Has your team been having a difficult time lately? Were you extra busy, short staffed, or otherwise strained? As a manager, it’s your job to make sure your team feels motivated and has a positive attitude towards their daily tasks. It’s your job to boost employee morale.

Unfortunately, boosting employee morale isn’t always easy. There’s always someone complaining about something but, in the end, the majority of your team member will appreciate your efforts to be involved in their lives and keep them happy. Here are a few tips for boosting employee morale.

Be Human

You are, first and foremost, a human being. Act like one. Have a little fun, crack a joke, laugh, smile, and let your team members know you are one of them. They’ll like you better for it.

Encourage Input

Do you have a suggestion box where your employees can share creative ideas? If so, do you actually use it or acknowledge submissions? If not, give it a whirl. Let your employees know that you appreciate their ideas, whether you incorporate them into your daily routines or not.  You might even offer a small monthly prize for participating and offering suggestions.

Treat Each Employee as an Individual

Your employees will have better morale, individually, if they feel as though they have a personal career path to follow when they come to work each day. Why not use your next coaching session to help each employee set his or her own long and short term goals and then help them find a way to take the first steps towards meeting them. They’ll feel as though they have a purpose aside from trudging through their 9-5 jobs every day.

Encouragement with Incentives

Offer incentives or goals to your employees each week or month. They don’t have to be elaborate. Have bagels for breakfast on Friday mornings or encourage a group luncheon once a month. Offer a prize for the employee with the highest level or production. Something, anything, they can look forward to will boost morale.

Remember – happy employees are productive employees. What will you do to make their days a little brighter?

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Leadership Development

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

Depression is a very serious issue. More than 10 million people between the ages of 25 and 44 are affected by depression every single year, and many go untreated. What does this mean to you as a manager? It means that at any given time at least one out of every 20 team members you employ may be depressed.

It’s true that some people get “the blues” from time to time but most of them are able to shake their blues off in a day or so. Those who are truly depressed can’t just “shake it off” the way other can. They can’t control the aches in their bodies, the way they are thinking, or the way they act. Before you know it, depression is affecting your employee’s judgement, productivity, and ability to socialize with other team members or clients.

The first thing you need to do is learn to recognize and identify the symptoms of depression. Some of the most common include:

• Sad moods that seem to be persistent
• A decreased energy level or overwhelming sense of fatigue
• Sudden changes in eating habits
• Excessively crying throughout the day
• Trouble concentrating or making clear decisions
• An irritated attitude
• Complaints about lack of sleep
• A sudden change in morale
• Sudden absenteeism
• Increased accidents in the workplace

As a manager, you have to take some sort of action if you identify an employee as becoming depressed. Here are a few things you must remember:

• You aren’t a doctor and you can’t diagnose depression.
• Objectively let your employee know you’ve noticed change and let him know that your organisation has resources available if he needs help
• Learn about depression so you can understand how it impacts life and the workplace
• Hold frequent coaching sessions to try to keep your employee’s performance goals on track

These are just a few of the things you can do if you begin to notice depression in the workplace. First and foremost is the need to make sure your employee gets the help he deserves. In the end, he’ll be glad you reached out to help.

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Development

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

Today’s ever changing economy means one thing – lots of change in the workplace. As a manager, you’ll be responsible for communicating changes within your organisation to your employees but you have a problem. The rumor mill is already running and most of your employees have already gotten themselves caught up in the buzz and may be worried about their jobs. So what can you do to help them stay calm and deal with change on a daily basis?

Explain Why the Organisation is Changing

Employees who understand why things are changing are more likely to accept change without high levels of anxiety. It doesn’t matter if you’re making a small change in procedure, if you plan to move your office location, or if you’re going to be part of a merger. Change is inevitable and the more we know and understand the easier it is to handle – regardless of where we are on the management food chain.

Remain Positive

No matter what type of news you deliver, remain as positive as possible. If you are a lower or mid-level manager you should never, under any circumstances, criticize upper management. The more respect you show for upper management the more respect your employees will show.

Remain Available

Make sure you stay available to your employees as much as possible, adopting an open door policy that will allow them to come to you with their questions or concerns. If your policy suddenly shifts from open-door to closed-door your employees will become nervous and upset and their work patterns will become disruptive.

Communicate with your employees as much as possible. The more information you can give, the better. The more secretive you are, the higher your odds of losing employees as they “jump ship” to find a more stable environment.

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Leadership

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

As a manager it is important for you to not just dictate instructions to your employees but to coach them along the way. Some of your employees will have more self-motivation than others but in the end they’ll all need just a little bit of coaching to help them meet their career goals. Here are a few simple tips to help you open the lines of communication as you work with each of your team members.

5. Find a Reason for Coaching

Don’t coach for the sake of coaching. Make sure you have a clear, concise objective. What are your employee’s career goals, both long term and short? What can you do to help him reach those goals? Without goals, there is no reason to begin coaching.

4. Direct without Leading

As a coach, you should offer advice as to how to reach a goal without actually paving the path for your team members. Give your mentee all of the information he needs to get from point A to point B without actually doign all oof the work for him. Be a support system instead of a crutch.

3. Ask Open Ended Questions

Questions that can be answered with a simple YES or NO won’t get you anywhere. Listen to what your employees are telling you about their goals, aspirations, and setbacks and ask probing questions. Use the answers to help them develop plans for more effectively dealing with similar situations in the future.

2. Remember – You are Human

You are human and, as such, are not a walking encyclopedia. Your trainee may ask you a question that you don’t know the answer to and it is perfectly acceptable to admit that you do not have that answer. Simply let your trainee know that you’ll have the answer for them at your next coaching session.

1. Provide Honest Feedback

Use a few minutes at the end of each coaching session to let your trainee know exactly where you think he or she needs improvement. Ask him or her to assess himself as well. Find out what he is learning and what he is able to apply in the workplace. Make sure he walks out of each coaching session with at least one new piece of information.

Great coaching will lead to great improvements – in both your communication skills and the performance of your overall team!

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management

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

Whether you’re working with a new customer or an existing one you’re going to have to talk about price at least once or twice. The problem, especially today, is that most people are incredibly concerned about their finances and most are looking for way to cut back instead of ways to spend more.

Your first instinct may be to lower your price but that course of action is really going to hurt you more than it will help. First, it tells your customer that your product isn’t really priced correctly to start with. After all, if it were you wouldn’t be able to give a discount. Second, it will leave your customer expecting discounts from you in the future – with every transaction.

You need to convince yourself, first, that the set price for your product is the right price. Then you need to make sure that every member of your sales team is convinced of the same thing!

After you are convinced, you’ll be better able to deal more effectively with your clients but remember the following:

• You have to make eye contact when discussion price.
• You need to ask your customers questions so that you can understand their needs and objections.
• You need to prove to your customer that he’ll get a return on his investment.
• AND you need to accept and move on if a client simply doesn’t want to pay the price you’ve offered.

After all, you want to close good sales – not just every one that walks through your door. A client not willing to pay the price for a good product and good service isn’t one you want to hold on to and, as a manager, you need to learn how to tell the difference!

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training Courses

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