Something we don’t necessarily talk about enough is your level of interpersonal skills. Your interpersonal skills dictate your ability to communicate and deal with other individuals on a regular basis. If you lack interpersonal skills you may find yourself labeled as difficult to communicate with, stubborn, aloof, or any of a number of negative descriptions.

In order to develop great interpersonal skills you need to focus on four main qualities. These can be summarised easily by remembering the STAR acronym.

• S = Sensitivity. You need to be aware of the different needs of each of the people on your team. No two people are alike, and each will need to be treated differently.
• T = Tolerance. Not everyone you work with will have the same beliefs. You need, especially as a manager, to be able to set aside your own personal beliefs so that you can objectively work with and understand the beliefs of your employees. Tolerance applies not only to cultural and religious beliefs but to individual work ethic as well (within reason, of course).
• A = Assertion. You’re the manager. You’re in charge. You have the final say. You don’t have to be arrogant or rude to get your point across but if you see something about to go wrong you do need to have the guts to stand up for yourself and your ideas.
• R = Restraint. We all have times where we want to say or do something inappropriate. You need to have the presence of mind to stop and think before speaking or taking action. If you need help, go back and brush up on some of your anger management tactics.

Get all four of these factors under control and you’re bound to build beautiful relationships with your team members and fellow managers. Let one slip and you may just find you aren’t necessarily a favourite within your office.

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training Courses

Click below for a:
Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”<-->

As a manager or trainer you have a great deal of responsibility when it comes to quality control within your organisation – both as it applies to your product and as it applies to your customer service team. As such, it’s important to recognise that a large majority of the errors that occur within your organisation go unreported and if they are not caught early you may have a rather large problem on your hands when they finally are uncovered.

So why aren’t those errors being reported? There are really two main reasons.

First of all, there are not very many people who care enough about their organisation, or anyone else’s organisation, to take the time to report an error that could be easily corrected. It’s a little bit sad, isn’t it? The average person simply won’t take a few minutes to pick up the phone, walk down to your office, or shoot you a quick email. They will see the error, acknowledge the error, walk away from the error, and forget about it.

The second reason is because the individual who catches the error feels it is insignificant OR feels that if he is the person to bring it to your attention he will be blamed and/or punished. These individuals feels it’s easier and, in some cases, safer to keep their mouths shut and let the errors continue in order to avoid unwarranted blame. Though I must add that if you suspect this is the reason your employees don’t point out errors you should really take a step back and review your management skills. Your employees should never be afraid to approach you, especially if they’re doing so in order to point out a problem that may have a negative impact on your team’s overall performance.

So what’s the resolution? It’s really up to you but you need to make sure your employees know they can approach you at any time without fear of retribution. The earlier an error is identified the less it will cost you (in both time and money).

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

O’Dell and Grayson describe knowledge management as follows:

“A conscious strategy of getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time and helping people share and put information into action in ways that strive to improve organisational performance.”

I believe that we often take knowledge management for granted. We know what we know and, in many cases, aren’t really acutely aware of exactly how much knowledge we do have. It’s up to you as a manager to familiarise yourself with the knowledge management cycle so that you always know where the right knowledge can be obtained in order to deal with any given situation.

The knowledge management cycle consists of four main features:

• The creation of knowledge – through acquisition or research;
• The adoption of knowledge – knowing the knowledge exists and determining what to do with it;
• The distribution of knowledge – sharing the knowledge you’ve obtained with the appropriate parties; and
• The review and revision of knowledge – reviewing your knowledge base regularly to weed out information that is no longer relevant while adding new information.

You’re in charge of the knowledge management cycle. It’s your responsibility to make sure that everyone on your team has access to the knowledge or information he or she needs to succeed.

Today I’d like you to take a step back and think about the vast amounts of knowledge you have available to you. What members of your team have specific knowledge-based assets? What members need help gaining access to additional tools? Is there anything you can do to enhance their work experiences and, in turn, the overall performance of your team?

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Manager Training

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

You have your work cut out for you as a trainer. Truth be told, you can pour hours of your life into preparing a training session but the work you do will be rendered useless if you find you are part of an organisation that doesn’t really foster the development of its employees.

Before you plan your next training session, consider the four main developmental blocks. They are:

• Unrewarding organisations. Does your organisation encourage employees to obtain training and/or reward them for seeking it out? Are employees motivated to seek further education?
• Difficult line managers. Upper management may require additional training, but sometimes middle and lower management finds it difficult to let employees off the hook for for the time needed to actually obtain that training. Through not fault of your own you suddenly have employees who can’t meet their educational goals because their managers simply won’t let them.
• Passive participants. In some cases the employees themselves really don’t care about receiving additional training. They come to work to do their jobs, collect a paycheck, and go home. This may work for them but in the grand scheme of things can prove detrimental to the overall goals of your organisation.
• Trainers who can’t promote development. It’s one thing to give a training seminar, but a completely different thing to teach attendees how to use the skills they’ve learned when they return to their offices. I’ve actually been to training seminars in which the presenter has followed people back to their desks to help them experiment with new software programs or to show them how to incorporate new skills. You can’t just drop information in a person’s lap and expect him to know what to do with it.

As a trainer it’s your responsibility to identify these blocks and find ways to work around them. Communicate with all levels of management and with every employee to ensure your organisation’s training requirements are clear. There’s no reason for anyone to be left in the dark with it comes to continuing education.

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

Today I’d like to focus a little bit on customer service. As a manager, it’s your responsibility to ensure your team is providing the best customer service possible, but at the same time it is very difficult to watch every single person you employ 100% of the time. Despite the best efforts of your team you may from time to time lose customers, but whether or not you decide to retain those customers is another story.

If you haven’t already realised it, you’ll learn that there are really three main types of customer that every organisation should strive to have. They are:

• Your current customers. These are the most important because they’ve already made a commitment to you. They’re less likely to leave your organisation if they receive great customer service and, in reality, it costs less to keep them happy than it does to solicit new business.
• Brand new customers. These are the people who are currently purchasing products and services from your competitors. What can you do to show them that your products and services are of a higher quality and would benefit them more than the products they’re currently purchasing?
• Lost customers. Lost customers left your organisation for a reason, but you may be able to win them back. You should, of course, consider this on a case by case basis. You obviously don’t want to try to regain a customer who had a terrible payment history. You should, however, try to regain customers who left because of price, because they thought you didn’t have what they needed, or who may suddenly find the service at the new organisation isn’t as great as they thought it would be.

Make sure your team members understand the three types of customers and how important each is to the growth and success of your organisation. Focus on these three main types of customer and you’re bound to see significant growth in your workgroup!

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Courses

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”