, you can hardly blame staff for gossiping or for being less than enthusiastic.

The first step to improving communication is to acknowledge that there is a problem and that it needs to be addressed. Communication is not the responsibility of the Marketing department or the HR Manager – it’s the responsibility of the senior management team. Without buy-in from the top, communications will simply not improve so your directors need to take ownership of this and they need to lead by example.

So the next step is to arrange a ‘closed door session’ for your senior management team where you come together and thrash out what needs to change. Have a frank and honest discussion about what’s working and what’s not and develop some practical solutions. If management meetings have lapsed or are missed by certain people, of course communication is going to suffer. When you have your ‘closed door session’ you might need to bring in an external facilitator or one of your non-executive directors to chair the meeting to ensure everyone feels heard and there’s a balanced discussion. Make sure everyone has a full understanding of the business plan and the company goals for the next few months. This will save people pulling in different directions or failing to prioritise projects crucial to other departments’ meeting their goals.

Then and only then, talk about how you’re going to cascade this through to the various teams working under the senior management team. Your senior team need to lead by example and put any past differences behind them. Some of them will already be good communicators, so find out what they do and see whether the others can learn from them. In the spirit of team-working encourage them to spend more time together, to have a quick weekly catch-up or even grab coffee or lunch together.

Now, for those people in your company who have been labelled as ‘difficult’ we need to get realistic. Most of the time, it’s because there’s a personality clash or where people have a different set of values when it comes to working. For example, this could mean that a particular manager might value adherence to deadlines higher then precision but they have a team member who believes it’s better to miss a deadline to get things right first time. There are going to be disagreements unless they have a frank discussion about working practices.

By keeping the channels of communication open it’s easier to nip any disagreements in the bud. It’s also easier to make sure everyone’s pulling in the right direction, because nothing is going to wreck your business faster than having a company where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

For more video tips and articles go to: www.smeacademy.co.uk

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Essentially what this means is that once the application has been enabled on your mobile device, e.g. your BlackBerry, other people can track your movements and view your status.

Already this application has got people worried, for example the BBC News website said: “The service has raised a number of security concerns, as many users may not be aware that it is enabled.” They continue: “privacy watchdog Privacy International argues that there are opportunities for abuse of the system for those who may not know that their phone is broadcasting its location.”

Google’s blogsite for this service states that the service is available on a strictly 100% opt-in basis, but this has got us wondering what it means for businesses who employ staff. Afterall, often the company owns the mobile phone, pays the bills and supplies the phone to staff to use for business purposes. So do you need to tell the user of the phone if the service has been enabled?

Google Latitude has been designed so that a notifaction pops up telling the user that their location is being shared, but in an interview with the BBC, Google “admits that the notification service is currently only available for BlackBerry users”.

Could this service help employers to cut sickness absences and keep an eye on staff who are out of the office on extended ‘client meetings’? If an employee knows that their movements may be tracked by their employer via their phone are they less likely to take a ‘sickie’ or does it mean that they’ll simply turn off their phone when they leave the building? If you have a large salesforce or need to track drivers, this could offer a very effective solution for improving efficiencies by ensuring that the right person is sent to the appointment or the job and to give customers a more accurate estimated time of arrival.

Before you get excited, take note. Users of this service can manually set their location. So when you check in on a sick employee and see that according to their phone they are tucked up in bed, they could be down the pub!

What are your thoughts? Would you insist on this feature being installed on your company phones or do you see it as an invasion of privacy?

© Copyright SME Academy 2009

In a recent article in the People Management magazine (available to read on their website at www.peoplemanagement.co.uk) it is mentioned that learning within a work environment should now be more individually led, rather than constantly attending mass training events. The article provides a fascinating read, not to mention a very convincing argument for why this individual stance should become the norm rather than the exception.

There is every reason to think that with the proper structure, this type of self-propelled learning could actually work rather well. Why? This is simply because not everyone learns in the same manner.

Let’s look at a typical example. Let’s suppose you set up a training session which takes place predominantly using a slide show and talk to get your message across. You may have chosen this method because it’s a method you like yourself.

Now some of the people who attend your training course may take in a lot of what you are saying. Others may study the slideshow carefully and take in a great deal of information in that way. Others may struggle to take in much at all – not because your presentation skills are boring in any way, but simply because they don’t study very well in that way. If you gave them a pamphlet that listed your presentation step by step it might be a different story – it all depends on which way they tend to learn.

That’s where individual learning can really be a winner. Provided there is a supportive framework in which the whole thing works, there is no reason to suppose that better results can’t be obtained, and motivating staff won’t become a lot easier.

It would be wrong to say that each individual employee will be totally alone though. A good move would be to start motivating staff to take on learning opportunities to grow and develop their skills during the coming weeks and months. The idea can also be brought up during discussions about their personal development plan; if you can identify the best ways of learning in their individual case, then you will be able to steer them in the right direction for making the most of every learning opportunity which comes their way.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara

SME Academy offers a range of in-house courses which are tailored to the requirements of your staff. Find out more.

Running a business can be very rewarding, but it doesn’t get any tougher than having to deal with making members of staff redundant.

It often falls to the directors to deal with the fallout of such an event, as the people affected seek help to cope with their sometimes unexpected (and nearly always stressful and upsetting) situation.

The key to being able to help workers faced with redundancy is to be ready and available to offer solutions and advice when they need it the most. Career coaching isn’t something that all members of staff will be aware of or will have thought about, but if you can suggest it to anyone who comes to you for help it can do wonders for their motivation. It is a useful tool for helping them to see that there are other options on the table.

When people are told they face redundancy, they often assume that they are leaving the company altogether. This is not always true however. Before you meet with any employee in this situation, you should investigate the possibility of outplacement; it’s quite possible that their skills can be utilised elsewhere in the business without them having to leave altogether. This can be a good solution for both the employee and the employer when a role disappears.

You can do a lot for employees facing redundancy, both in terms of providing information and providing support as well. An employee’s productivity will understandably be affected by the news, but if you can provide the right resources to help them negotiate the situation successfully there is every chance they will begin to see it as an opportunity to stretch their wings.

This does bring up an important point, since the first thought of many company directors will naturally be to provide resources such as career coaching in order to help the employee through this period of transition. It is important however to remember that they are likely to be feeling emotional at this time, and may not be very accepting of help in the first instance. It may simply be enough to let them know where you are and how you can help, and to tell them that they can arrange a further meeting to discuss future options when they feel ready to do so.

Redundancy is not a pleasant situation from either side of the fence, but if it is handled carefully by those in a position of authority then the workers affected will at least know the support they need is there for them.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara

Want to speak to us about how this could work in your company? Call Hannah McNamara on 020 7939 9910 or email info AT smeacademy.co.uk - replacing AT with @.