5 Steps to Speak with Clarity and Confidence at Work

How to give corrective feedback to an employee is a scary prospect when you don’t know how to do it or when you have had bad reactions with previous attemptsIf you don’t provide critical feedback, then it will be: 1.         Harder for the other person to improve quickly2.         They may not realise that they are missing expectations3.         You are not really treating them fairly if they are underperforming or have poor behavioursI share 4 key ways to give negative feedback without offending or upsetting the other person which maximised the chances they will take action. --- --- How to give feedback has to start with your mindset and approach. The whole purpose of giving corrective feedback to get action and improvement from the other person. To do this, they need to listen to what you say, take it in, understand it and then be committed to actioning it. You massively improve the chances of all this happening when you give feedback with the genuine aim of helping and improving the other person.Next, we go through what to cover when giving feedback to employees. You have to make your negative feedback as useful as possible. You also want to avoid having lots of difficult conversations.How to give critical feedback to an employee starts with being specific. You must describe what the employee did in some detail, so they know exactly what they did wrong. Giving critical feedback doesn’t have to be an ordeal for both parties when you know how to approach the conversation. I share key ways to give critical feedback.Don’t make the corrective feedback about the person. Make the critical feedback about what they did or didn’t do. Finally, try to avoid stating your opinion when giving feedback effectively. Aim to use examples and evidence rather than you opinion. I explain how to do this so you are clear on the difference and provide examples. If you have any questions on “How To Give Corrective Feedback To An Employee”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess ColesEnhance.training 

To be able to speak with clarity and confidence at work makes you more effective in your role and you are seen as more successful. To speak with confidence at work takes a little know how and some practice. That is all.I share 5 steps to help you speak with clarity at work. Speaking to others are key communication skills for any role and job---- ---- To speak confidently and clearly knowing your audience really helps. Make the time to think through what the other person might be thinking and feeling right now. How does their role influence their viewpoint and what pressures does it create. The better you understand your audience, the more clearly you can speak to others so they listen, understand and take in your message. Preparing in advance, even if it is only a few seconds to think through how you are going to structure your points gives you confidence and enables you to speak clearly. Rambling, long and overly detailed talks or emails are very hard to follow and understand. Create a structure to what you say so that it is easy to follow and easy to communicate. How you speak or your speaking style can be improved quickly with a little practice. This will help you speak confidently in meetings and with groups. I share tips on how to practice to speak confidently and clearly.The four step in making your communication more concise – that is having the same meaning in a lot less words. Even those that ramble a lot right now can become concise in how they communicate. I share an simple exercise to practice regularly that will build your conciseness skills quickly.Finally, your body language, particularly your facial expressions and how you hold yourself communicate a lot of meaning alongside the words you use. Focus on how you use your body language when communicating more than the words you say. Both are important. When you look confident speaking, you will feel a lot more confident. If you have questions on “5 Steps to Speak with Clarity and Confidence at Work”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.Jess ColesEnhance.training

You should value a positive attitude before skills at work. I am going to explain why this is so important as an employee and as a manager thinking about who to promote and who to recruit.Work on your positive attitude. I share lots of tips of what to do and what to look for to build positive team cultures and get the best from your team in the process.--- Courses for Managers to Increase Team Performance & ResultsThe quickest, easiest and cheapest way to improve team results is to improve the management of the team. Learn the management skills and approach that created multiple high performing teams, won “Best Team” prizes and added millions in value. https://enhance.training/msa-usp006/---Most team members appreciate a teammate with a positive attitude at work. Positivity lifts everyone up and creates a nicer working atmosphere. It is so important to develop and maintain a positive attitude at work. This is great for teams and for individuals.I share 5 signs or behaviours that indicate a positive attitude plus plenty of tips of how to be positive at work and stay positive at work. The more you have a positive mindset at work, the more likely colleagues will be positive towards you. Being positive is more likely to result in better relationships and receiving more help from those around you. This is brilliant recipe for being personally more effective at work. In addition, those that have a positive attitude are much more likely to get promoted at work. It pays to develop a positive attitude before skills at work.Next, for managers, it pays stay positive at workplace to demonstrate how you would like your team to behave and operate. Creating a positive team culture starts with the leader and their decisions, actions and behaviours. Always focus on being positive at work. I also share 7 key benefits you will have from creating a positive team culture. Take a look at the links above for more details on how to motivate teams. Finally, when recruiting staff - put attitude before skills at work. You can teach skills. It is very hard to change a person’s attitude. This is why it is so important to focus a good portion of your time during the recruitment process working out what character traits the candidates have and how positively or otherwise they view the world. If you have any question on “Why You Should Value a Positive Attitude Before Skills At Work”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.Jess ColesEnhance.training

Successfully managing employees in their first few months is crucial for their success, and have an impact on the success of the team. New joiners first few months are critical to creating a good impression, building positive relationships, getting to grips with their role – all of which set them up for success over the coming years.When new employees are successful, the team is more successful, with reflects very positively on you as the manager.I share 5 tactics that every manager should employ to get the very best from their new employees. ---- --- Managing your new staff successfully has to start with helping them build relationships with team members and then colleagues across the business. Nearly every job relies on teammates and colleagues. With better relationships, you get better teamwork, trust, and interdependency. These in turn produce better results at a team level. During the probation period of a new joiner there is lots you can do to help your new staff member build positive relationships which don’t take much time to organise. It is in your interest to help your new employees be successful.Next when managing employees first few months, it is really important to give them very clear direction and set clear expectations and personal goals. This is vital at any point but none more so when managing new employees.  When managing an employee during probation you both need goals to assess performance and progress in a fair and collaborative way. Helping the new joiner be as productive as possible as quickly as possible is in everyone’s interests. There is a lot a new employee needs to learn, regardless of how much experience they have prior to joining. Help them get through this learning process as quickly as possible plus remove problems and provide the resources then need to be successful. A good manager plays chess, not checkers. To know what your new employee is capable of and what their real character is like, you need to get to know them. Spend time with them. Work alongside them for a bit. Get to know their strengths, weaknesses, ambitions and interests. I share 7 areas that I want to learn about with any employeeFinally, holding your new joiner accountable for performance and their attitude is also very important. A new employee should be on their best behaviour and working hard to impress. If they don’t demonstrate the right level of ability, work ethic and attitude, take action quickly.IF you have any questions on “Successfully Managing Employees In Their First Few Months – 5 Tactics”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.Jess ColesEnhance.training

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. ---- ---- 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 [email protected] and I will get back to you.Jess ColesEnhance.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.--------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 importantYou 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 [email protected] and I will get back to you.Jess ColesEnhance.training

How to keep your career moving upwards is a question most of us think about. We all want some progress, so we don’t get stuck doing the same job for ages. There are a lot of factors in how to keep your career moving. Climbing the corporate ladder starts with working hard and doing a good job. More is needed so you don’t lose momentum in your career. I share 4 key approaches that will massively help you in how to keep getting promoted.---- FREE Advanced CV Writing Techniques Webinar. This is ideal for those up against significant competition – for example when going for professional and managerial roles. Learn over 40 actionable techniques that far to few candidates put into practice.  https://enhance.training/lm-lp/write-your-best-cv-webinar-ulp034/--- Climbing the career ladder is a lot easier when you choose a career goal and then stick to this goal. Having a consistent goal means you put a lot more effort and energy into everything that helps you reach your goal and less into other activities which don’t help you reach your goal. Being more focused means you get to your career goal faster. This advice is simple to give yet hard to keep putting into practice every month and year through your career. Those that stay focused get a lot further ahead and gain a lot more career advancement.It is hard to make sure you don’t lose momentum in your career. There are ever changing hurdles to overcome and developing a learning mindset is a really important way to keep overcoming hurdles and challenges as quickly as possible.Another really important aspect for how to move ahead in career is to ensure you keep a positive attitude at work to as much as you can. Positivity is energising for those around you, great to improve teamwork and looked on very favourably by bosses. Look for the positives in all the situations you can. Very important in career advancement strategies is to be ready to move company when the opportunities at your current company don’t materialise. Moving is very important to keep climbing up the corporate ladder, so your career doesn’t suffer delays or get stalled. The key to being able to move easily is to invest in learning how to write a knockout CV and be good at passing interviews. Both are skills that can be learnt fairly quickly. See the links above.If you have any questions about “How to Keep Your Career Moving Upwards – Career Advancement Strategies”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.Jess ColesEnhance.training

How to influence people who don’t report to you is a really important skill to make you more effective at work. As you rise through the ranks, you are increasingly expected to influence without authority to deliver results and desired outcomes. The ability to influence employees who don’t report to you and influence people in other teams enables you to be a lot more effective in your job. You can get more help exactly when you need it from colleagues in different teams. Learn 5 important actions to build influence without authority. ---- ----When you manage people who don’t report to you, using social influencers is much more effective that trying to rely on the limited power of your position. People like to work with people that are nice, pleasant and easy to get along with. It makes the workday more enjoyable and go quicker. When you manage employees who don't report to you, be nice, be respectful and be useful to them. Another very important action when you lead people who don't report to you is to be interested in them and their world. As a manager you want to get to know them so you can understand their strengths and weaker areas, which enables you to get more from them. Being interested in them also create the bonds and obligations of relationships. The more they like and trust you, the more influence you will have with them. You can influence without authority.Another incredibly important action is the use reciprocity. That is offering them value first. Look for ways to help the other person and help them. Then you can ask for help in return and be much more likely to get that help. A brilliant way to influence at work.People are much more likely to do what you ask when they are sure you are working to help the wider group, which indirectly helps them, rather than if they suspect you are trying to help yourself. Create and communicate clear common goals. Even better is to link those goals back to how achieving them helps the other person. Finally, becoming an influential person builds more influence by itself. Other people know that you are in a better position to help them than less influential people. This gives you more opportunity to influence.If you have any questions on “How To Influence People Who Don’t Report To You – Influence Without Authority”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.Jess ColesEnhance.training

Being confident and self-confident at work is a very big deal – it helps you enjoy your job more, be more effective, be more influential and move your career forward faster. I share 10 actions for you to take to boost your self confidence at work. Some are short term, giving you improvements in days, others are longer term and very effective to build self confidence.  ---- If you are manager, there is nothing better to boost your self-confidence than investing in your skills and learning how to give better feedback, delegate more effectively, be good at setting expectations and saying no, managing difficult employees etc. Visit us at enhance.training and take a look at all the courses we have to boost your self-confidence.https://enhance.training/courses/To explore coaching options, please visit us at https://enhance.coach/--- The first action to improve your self confidence is to focus on what you can control and influence. Try hard not to worry about what you can’t control. Measure your progress so you can see your own improvements. Next for how to deal with low confidence at work, always focus on the positives. Think about what you did well. What was successful and what worked. Our brains are brilliant filters and when we look for the positives our brains filter out more of the negatives.Third, use mental visualisation exercises to prepare yourself well for actual events. These are brilliant for how to improve your confidence at work. Athletes, speakers and all those who need to perform under pressure use this technique a lot. It works brilliantly.Boost your confidence by comparing where you are now to where you were a week, month or year ago. Don’t compare yourself to people around you how you feel are more confident than you. They were in exactly the same position you are now.Fifth, for how to boost self confidence at work – dress well, hold yourself tall and look confident. This will help you feel confident and other people will treat you are more confident. A good self-fulfilling cycle. These are all very good actions to how to build confidence fairly quickly.The best way I know for how to build confidence in yourself is to work to be successful at a number of different things. They can be small through to significant. Success breeds confidence. I share 5 actions to take to help you become more successful quicker, so you can build your self confidence.If you have any questions on “How To Boost Your Self Confidence At Work – 10 Actions To Improve Confidence”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess ColesEnhance.training

Going from manager to director level is a big step and a difficult step. Firstly, there are few board director positions relative to senior manager positions. To secure one of the few director positions available you need to stand out and operate in a different way from your peers in senior manager roles.I share 7 actions to take to get your first director role, going from manager to board director. ---- Additional Resources and Videos you will find useful: For coaching options to position yourself for promotion and prepare yourself to be successful when you get your promotion visit us at https://enhance.coach/ Here is a free booklet explaining exactly how to market yourself internally professionally and skilfully to get the recognition, appreciation and promotion you deserve. https://enhance.training/lm-lp/market-internally-booklet/----   Moving from manager to director is a big jump in responsibility. The impact of decision making goes up plus you now don’t have anyone to check your functional decision with before making it. Going from manager to board director also means moving from one job into two jobs – you are joining the team running the company. All of these changes need several mindset shifts to be successful, which are a key part of leadership development. When you are a manager, creating a professional development plan and taking professional development training is very sensible. Being absolutely ready to take on a director role is super important so you will do a good job when you move into that role.How to go from manager to director is a lot easier when you take specific actions to build your skills and demonstrate you are ready. Showing you are good at decision making is a vital starting point. I explain some of key factors to consider.Next, for going from manager to director, show you are good at working cross functionally in your business and able to deliver results while working with anyone. This is a key skill to climb the corporate ladder and one of the key leadership skills for managers. Another very important skill is showing you are good at developing managers in the business. Another part of leadership development skills is showing you think strategically with the questions you ask and the suggestions you make. There are a lot of actions to take and skills to develop to be ready for a director position and then to show you are ready and a good choice to promote. Starting an executive coaching and leadership development programme is a great way to develop the right areas for you, build your confidence and take the right actions at the right time. Do get in touch to discuss how working with me will get you to promotion for director roles. Good luck in getting your first director role.Jess ColesEnhance.training