Now that you understand the importance of having a mentoring plan in place it’s time to start building one. In order for any mentoring plan to be successful two things have to happen. First, you employees need to realize they are responsible for their own levels of success. Second, you must have support from upper management in the development and implementation of your plan.

Once you have commitment and support you can start building a mentoring program for each of your employees. You have a choice. You as a manager can do the mentoring work or you can hire a third party who will focus on mentoring full-time. No matter what you choose to do you must make sure your organisation understands the following points:

• Your employees need to be able to clearly identify the paths they want to take in their own careers.
• Your employees must feel like a valuable part of the overall team.
• Your organisation must be ready to spend time on training your employees so that they can reach their individual career goals.
• Your organisation must be willing to look internally when it is time to hire for new positions rather than immediately looking to hire from the outside.
• Your employees must feel as though the company cares about their futures.

Is your organisation willing to make a few changes in both mindset and procedure in order to help foster the growth of your current employees? They should. After all, it costs less to keep an employee than it does to hire a new one. Keep that in mind.

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Manager Training

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

You have a problem.

As a manager, you are responsible for making sure your employees have mentors. The problem you have is that your company may or may not support the mentoring process. It’s a shame, and it’s something you’ll have to deal with.

Last week we spend some time talking about coaching, which is great. But let’s not forget that coaching is completely different from mentoring, which is your ability to help someone grow in their immediate, professional career.

There are several reasons why companies today don’t focus on mentoring:

• Downsizing has increased workloads and people feel as though they simply don’t have the time to devote to mentoring;
• Upper management doesn’t understand that there really is a ROI when it comes to taking the time out to mentor others;
• Managers aren’t properly trained as to how to become good mentors, likely because they haven’t received mentoring themselves; and
• Some employers find mentoring useless because they think their employees will likely move on to another position or company eventually anyway.

I personally think these are terrible reasons to avoid mentoring. They all reflect one problem - a huge lack of committment to your company, to yourself, and to your employees. The same goes for your employees - they lack a committement to themselves. as well.

The truth is that you need to find the time and/or money for mentoring, whether you realize it or not. The benefits far outweigh the risks any day. And not having a mentoring program could prove detrimental to your team and your company as a whole.

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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

In the past we’ve talked about workplace safety but from the standpoint of employee burnout and, more recently, the importance of having a plan if your organisation is affected by a pandemic like the H1N1 virus. Today, though, I’d like to take a step back and look at workplace safety from a more general viewpoint.

You may think that the fact you work in an office exempts you from workplace safety. You are, after all, simply sitting at a desk all day, right? Wrong. Employees trip and fall, burn themselves in the kitchen, and even suffer from health issues while at work. So what can you do to ensure you workplace is safe for everyone all of the time?

5. Keep Your Work Areas Clean

Whether you work in an office or in a warehouse it’s important to always keep your work area clean. Strewn garbage, unattended wires, and boxes piled floor to ceiling can create dangerous hazards for those who need to move around them.

4. Give Clear Instructions

Workplace safety is, as a manager, partly your responsibility. If you don’t give your employees clear instructions about what they need to do they may do the wrong thing, or put together an incorrect set of pieces of information - causing danger to themselves and others.

3. Show You Care

So you’re running on a deadline but the printer is smoking or an important machine is making a terrible grinding noise. Do you push through and hope the machines last or do you shut them down to avoid a potential safety hazard? Hopefully you show your employees that you care about them more than deadlines by shutting the machines down.

2. Ensure Everyone is Properly Trained

One of the best ways to avoid an accident is to ensure everyone on your team is properly trained. A new or inexperienced employee can easily make a mistake that a seasoned veteran might take for granted. Offer the right amount of training and then make sure new employees are supervised properly until they gain enough experience to ensure total safety.

1. Ditch Workplace Safety Incentives

Workplace safety incentives are some of the silliest things I’ve ever seen. Offering employees incentives to be safe is like saying you expect them to do stupid things and need to bribe them not to. I’m not saying you should punish them for being unsafe but I don’t think they should behonored for doing what they should be doing naturally to begin with.

Are you ready to start the week on a safe note? Good luck!

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Courses

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

In the past we’ve had several conversations about knowledge and how to manage the knowledge you have within your ogranization. We’ve talked about auditing information, storing information, and even making sure it gets back out to those who need it.

Today I want to talk about what I consider the four fundamental priniciples of knowledge management. They include capturing knowledge, validating knowledge, accessing knowledge, and then scaling that knowledge down. What do I mean?

The idea of capturing knowledge is pretty simple - in theory, anyway. Capturing knowledge is the process by which you determine what knowledge is available and then bring it together into some form of documentation. Knowledge that isn’t documented can’t be shared or used.

After you capture knowledge you have to validate it. Validating knowledge is about ensuring that the information you have is accurate and relevant. It won’t do you any good to have incorrect facts in your database and it’s just as bad to have completely outdated information as well.

After you capture and validate the knowledge within your organisation you have to create a way that makes it easy for everyone to access the pieces they need at any given time. They shouldn’t have to sort through an entire database. It needst to be indexed so that it can be easily found and used.

Scaling information is the process of making the information you have into something usable regardless of the geographic location of your business. If you are part of an international business, for example, your employees in New York City and Tokyo may need to access the same database. An employee in NYC can’t use one method of capturing, validating, and accessing if an employee in Tokyo is doing something different. If that happens, you’ll end up with a database of jumbled information.

How do your knowledge databases look right now. Could they use some improvement?

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training Course

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

I hope you took a few minutes over the past couple of days to think about some of the coaching myths we covered on Monday. I think that after a while you’ll see how important it is to have a professional or executive coach in your life, especially if you want to continue to climb up the corporate ladder. Today I’m going to share 5 more myths and, hopefully, you’ll undertand what I’ve been trying to say.

5. I don’t need more feedback.

We all get feedback from our managers, peers, and even subordinates. The problem is that they aren’t giving you neutral feedback. They’re giving you feedback based on their personal expereriences with you and they can’t take a step back and look at you objectively. They’re also less likely to let you know if they think your behaviours or attitudes are inappropriate. A coach will give you honest feedback, whether you like it or not.

4. Coaching relationships are short term experiences.

On the contrary, if you seek a professional coach you should seek to build a long-term relationship. The cycle of growth and development never really ends and, as such, you’ll always need a coach to help you reevaluate your goals and objectives and make changes to your plans. Your goals will determine how long you need a coach.

3. I have a mentor. I don’t need another one.

Having a mentor is great but mentors and coaches aren’t the same thing. Mentors are usually people within the same industry you are in - with a focus on helping you learn the specific ropes of that industry so that you can build your career. Coaches, on the other hand, may have skills that complement yours - skills you need to learn that have nothing to do with your industry in general. Mentors focus on work. Coaches focus on you.

2. I’m not coachable.

Everyone who wants to be coached is coachable. It’s true that there are a few people who simply can’t be coached but it’s not for lack of trying. Their attitudes and behaviours simply make it impossible. You can’t expect a coach to do all of the work for you. Your coach won’t even be able to motivate you if you don’t want to be motivated. There are even days when the most coachable people simply can’t be coached. You’ll get over it - and you will learn.

1. Coaching forces people to form dependencies.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Working with a coach will not make you dependent upon him. Your coach is more likely to help you learn to be self-confident than he is to allow you to form a dependancy.

Stop making excuses about why coaching won’t work for you and start reconsidering your options. Having a coach in your life is likely to help you foster your career - and before you know it you’ll be a better manager with a promising future!

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Leadership Training

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