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.  ---  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/  ---   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 support@enhance.training 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 support@enhance.training 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 support@enhance.training 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 support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.  Jess Coles Enhance.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 Coles Enhance.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 support@enhance.training and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.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 support@enhance.training and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.training

Resolving organisational conflict makes everyone’s lives better, more enjoyable and more productive plus it adds significant profit onto the business I 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 support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.  Jess Coles Enhance.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 support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.  Jess Coles Enhance.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 support@enhance.training 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 support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.  Jess Coles  Enhance.training 

How great leaders hold employees accountable is an approach, a process and set of actions that works together to create accountability in individuals and teams.  I share 5 interdependent actions essential for creating a culture of accountability in teams. ---  ---  How great managers hold employees accountable starts with creating and maintaining really clear goals and expectations at a team and individual level. Know exactly what is expected is essential in building accountability in teams. I share tips on how to communicate verbally, non-verbally and writing to set really clear expectations and goals your team pays attention to and owns.  Next in creating a culture of accountability in teams, build team capability. If staff members don’t know how to reach a goal, they are unlikely to reach that goal. Ensure they have the knowledge, skills and resources to be able to achieve goals – a key part of how to hold team members accountable. Next in how to make my team members more accountable, create a lot of visibility of progress towards goals. Clear goals, objective measurement of progress and visibility is great in creating accountability. Work out how you track progress against team and individual goals and share this progress.  How great leaders hold staff accountable includes undertaking a lot of follow-up and providing a lot of feedback. Both activities provide a lot of guidance and support and well as communicating exactly where each employee stands.  Finally, in holding employees accountable, create clear consequences for missing goals and expectations and for beating goals and expectations. If there are no consequences for either, there will be little accountability.  How to hold your team accountable requires the continuous application of all 5 elements. Miss one and your team and team members will not be nearly as accountable. Don’t let accountability slip through the cracks.  If you have any questions on “How Great Leaders Hold Employees Accountable – Use 5 Essential Actions” please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.training

5 steps to ask for your next promotion at work takes you through how to prepare to make asking your boss almost a formality. Asking for a promotion is daunting enough. Learn exactly how to prepare so you are confident and much more likely to get a yes. ---  ---  Before you work out how to ask for a promotion at work, make yourself ready to be promoted. Think about the skills and experience you need to demonstrate for the role you want to be promoted into.  How do you compare right now? Work out your gaps and close them before going for a promotion at work. I share 5 methods for working the gaps out. Getting promoted at work is showing you can do a lot of the role before you ask for your next promotion. Think about the tasks, activities and responsibilities of the role and the level at which you need to operate at. Work out how you are going to demonstrate this - key steps to get your next promotion at work. Make yourself ready for a promotion at work! Next, build your list of achievements and how much value (revenue and profit) you add to your business. This is really important for your conversation with your boss and your bosses conversations with others deciding on promotions. Achievements that make you stand out really help with promotion at work How to ask for a promotion at work includes preparing for objections. There will be objections: there is not a role available, you are not ready yet, we don’t have budget etc. These can all be big blockers to your next promotion at work. I share tips on how to prepare and overcome objections to your promotion.  When to ask for a promotion is also important. There is never a perfect time. There are plenty of bad times to avoid which I go through. Choose a good time and book a meeting in with your boss and ask for that promotion.  Good luck! If you have any questions on “5 Steps To Ask For Your Next Promotion At Work”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.training

Preparing for your first board meeting is daunting. It doesn’t matter if you are a new director or if you are attending the first meeting of the board of directors in a new company.  I am taking you through 4 key actions you should take in preparing for a board meeting to make sure you create the right impression and allow you to contribute fully. ---  --- How to prepare for board meetings starts with be really clear about what you are bringing to the board team. You will have skills, experience and knowledge that other board members don’t have. To prepare for you first board meeting think through how your differences are can be used in the board meeting to best effect.  Next, speak to the chairman of the board (or who leads the meetings) and find out what they expect from you during the board meeting.  Second, I share 4 key areas of background preparation for a board of directors meeting that will increase your confidence and give you good insights to share in the board. You will also be a lot more confident asking questions and challenging other board members. A great way to prepare for a meeting with the other directors. Third, build relationships or re-calibrate relationships (if internally promoted) before attending your first board meeting. I share tips on how best to do this. Knowing your peers on a professional and personal level is another key step in preparing for board meetings.  Fourth, for how to prepare for a board meeting, plan out how you will contribute to each agenda point in the meeting. Prepare well and you can demonstrate your strong communication skills and leadership skills to peers. Setting the right impression will make working with peers a lot easier, more productive and more enjoyable.  If you have any questions on “Preparing For Your First Board Meeting – 4 Actions For A Knockout Performance”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.training

To go from manager into your first executive level position is a big jump up in responsibility, pressure, influence and impact on the business you work for. Getting your first executive level position requires you to operate in a different way from your peers.  I share 6 key areas to focus on to get your first executive position, to enable you to go from manager to leader.  ---  To book a call in to discuss a coaching programme with me to land your first executive level position or to make a bigger impact in your first six months of a new executive role, click on this link https://bit.ly/40y8gLW  ---  In executive level positions, you are part of the team running the business. You will need to put the company first and think at a strategic level. When getting your first executive level job do your homework so you can demonstrate you can and do think at a strategic level. I share 5 areas you should focus on to build your knowledge and confidence.  Getting your first executive level role is much easier when you focus all the activities and actions that generate better profitability for the company. Profitability is the comprehensive measure of performance and a great way to demonstrate all the value you are adding to get promoted from manager to director.  Next, in getting your first executive level role, it is essential you get the best from the teams you manage. The higher you go, the more you have to work through others. I share 8 different ways to encourage more from your team.  As senior manager, show you are able to deliver great results when working on cross functional projects for getting your first board director role. Executive level positions have to work across all departments and manage conflicting goals to get the best results for the company. This demonstrates your leadership skills and is great leadership development.  For how to become an executive spend a significant amount of your time building good relationships with as many colleagues and co-workers as practical. This increases your influence and enables you to deliver a lot more in your role. Essential skills to go from manager to leader.  Finally, for your career development, it is essential that you build good relationships with the current executive team. Working hard and delivering amazing results is not enough. The executive team want to know about you, if you will fit in with their group and if they will enjoy working alongside you.  I share tips for how to create opportunities to build your relationships with the current executive team.  If you have any questions on “Go From Manager to Leader: Getting Your First Executive Level Position”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.  Jess Coles Enhance.training

I share 6 brilliant ways to encourage more teamwork at work. Most of us work in jobs where we depend on others to enable us to do our jobs well.  Most company leaders and managers want more teamwork in the workplace because they know the company will be a lot better off. Learn more about how to create and encourage teamwork at work with any team. ---  ---  The first of the ways to increase teamwork is to set clear team goals. This is standard advice, yet I coach a lot of managers that don’t set clear goals or they set them and then forget about them. I explain methods to set and remind the team of the team goals for how to make your team work better. The second of my tips for effective teamwork is to think of ways to teach teamwork to your team. Great teamwork can absolutely be demonstrated to a team by you to improve their teamwork skills and improve teamwork and collaboration in the workplace. Third, effective teamwork in the workplace needs clear responsibilities and accountabilities throughout the team. Work to give everyone a clear role and activities and projects. Spend time with individuals to ensure they understand exactly what they need to do and also communicate this to the team.  Fourth, for how to build teamwork in the workplace, work on building trust between team members and yourself and between team members. Without trust, relationships do not strengthen, nor does reliance on each other. There are different types of trust so work on building personal and competence based trust.  Fifth, encourage lots of open and honest communication between all members in the team. This is one of the essential ways to coach teamwork and to get each team member focused on helping their colleagues.  Finally, align the personal rewards that you offer to team members with how well they personally work within the team. I share 6 different ways to reward team members so do stay for this.  If you have any questions on “6 Brilliant Ways to Encourage More Teamwork – 6 Ways to Teach Teamwork”, please leave a comment below and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.training  

We all want to build great relationships at work because great relationships make work enjoyable and enable you to deliver a lot more in your role. Quickly build great relationships at work and you get a ton of benefits personally and you help your team just a much.  I share 5 ways quickly build great relationships at work. These principles and actions also keep your relationships strong year after year. ---  ---  Relationship building starts with making yourself a nice person to work with. Be friendly, smile, be positive etc – these are things that most people do already. I share 6 traits of those that build great relationships with coworkers. We should all work at improving these to improve workplace relationships. Next, think about how you quickly build great work relationships. Spending time with the person face to face is the best way. I explain exactly why and give you tips for this. Taking these steps needs a bit more time and effort with the benefits gained far outweighing this investment.  Another way to quickly build strong relationships is to seek to proactively help co-workers who reciprocate. When you help most people do a better job, get resources they need or help them solve a problem, they will be much more willing to help you in return. When you help others, you also help build good trusting relationships – a double benefit. Help others were you can for building relationships at work.  Next for how to build relationships at work always deliver what you say you will. The most important part of this is setting and managing expectations so that you don’t let others down. Of course you need to put in the work too.  Finally, work on building personal relationships as well as professional relationships. It is all the personal stuff that creates strong connections and shared interests. Connections and feeling the other person is interested in us and gets us are really important parts of building great relationships.  If you have any questions on “5 Ways Quickly Build Great Relationships at Work”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.  Jess Coles Enhance.training

Knowing how to praise staff at work and being able to show your appreciation to your team is  brilliant to build team motivation, a positive culture and help increase team performance. Everyone wants to be appreciated and valued. Learn exactly how to praise employees at work to maximise motivation and action. ---  Course Links To learn exactly how to give really useful positive and corrective feedback to team members without upsetting and to maximise the chances of action, take a look at our course on giving powerful feedback https://enhance.training/lp/how-to-give-powerful-feedback-usp007/ ---  Learning how to compliment staff at work and regularly showing employee appreciation with massively help you increase employee engagement. Praising staff at work by saying “Good job” and “Well done” is a great start.  This type of general praise in not memorable and does not inspire repeat action nearly as much as more considered praise. Firstly, praising staff is great for you as a manager. Giving praise creates positive reinforcement and action. Praise demonstrates your appreciation and that you value them. Happier, motivated teams are much more likely to work harder. Use your praise to guide your team to work smarter. Use praise as employee recognition and for how to show your appreciation. The more you appreciation your team members, the more they are likely to appreciate you. To give praise intelligently, you need to be on the lookout for good work, good actions and events to give praise about. I explain what type of actions you should be looking for and what to praise and what not to praise. Learn how to show appreciation at work while reinforcing your expectations. To make your praise standout, remain memorable and maximise the chances of repeat action, make your praise specific. I explain exactly how to do this. Learn how to show employee appreciation and get more action. Finally, we cover where to give praise and how to use private and public praise to motivate team members and the team overall. Learning how to give intelligent praise are great leadership skills. If you have any questions on “How to praise staff at work – show your appreciation to your team”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.  Jess Coles Enhance.training

How to boost your productivity as a manager is different because your team’s productivity is more important, and you have a big influence over that productivity.  I share 4 winning productivity tips for managers. These are the best actions you can take for how to be more productive at work as a manager.  ----  ---- To boost your productivity at work an obvious tip is to put time and effort into planning and organising. To boost your productivity as a manager, what is a lot less obvious is what do you plan and organise, plus what less obvious steps do you take to be great at this. I share 4 actions every manager should be taking every day to increase manager productivity at work.  Second, investing the time into managing expectations and saying no creates a huge amount of time for you and your team. Vital for time management at work. Increasing productivity at work with your team and to boost your productivity working on the highest value tasks and projects is a must. Third, for how to increase your productivity at work as a manager, intelligently delegate and leverage your team. Once you are organising and planning, you can start intelligently delegating – matching the best skills and experience available to the tasks, activities and problems you delegate. From personal experience, this alone will easily boost productivity 10%+ because people work faster and better doing tasks that play to their strengths and interests.  I share 5 other key ways to leverage your team to boost productivity at work. Fourth, one of the best productivity tips for managers is to invest time in relationships and reciprocity. Very few people can do their job well without the help of other people. For managers the help of other people is essential to even do an okay job. The better your relationships with others, the more productive you will be at work. You spend less time persuading, explaining and waiting for help. As a result you get a lot more done in same timeframe.  If you have any questions on “Productivity Tips for Managers – 4 Winning Actions to Take”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you. Jess Coles Enhance.training

In my experience, there are 4 main reasons that staff perform badly. To learn how to handle poor performers and to be a lot more successful in managing teams, the actions you take should address each of these reasons. Remove poor performance from your team fairly, quickly and cheaply. ---  ---  Most workplaces are so busy with so many initiatives happening at any given time, it is really easy for team members to be unsure of what exactly they should be focusing on. An equal number of employees receive very confusing or contradictory messages from bosses about what is expected of them.  Too few managers spend enough time communicating to their teams exactly what they expect of their employees and reinforcing those expectations with their own decisions, actions and behaviours. Spend more time that you think you need communicating goals and expectations to both the team and individuals. Another of the reasons staff perform poorly is they don’t know or accept they are under performing. 43% of managers find giving corrective feedback to employees stressful and an unpleasant experience (2700+ leaders surveyed). I also know from personal experience that really good managers provide feedback all the time – every single day.  Providing useful specific feedback means that every staff member knows exactly what their boss thinks of their performance and why. This reduces the reasons why employees perform poorly. Staff are grateful for their bosses feedback, even when they are below expectations. A key part of performance management is to make sure your team know exactly what they are doing well and not so well, week in week out.  Another of the reasons why employees perform badly is that employees don’t know how to improve what they do. Ideally staff would be good at self-learning and good at motivating themselves to improve and you would have good employee performance. A key action when managing poor performing employees is to teach them exactly what they need to do to improve. If staff don’t really know exactly how to improve, this could be why you have poor performing employees. Finally, on of the reasons why you have poor performing employees might be they don’t want to perform better. There are so many reasons that drive anger and frustration that lead to lack of will to do better as well as a multitude of character flaws that can also stop an individual improving. An important action when managing poor performance at work is to find out why a person doesn’t want to improve. When you know what the problem is, you have a much better chance of improving the situation.  If you have any questions on “Reasons Staff Perform Badly – How To Handle Poor Performers”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.  Jess Coles Enhance.training