1) They have recently taken on new responsibilities, but carry on doing their old job

When someone is promoted, it’s important for the organisation that they get up to speed as quickly as possible. There isn’t always the time for people to learn the new job before other people start expecting to see results. Many managers in this situation respond by continuing to do their old job (only in a more bossy way) or failing to delegate, which means their direct reports don’t start to develop the ability to assist their manager. This doesn’t help anyone. These people are good candidates for coaching and are almost always receptive to it.

2) They have issues with communication skills

‘Communication skills’ covers a huge spectrum of development needs – they might be sending one-line abrupt emails, belittling people, having difficulties with a colleague, avoiding confrontation,  not speaking up in meetings and so on. Executive coaching can help them to be more empathetic and consider the impact their communication style is having on others. Depending on the person, they may respond well in a workshop or if your organisation is status-orientated they might prefer to work on this in the privacy of an executive coaching session instead.

3) They need to improve their leadership skills

There are so many books, courses and resources available on leadership. They all add value and give people the information they need to be a good leader. It’s the application of that information which makes a difference in the long-term. Executive coaching helps people to apply the knowledge they have and turn it into something practical. It also gives them the space to practice these new skills before trying them out ‘live’ on their staff and helps boost their confidence. Position it to them that they’ll be able to do this in private and they are likely to be receptive.

4) They have started to deliver work at the last minute or late

When an otherwise organised person starts struggling to meet deadlines it can indicate that they are having challenges saying ‘no’, delegating, or something else is bothering them. While they might think the last thing they need is to work with a coach because it eats into their day, the benefits to them can be huge. Executive coaching sessions don’t need to take long – they can be half an hour on the phone. They may need a little coaxing and convincing to take time out, but it will be worth it.

5) They ask for it!

Yes, this might appear obvious, but it can sometimes be overlooked when someone is already doing well in their job. They might be able to keep up appearances now but know that they need support with something in order to continue to perform. Whether they are asking for presentation skills coaching, conflict management coaching, time management coaching or any other type of coaching if you can respond quickly, they will be very grateful. Executive coaching doesn’t have to be a long-term support. Many of our clients find that one or two sessions is all they need to work on achieving a specific outcome.

While some of the above examples might appear to focus on coaching being used to ‘fix’ a problem, it’s important to position coaching as something positive – which it is. Depending on the culture of your organisation, changing the terminology might convince an otherwise sceptical person to accept help. We know they are going to be coached, but they might respond better to it being pitched as ‘one to one training’, ‘mentoring support’ or ‘leadership development’. Just make sure the coach you choose can cover this as well.

Hannah McNamara is the managing director of HRM Coaching Ltd. She is a former head of marketing and a Chartered Marketer. HRM Coaching specialise in providing down-to-earth, jargon-free coaching and development for senior executives and managers. Hannah and her team work internationally and can be contacted on +44 (0)20 7939 9910 or via www.hrmcoaching.com

This article on executive coaching originally appeared in Training Journal

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 ways that you can use freelancers to do specialist work for you or take on some of the burden of your every day work.

Liked this video tip?

We publish tips like this on a regular basis, so make sure you’re on our mailing list and you’ll be told when we add new video tips and articles to the site. You are automatically added to our mailing list when you download a copy of our FREE e-book ‘10 Ways to Sabotage Your Own Business: Are you making these mistakes?’ Claim your copy now here.

Transcript

Time or more accurately lack of it comes up all the time (excuse the pun) when I’m working with clients one on one.

They have great ambitions for their business but don’t have the time to do what it takes to make it happen. They’re too caught up in the day-to-day running of the business to think ahead and plan for the future. It’s often seen as quicker, easier and cheaper to do everything yourself rather than have to take on staff or get external help.

If this sounds familiar, rest assured you’re certainly not alone and I’ve been through it too.

I know what it’s like to want to feel in control of everything. To think that no one can do things the same way you can. And it’s true. No one can do it exactly the same as you. They might mess up. They might even do it better than you.

The point is, if you’re stressing out about the amount of day-to-day work you have to do, you’re not able to work on the important job of building your business. And it’s only going to get worse.

A flexible and affordable solution is to use the services of freelancers. You might have thought about using a freelance graphic designer for example, but what about a freelance personal assistant or webmaster? They can take on the administrative and technical roles in your business when you need them, and then when you don’t, well they are doing work for their other clients and they’re not on your payroll.

One place where you can find an international network of freelancers is Elance – you can find it at www.elance.com. It works a bit like eBay because freelancers bid to do work for you. I’ve used elance to find virtual assistants and freelance PAs, researchers, transcription services, data entry, audio editing, graphic design, webmaster services and many other services. Because on the whole I use people around the world, we use US dollars. This works out well on the exchange rate and there’s no tax to pay. Many of the people are home workers with low overheads so they can provide great value.

You do need to use a bit of common sense when looking for help on a site like this and check people out thoroughly before handing over work to them, but I’ve found that the benefits you gain from starting to delegate certainly outweigh the feeling of complete overwhelm and stress when you try to do everything yourself.

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

[END TRANSCRIPTION – 00:02:43]

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.

Liked this video tip?

We publish tips like this on a regular basis, so make sure you’re on our mailing list and you’ll be told when we add new video tips and articles to the site. You are automatically added to our mailing list when you download a copy of our FREE e-book ‘10 Ways to Sabotage Your Own Business: Are you making these mistakes?’ Claim your copy now here.

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

[END TRANSCRIPTION – 00:03:27]

Dr Patrick White from SME Academy talks about the dangers of surrounding yourself with ‘yes-men’ in your business. His story illustrates how not allowing people to challenge your decisions can lead to expensive mistakes.

Liked this video tip?

We publish tips like this on a regular basis, so make sure you’re on our mailing list and you’ll be told when we add new video tips and articles to the site. You are automatically added to our mailing list when you download a copy of our FREE e-book ’10 Ways to Sabotage Your Own Business: Are you making these mistakes?’ Claim your copy now here.

Transcript

Welcome to today’s tip of the week. Something I’d like to talk about is called: ‘Never Let Me Make A Mistake’

And this is very important when you’re an entrepreneur or manager or leader because it has two values that I want to talk about initially and then I’ll tell you a story to illustrate how I came about this rule.

One of the things you don’t want when you’re running a business is a lot of ‘Yes’ people around you. You want people to be able to be empowered to tell you if they think you’re making a mistake because sometimes we as owners and managers tend to rush off and do things that our staff think aren’t too bright at times.

So one of the things you need to instil in your business is to let your people know that they can actually come up to you and say: “I think that you are making a mistake.” – And then have a discussion about why they think that.

I have found this very empowering for people and I’ll tell you a story where I actually learned the lesson about this.

One day I happened to be visiting a fellow fuel distributor, which was one of my past businesses. And on his premises he had this really shiny, very nice Pantech truck with a nice big back on it all painted up and sign-written and it had a drop-loader elevator on the back which was great; it looked really good.

And it immediately came to mind that I had a depot that I had visited not long ago which had a very poor looking truck which was 20 years old and had just a flat deck on the back.

I thought: Wouldn’t it be great to buy this truck and send it to that depot and give that particular truck driver a big thrill?

So I went ahead, purchased the truck and then rang the Manager of the depot, told him I had purchased the truck and sent it on to him.

A couple of months later I had to go and visit that depot and when I got there I met the truck driver just as I was walking in the door and said something to him and I got a bit of a grunt.

After that I carried on walking and talked to the actual depot Manager and I said: “What’s wrong with Brian? We’ve just sent him this brand new truck and it looks really good, why is he not happy?”

The depot Manager proceeded to tell me why. He said: “The reason we had the old truck with a flat deck is because we needed to move a lot of fuel tanks around so we don’t need a truck with sides on the back because we can’t manoeuvre the fuel tanks in and out of the truck.”

So what was actually happening was they were using the new truck I’d bought for local deliveries but when they needed to shift a tank they would go and hire a flat bed truck.

So not only had I bought another truck that I didn’t actually need but it didn’t serve the purpose that they needed it for. What I should have done is asked the question. But if I had empowered these people before I bought the truck they could have told me that this was a mistake, that wasn’t the truck they actually needed.

So hence I learned the lesson ‘Never Let Me Make A Mistake’. It’s important to give your people the right to talk to you when they think you are making a mistake.

It’s also important to encourage them to make sure they tell other people in the business if they think they’re making a mistake and most importantly they must tell the customer if they think he or she is making a mistake.

So that’s a lesson I have learned. So if you want to empower our people get rid of the ‘Yes’ people around you and empower them so that they can tell you when they think you’re making a mistake.

Thank you.

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

[END TRANSCRIPTION – 00:03:54]

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.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara

If you or someone you work with is having trouble with a difficult member of staff, or a co-worker, we can help. Call 020 7939 9910 in confidence and ask for Hannah McNamara or email info AT smeacademy.co.uk (replacing AT with @)