Be Fair NOT Nice When Leading Teams + 10 Team Performance Tactics

Every manager faces staff who refuse to do what you ask. Staff who don’t take direction cause you a lot of stress, anger, delays and uncomfortable questions from bosses and stakeholders.I share the winning actions to persuade staff to do as you ask.--- --- There are lots of actions you can take to painlessly turn the “No” into a “Yes”, even from the most stubborn of employees. Learning how persuade employees who don't follow instructions to do what you ask will give you a ton of benefits:·        Spend less time delegating work·        Encounter less roadblocks·        Be more relaxed ·        Less stress·        More confidence in you from bosses and team members and more. When employees don't do what you ask, they cause problems for the team – less co-ordination, less collaboration, less teamwork … all lead to lower team performance. The first critical approach when dealing with employees who don’t take direction is to understand why. Most staff who doesn't take direction when you ask have reasons for their no. Find out what this reasons are by asking questions and listening. I share the principles for asking questions to get employees who don't take direction talking. Next, I share 5 of the best tactics to use to persuade team members who don't take direction. These are practical actions that ANY manager can implement quickly and easily. You don’t need a ton of specialist skills. I have used these for over 20 years with employees who don't take direction and many bosses above me. They work without annoying or upsetting. Gaining understanding and using the 5 persuasion tactics will get you great results with 90%+ of staff. When you have an employee not doing what you ask even after going through these steps, move into creating attention grabbing consequences. There is an art to creating and communicating consequences that get the right action from difficult staff members. I share the steps I go through to get the support and permission I need to put the consequences into action. Good luck!If you have any questions on “Winning Over Staff Who Refuse To Do What You Ask. Painlessly Turn No To Yes”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess Colesenhance.training 

How to lead when you are not the expert and deliver impressive results needs another set of skills, a different mindset, and a new approach. The good news is you (and any manager) will be able to learn exactly what is needed for success fairly quickly. I share the essential mindset changes you should make to be successful and the practical actions to take. --- ResourcesGrab our downloadable booklets and help sheets and access our free webinars. Gain more depth of expertise, build greater confidence and be a better manager quicker. Unlock your potential and lead your team to their best performance.  https://enhance.training/team-and-business-management-resources/---  When you are not an expert, working out who IS an expert is a little tricky. I have come across many “experts” who talk a very good game and when it comes to the crunch, can’t deliver even half of their promises. I share 4 approaches to help you navigate the expert minefield with confidence, so you find experts to trust. Leading when you are not the expert starts with getting the right experts on your team. When team members who know more than you , when you are leading experts, there is one responsibility you have that is critical for the success of your team or project. If you get this wrong, the best experts won’t help you. Get this right and managing experts becomes easy plus you deliver much better results. Make the time and ask the right questions to get this right every time when leading those who know more. When leading employees who know more than you, it can be difficult to work out what you should focus your attention on. How to you give your experts the space and autonomy to fully utilise their expertise, yet still control the direction of their work, and the results they deliver. I share my managing tips and the one thing you should always focus on. Finally, for managing when you are not the expert, I share 9 actions or approaches that you should use every single day for great team leadership and especially when managing experts who know more than you. Use all these and you will be very confident in how to lead experts. If you have any questions on “How to lead when you are NOT the expert & deliver impressive results”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess Coles enhance.training  

Developing talent in your team is one of the best ways to boost your own personal success as a manager. The more value and profit you can create directly and through your team, the more your bosses will want to give you more staff to manage (promotion). I will explain exactly how to boost your personal promotability and share 4 clever ways to boost your success by developing talent in your team without needing a big budget. --- ---  One of the best ways of developing talent in your team is to stop providing solutions. You can’t develop the talent in your team if you don’t get them thinking. One of the best management skills is knowing when to ask questions for developing talent in your team. A great example of developing talent is when a team member comes to you with a problem. Get them to provide you a solution and you improve their problem solving skills. For the best ways of developing talent at work, focus on 4 core skill groups that all managers need. Improve these in your team and increasing team performance becomes a lot easier. The more you increase team performance, the more people you will be asked to manage and the quicker your career progresses. Improving performance in individuals happens when you develop their skills. Providing development to employees is also brilliant for motivation, commitment, retention, relationship building … in short a lot of the factors that increase team performance. How the best managers develop talent, often with very little in the way of budget, includes each of the four actions discussed. Developing talent in the workplace takes a little imagination and some of your time. You have a ton of skills that you can pass on to your team members and you are perfectly placed to create opportunities for them to learn. Invest your time and the time of others to improve the skills and knowledge of your team and you directly boost your success as a manager. If you have any questions on “Developing Talent In Your Team - 4 Clever Actions To Boost Your Success”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.  Jess Coles enhance.training 

How open & transparent should you be when leading and communicating? Management advice is to be authentic for good reason. Authenticity builds connections, relationships and trust, all of which increases performance in pretty much any team. You can lead and communicate too openly, where respect for you drops, where you damage your credibility and authority and where your bosses become pretty unhappy. Do you know where this line is and why? I explain how to balance the need to be open and transparent with maintaining your credibility and authority when leading & communicating. ----  Additional Resources Grab our downloadable booklets and help sheets and access our free webinars. Gain more depth of expertise, build greater confidence and be a better manager quicker. Unlock your potential and lead your team to their best performance.  https://enhance.training/team-and-business-management-resources/  ----  Creating great teamwork starts with know what makes great teamwork. I discuss 6 behaviours that strong teams always display such as high levels of trust. Managing others well, inspire trust in your team, combined with good communication skills and a desire to promote openness in your team will get you a long way towards a strong motivated team. These are essential leadership skills in the workplace. To be a good leader, manager, being authentic is really important. To build trust and good relationships with team members, they need to get to know the real you. In contrast, instinctively we want to keep our weaknesses, our less useful characteristics etc hidden. On top of this, there are a lot of expectations that come with the position placed on us. How do we get the right balance of revealing ourselves with maintaining our credibility and authority and inspire openness in your team. We share our experiences and approaches. Providing feedback is essential to managing teams well. How open and honest do you make your feedback? If the feedback is not open and honest how will the team members improve? How will you increase team performance?  How open and transparent should you be with what you think? Will being frank be counterproductive and damage relationships. Will they get upset? Will they stop listening. There is a lot to balance in giving feedback. We explore how to get this balance right. Finally, you are communicating with team members and others every single day. Using a transparent leadership approach will build trust quickly. How much do you communicate and when do you keep silent? I share 7 questions to help you filter what you should share and what you should not. If you have any questions on “Leading & Communicating – How Open & Transparent Should You Be?”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.  Jess Coles enhance.training 

 How to lead and motivate managers in your team is different from how you manage employees. Managers have a different range of skills and expertise compared to employees. How to lead managers and get the best from your managers takes a few changes to your leadership style. I explain 5 big differences in leadership approach needed for success in leading your managers. I cover why leading managers is different from leading employees with practical tips on exactly what to do differently. ---- ResourcesGrab our downloadable booklets and help sheets and access our free webinars. Gain more depth of expertise, build greater confidence and be a better manager quicker. Unlock your potential and lead your team to their best performance.  https://enhance.training/team-and-business-management-resources/ ----  To lead and motivate managers in your team, start by giving them more space. If you manage your managers like you do your employees, chances are that they will not be happy AND you will waste a ton of their talents. For how to lead and motivate managers start by setting really clear goals and direction with them. I share 4 other really effective approaches for leading managers versus employees. Next, for how to lead more junior managers, focus on delegating problems not tasks. Maximise use of your managers’ problem solving, organisational, and people skills to solve problems you and your team faces. You also create time to focus on the hard more complex problems which means better solution building across the team as a whole. Third, help your managers develop leadership skills through coaching, mentoring, creating opportunities and more. I share tips and tactics that have worked very well in many companies. Another example of the differences in successfully leading managers. Fourth, help your managers to think strategically. Strategic thinking or big picture thinking is an increasingly important skill as you rise through the ranks. Starting early will make their progress easier quicker and more successful. You will also get more aligned actions and more focus on the most valuable work which helps drive team performance in the short term. Lastly, very important leadership skills for managers include the ability to build and maintain good professional relationships with a much wider range of people and personalities. I share tips on how to help your managers raise their profiles and build networking skills. If you have any questions on “Leading Your Managers - 5 Big Differences To Managing Employees”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.training 

Learn 3 practical approaches to get amazing team results and balance being helpful with being demanding. Being too helpful at work damages your credibility, reputation and job security. You can go all out to help your team and NOT be too helpful. Get amazing team results by using a specific approach that maximises the help you give while demanding a lot from the team. ---  More Resources Grab our downloadable booklets and help sheets and access our free webinars. Gain more depth of expertise, build greater confidence and be a better manager quicker. Unlock your potential and lead your team to their best performance.  https://enhance.training/team-and-business-management-resources/ ---The first approach to get the best team performance is to stop being too helpful as a manager. Being too helpful has little to do with how much you help. You can help your team a bit or you can go all out to help the team be better and do better. Being too helpful happens when you don’t balance enough against the help you provide. I explain 3 ways to stop your team taking advantage of you and potentially create powerful team performance. Helping your team get better and realise more of their potential is one of the best ways to get more from teams. Serving your team is a vital part of any manager or leadership role IF you want to get great performance while really motivating teams. Secondly, managers stop trying to be liked! Your job is not to win friends or boost your ego. Your key job is to support and direct the team to INCREASE team performance. Of course you need to build connections, to be relatable, to be empathetic and to be authentic. You should not be looking to make friends because doing so will make it a lot harder for you to make the necessary tough decisions and unpopular choices. Stop being taken advantage of at work. Instead, aim to be respected. Being respected is a direct outcome of doing a good job as a manager. The more respect you get, the better you are doing your job! Finally, demand more by providing more. This is crucial to get amazing team results. If you don’t demand much from your team, it is unlikely you will get anywhere near goals set, let alone smash them. I share 7 example practical actions that you can put into practice quickly to balance demanding more from your team, so you get the best team performance possible. If you have any questions on “Get Amazing Team Results: Balance Being Helpful With Being Demanding”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.training 

Be fair not nice when leading teams and you will effortlessly be a lot more popular and a lot more effective in your job. Getting the balance right is not always easy. You can’t be too nice. You also can’t be a tyrant. I share critical skills for managing teams effectively, creating connection, building trusting relationships and increasing team performance. --- ResourcesGrab our downloadable booklets and help sheets and access our free webinars. Gain more depth of expertise, build greater confidence and be a better manager quicker. Unlock your potential and lead your team to their best performance.  https://enhance.training/team-and-business-management-resources/ ---  Be fair not nice when leading others. This is one of the critical management skills to learn early. Managers are told for team leadership, that they need to create connections and relationships with their teams. The type of relationship has a direct impact of team performance. I share 10 examples of getting the wrong balance that stops effective team management. Learning what is not good is just as important as learning what is good. Be fair not nice when managing others. Next are six actions to create trusting manager-employee relationships. Building good relationships are essential management skills in business. Be friendly not nice to maintain your authority and the respect others show towards you. Build strong relationships with the team and between team members and you foster teamwork, co-ordination, trust, communication, collaboration, problem solving and more. It is an amazing feeling to be responsible for transforming a quiet caution team into a lively banter filled environment with great teamwork and high levels of motivation. Lastly, I go through 10 example behaviours for how to be nice but not too nice. Each of these behaviours are brilliant actions to take at any point and will help you build a good team environment, encourage your team to work hard and smartly, and to value the work that you do for the team. These behaviours translate into increasing team performance which is great for any manager at any level to be responsible for. If you have any questions on “Be Fair Not Nice When Leading Teams + 10 Team Performance Tactics”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.training 

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