5 Ways to Build Rapport and Connect with Work Colleagues

Make change easier for any team by using 6 actions to reduce fears, provide purpose and help individuals learn and adapt to what is changing. If we don’t pay enough attention to the human side of change management with teams, the changes planned are going to be painful for everyone I share 6 key actions to make leading teams through change easier. ----  Here is a link to all our downloadable booklets and help sheets and our free webinars. These all provide you more depth and will help you develop your management expertise that much faster. Build your confidence so you can lead any team to their best performance! https://enhance.training/team-and-business-management-resources/ ----  How to lead teams through change starts with explaining the why. The why provides context and the purpose behind the change. Team members can then decide for themselves if the change will make them, colleagues and the business better off or worse off.  Not knowing the why is one of the classic reasons why people resist change in the workplace. Next, explain clearly what is in it for them – a key part of how to help teams through change. Everyone wants to know the impact on them of the change. Helping teams through change is clearly explaining the upsides without ignoring the downsides. Third for how to lead through change, break down the change into manageable tasks and activities for each individual in the team. This takes away a lot of the fear element. Staff also know what to do rather than having to try to work it out themselves. Whenever you are managing staff through change always spend a lot more time listening than talking. Listen to concerns, issues, challenges, ideas and solutions from team members. You will get amazing insights into how they are thinking and get a ton of useful ideas and solutions to boot. Listening a lot is key in change management. When managing teams through change, teach team members how to change. Teaching them what is needed to change will speed up making the change plus you are more likely to get the change you are expecting. Always train and teach your staff through change. Finally, when leading teams through change, hold teams and team members accountable for making the changes needed. There are 5 key actions to take in parallel to hold team members accountable during change – make sure you are taking each one. If you have any questions on “6 Actions to Make Change Easier for Any Team”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.  Jess Coles Enhance.training 

Develop influence as a manager, or at any level, and you will be able to do more, deliver better results and be viewed as more valuable in your role. Build your influence at work and the great your effectiveness in your role and the greater your personal rewards. I share 5 principles for influencing others in the workplace. ---- ---- To influence people as a leader or manager, being competent at your job is a must. Do you WILLINGLY follow people you don’t admire and respect? Do you willingly follow people you don’t trust to do their jobs well? I don’t think that I do. Influencing others starts with trust. The more trust you can build with those that you want to influence, the more influence you will have with those people. This is the power of influence and trust. How leaders influence people starts with becoming good at leading themselves. How well you know yourself, how confident you are to reveal weaknesses, how you manage your reactions and behaviours and more … are all part of leading yourself. We follow those that lead themselves better than we do. Work on your own self-awareness, self-management and emotional intelligence to influence more in the workplace. One of the most important principles in the art of influencing others is reciprocity or helping others before asking for help. Helping others creates influence. We like, trust and respect those that help us (generally) without strings attached. So go out of your way to help others, knowing that at some point in the future you will have that help returned. Helping others is an investment in your own productivity and investment. It is much easier persuading and influencing others when they are happy to be influenced by you. Leadership is having the courage to take risks and step into the unknown. A great starting point to building leadership skills for managers and your confidence is speaking up and sharing your opinions, ideas and solutions. Start small and build. Have the courage to use your voice every day and every week. Finally, a very important part of influencing others is building relationships. As mentioned before, we are a lot more open to being influenced by those we like and trust. Build positive personal and professional relationships with your team and bosses. I share who you should target and in which order. If you have any questions on “5 Principles To Develop Influence As A Manager”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.training 

Planning your work week as a manager is the different between doing a great job and doing an okay or even a poor job. The more people you manage, the more moving parts, demands and deliverables you have to stay on top of. Planning ahead at work gives you a ton of benefits.I share six actions for planning your week as a manager to be really effective in your job.----- ----- How to effectively plan your week at work starts with be very aware of the team, functional and company goals. Consistently ensuring what you are working on aligns to the wider business goals increases the value of your work to bosses. You also meet more than one goal with the same piece of work – a great way to leverage your time and value creation. Very effective productivity tips and time management tips for managers. How to effectively plan your week as a manager is about prioritisation. You will always have more to do than time permits. How to plan your day week and month must include separating the important and urgent tasks from the unimportant and not urgent tasks. How to be productive at work is not about doing more but about doing more valuable. How to effectively plan your week as a manager also includes what you are going to do yourself and what you are going to delegate. Delegating is not always a time creating activity. I share tips on time management for managers.How to plan your day for success should include how you use your calendar and organisational tools to reduce the number of disruptions you get. The average office work is interrupted every 3-11 minutes. I share tips on how to minimise disruptions which kill productivity. In management roles, the unexpected nearly always happens. Something will come up to disrupt your plans. One of the essential time management tips for work is to build in contingency time to account for requests, challenges and problems that arise. Finally, at the end of every day, take 5 minute to review what was achieved against your plan and what was not. Replan so that you always have up to date weekly plan in place. If you have any questions on “6 Actions for Planning Your Work Week As A Manager -Boost Productivity”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess ColesEnhance.training 

I am sharing 5 people skills to become a great leader. The ones I am discussing today are some of the most important people skills; the ones that every really great leader displays. Great leaders have the leadership skills to bring something out of us. To become a great people leader, encourage, inspire and motivate through how you make people feel and what you motivate them to achieve.--- --- Communication is one of the most important skills for leadership. I share 5 communication skills that I view as essential people skills for leaders and good people skills in the workplace for anyone with ambitions. There are a lot of skills needed for how to become a great leader at work. Leadership is about change. Being courageous is a requirement for leaders. It takes courage to change, to do something different. It takes courage to speak your mind, to share your ideas. Courage is needed for how to become a great team leader.Demonstrating integrity is also a very important skill. I share 8 different ways to demonstrate your integrity (and there are plenty more). Integrity builds trust, it creates safety, it means staff members will be treated fairly.People follow people they admire and who help them bring the best out of themselves. Being yourself, being authentic is needed for people to relate to you, to learn about you. Trust is massive when leading others. If you are not being true to yourself, how can others trust you?Finally, flexibility is a critical skill of many management skills. Leadership skills for managers and leadership skills training focus on different approaches to the massive range of situations and personalities any manager faces at work. Work on the flexibility of your approach because everyone and every situation is different.  Work at your people skills training and learning and in particular these 5 core people skills to become a great leader.If you have any question on “5 People Skills To Become A Great Leader”, please leave a comment below and I will get back to you. Jess ColesEnhance.training 

As a leader or manager, how do you build great management skills in your organisation? How do you encourage the coaching of great management skills, so you are developing the next generation of managers AND upskilling the managers you currently have?I share tips and actions to help you encourage managers to develop their teams and in particular their manager direct reports, which in turn will drive increasing team and business performance. --- --- To incentivise coaching of management skills, it is really useful to identify which skills leaders should be encouraging their managers to develop. I list out 7 of the key skills which are great management skills training.Next to encourage managers to develop their teams work to create a development culture in your team. There is lots you can without budget to get every team member learning and especially you managers. For example spending time mentoring and coaching your managers is great to incentivise building management skills.To incentivise management skills coaching throughout your organisation, create a management skills development plan for each manager. A development plan provides clear direction, activities and projects for development plus gives you the ability to hold both parties to account (manager and line manager) to deliver that plan. Finally, I share 4 practical actions to encourage coaching of great management skills within your manager population. Each are great in how to develop team lead skills. For of these skills, I list out practical actions to take and activities to encourage the practice of management skills which will improve management performance and the performance of the teams your managers lead. Developing better coaching skills is another way to incentivise managers to coach their teams. Get them to pass on the skills they have learnt. Incentivise management skills coaching!If you have any questions on “How To Encourage The Coaching Of Great Management Skills In Your Team”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.Jess ColesEnhance.training,

Start quickly and successfully by implementing 5 actions for first week success as a new manager. Have a good first week and you set the stage for your ongoing success, you feel a lot more confident in yourself and your team will be a lot happier and more confident in you too.  I share 5 actions to take in your first week – all great first time manager tips--- --- Start your first week as a new manager by focusing on the new 20%, not the old 80%. Chances are you will be doing a lot of your old role as a new manager. For first time manager success, focus on your new responsibilities – the management part, rather than stay in your comfort zone. I share 5 steps to take to start doing this brilliantly for first time managers.Next, for first week success as a first time manager understand the goals and expectations for your team. Maybe obvious, yet so few bosses provide clear goals and expectations. I share tips for new managers to work with their boss to get clear goals. Third, the next of my first-time manager tips is to start with a team focused attitude. Success to become a manager is all about growing yourself. As a manager, success is growing your team first.For first time manager in their first week, don’t make changes too soon. There is a lot of pressure on managers to make their mark, impress, and prove that hiring or promotion them was the right choice. Too many managers make the wrong changes too soon as a result. For a first time manager success guide, I share how you should go about making your mark quickly.The last of my new manager first week tips for success is to focus on building relationships. Probably the most important action for the first few months in any new role, and particularly so as a manager. I share tips on who to focus on first and how to go about building the right relationships in the right way. If you have any questions on “5 Actions for First Week Success As a New Manager – 1st Time Manager Tips”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.Jess ColesEnhance.training

Resolving organisational conflict makes everyone’s lives better, more enjoyable and more productive plus it adds significant profit onto the businessI share 4 ways and 10 steps to resolve organisational and inter team workplace conflicts. I also cover what is organisational conflict and provide organisational conflict examples. --- --- Learning how to handle organisation conflict (organisational conflict management) starts with understanding how a lot of conflict occurs within the workplace. In my experience, more conflict occurs because of decisions, organisational setup, goals and processes that have not been designed carefully enough. You see the impact through individual getting into conflict, yet the cause is external to them. I share 7 classic causes of conflict in the workplace. How to resolve workplace conflict starts with understanding what is happening and why it is happening. Separately, speak to both parties is essential, ask lots of questions and listen carefully to what they tell you. Understand what is happening. Figure out why it is happening. Understanding is essential for managing conflict and organisational conflict resolution.  I share 5 steps to practice for this stage. Understand what organisational conflict types you are dealing with – conflict between individuals, conflict within a team or conflict between teams. A lot of conflict management in the workplace is redesigning goals, objectives, policies and procedures so individuals and teams are more aligned and not set against each other. To resolve workplace conflict, then bring the parties together to get them to create solutions. I share 5 steps to follow for this meeting and process. If you have any questions on “4 Ways of Resolving Organisational Conflict: Reduce Workplace Conflict” please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess ColesEnhance.training

Use 5 techniques to speak with the confidence of a leader. Communication skills are probably the most important skill set for leaders and managers. At the heart of leading others is building relationships, earning trust and making the lives of those you lead better.  I share 5 techniques to speak like a leader, so you can feel more confident when speaking with executives, when public speaking or presenting to the board of directors. --- --- To sound like a leader you must know your audience. Put in the time to do your homework and think through the challenges, pressures and desires the audience has. To speak like a CEO or leader, speak to the audience’s fears and hopes. This is a key part of confident communication and presentation skills.To be an effective leader, building and keep trust with the teams you are leading is essential. The same can be said when speaking effectively with executives. The greater the trust levels, the easier it is to do your job without questions and challenge slowing down the results you can produce. Always speak with as much openness, transparency and honesty as you can. One of the essential public speaking skills to master is creating clear digestible messages that are easy to understand. Creating concise well-structured communications will help you speak like a leader and are great public speaking tips and tricks.When speak in public, to large audiences, and if you want to sound like a leader, your practice is your performance. That is the more you practice out loud before speaking, the better your performance. I share 4 key mental tricks and practices to reduce your nerves before speaking publicly or to large audiences. Finally, to speak confidently, you must master your own non-verbal communication. These are the facial clues, how you use your voice, the pauses, your body positioning etc to convey additional meanings with the words you use. I share 6 areas you need to be aware of and practice improving as you speak. If you have any questions on “Speak With The Confidence Of A Leader – 5 Vital Speaking Techniques”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess ColesEnhance.training

There are lots of people problems managers can’t ignore if they want to have a happy and productive team. People problems in your team usually get worst over time if left alone and they will easily damage team performance. I share THE top 5 people problems managers shouldn’t ignore (in my opinion). --- How to Manager Difficult Employees (1 Day Course) Learn how to manage and improve any difficult, underperforming or problematic employees quickly and effectively. Find out more here https://enhance.training/lp/manage-difficult-people-usp015/ ---  The first people problem managers can’t ignore is bullying and any behaviour intended to put others down. Any form of bullying that the manager ignores is deadly. No action will destroy team trust, motivation and performance. This drop in performance can be quick and dramatic with these people problems at work.Always take actions quickly to stop any form of bullying in your team. It is one of the worst people problems that impact performance. The second of the people problems to always look out for is individual undermining team members or you. Undermining can take many forms – usually a pattern of behaviour to attack another person credibility, confidence, standing etc. Use an escalating set of steps to make it unappealing for undermining to happen in your team.  The third of the people problems managers need to spot is individuals taking credit for others work. This behaviour damages trust, relationships and teamwork. For those take credit for others work, they may get short term gains, but they nearly always lose out long term. Demonstrate how to give credit by praising good work, ideas and actions across your team publicly. Don’t put up with team member unfairly taking credit. Fourth  of the people problems that kill team performance is no or poor communication. Communication is at the heart of relationships, co-ordination, collaboration, teamwork, solution building and more. I share 7 actions to encourage more communication within your teams. Help coach team members who struggle to communicating and give them opportunities to practice. Fifth of the damaging people problems for managers is conflicts between team members. Conflicts can arise for all sorts of reasons. Often it is not the fault of those in conflict. As a manager you are very well placed to help all parties resolve conflicts quickly, fairly and openly. I share steps to take. If you have any questions on “The Top 5 People Problems Managers Can’t Ignore For Happy & Productive Teams” please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.training 

You are in control of many of the factors that go into how to develop a winning team at work. You don’t need amazing people or big budgets to develop a winning team at work. I share 4 development strategies for team success and for developing team capability. --- --- Leadership success depends on growing others because the majority of the value you create in leadership roles is delivered through others. Developing teams becomes a must. How to develop your team at work starts with understanding what development is needed. There are three important factors to be considered and balanced, one being what development the individual wants and needs. Planning and delivering staff development is a massive part of motivating staff to work harder and improve the quality of their work. There are lots of ways to develop a winning team. Building skills in a team is as important as building knowledge and experience. I explain 3 key reasons this helps you personally and share 6 skills to build in developing teams and effective leadership. I also talk about how to develop a team at work. You also have to do you part in building a winning team culture and one of the key strategies is working to remove all the basic repetitive low value tasks the team does. Doing this frees up time for to spend on higher value tasks and provides staff development all by itself. There are 4 main ways to remove these low value tasks – are you working at all of them? Lastly, another important of the development strategies and important in how to develop a team at work is to create a team culture where peers develop each other. This reduces the burden on you, giving you development too! I share 5 key activities to enable you to build a great team culture and brilliant for how to motivate your team at work. If you have any questions on “How to Develop a Winning Team At Work – 4 Team Development Strategies” please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.training