I’ve learned a new word. Hyperopia is, simply put, the fancy medical term used to refer to farsightedness.

What does farsightedness have to do with your career as a manager?

It all has to do with work/life balance.

From an economic standpoint, hyeropia is the failure of an individual to make a long-term estimate about the benefits of the work he is doing. In most cases, we believe that the future benefit will be greater than it actually is, and, as a result, we opt to work during times we should be relaxing or spending time witho ur families.

There was an article in Harvard Magazine, in the September-October 2009 issue. In the article, researchers surveyed a group of individuals about the choices they had made in business, and they found something incredibly interesting. If they asked someone if work was more important than leisure time right after a person had to make a decision about that time, they’d choose work. The longer it had been since a pivotal decision making point, the more people felt as though they should have taken some time for themselves.

Hindsight is 20/20, right?

My point is that you, as a manager, need to find great work/life balance. You need to really think about whether or not working overtime is going to have a huge impact on your future – or whether or not you’d rather spend time watching your kids grow up – or preventing illness from overwork.

The choice is up to you.

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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”

We’ve spoken several times about how important it is to build a great team. As managers we spend a lot of time focused on building a team and working as a team but we sometimes forget to step back and take a look at how our team members feel about being a part of the team – as part of a team in genearal and, more important, as part of our teams specifically.

So what areas of team building should you really be looking at in order to ensure both the happiness of your team members and the group’s overall success? Here are a few concepts to get you started…

Do your team members have clear goals and expectations? In short, has upper management given you clear directions and have you conveyed those directions clearly to your team? Your team needs to know why it exists, what it’s goals are, and what it’s limitations are (financially, chronologically, etc.) in achieving those goals.

Are your team members committed to the task at hand? Do they really want to be on your team or do they feel forced to participate? Will they be rewarded or recognized for their efforts? If the entire group isn’t committed the odds of you completing a successful project instantly drop.

Has the team created its own mission statement or charter? The team needs to work together to outline exactly what its goals will be given the task at hand. Upper management needs to support the team in its efforts to set those goals. Do they have clear goals set within a reasonable timeframe?

Do your team members understand the concept of collaboration? Are they all working together as a team or is one person (or group of people) making all of the decisions and telling everyone else what to do? Are they working together respectfully? Are they resolving conflicts peacefully? Are they all working towards the same goals?

Are the teams coordinated properly? Is your team working independently or are there several other teams working on tasks that will ultimately come together to form one large project? If they are working together, is upper management coordinating the teams properly so that the process flows smoothly? Will everyone complete their share of the project on time – and will all the pieces fit together properly?

If any one of these aspects is falling short, your team members will begin to feel as though they’re not really a part of a team. The happier they are in their work, and the more they feel like a part of a team, the better they’ll ultimately perform!

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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

It takes time to develop a good team. As a manager you’ll find that once you have a team of great employees you’ll need to learn how to balance their skills. For example, some are better at building personal client relationships while others are better at doing the technical aspects of their jobs.

Once you develop a strong team you’re going to have to take a step back to look at the way your team members interact with your customers. From there, you’ll need to develop a strong customer service plan. A good customer service plan involves day to day interactions, retention, and future development but before you can dive into the details you need to work on something a bit more generalised – your main customer service promises.

My research has led me to four main promises every good customer service team should be able to keep. They are as follows:

• A good customer service team has the ability to attract good customers – the kind they want- and win them over;
• A good customer service team has the skills necessary to convince those customers to remain loyal and stay with them;
• A good customer service team has a strong brand that emphasizes the value of good customer relationships; and
• A good customer service team always has a positive attitude when it comes to client relationships.

How does your team rate when it comes to fulfilling these promises? Are you able to keep these promises or are there things you can or should change in order to build better relationships?

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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

Now that we’re a bit more familiar with the knowledge management cycle and some of its key factors I’d like to take a few minutes today to discuss the importance of conducting a knowledge audit. A knowledge audit is the process through which you take an inventory of the actual knowledge stored within your organisation and how it is used.

The knowledge audit is incredibly important for a number of reasons. It allows you to identify some of the strengths and weaknesses associated with your organisation’s overall level of progress and method of storage. The following are six signifcant outcomes an audit will provide:

• First, you’ll be able to identify areas in which you either have too much or not enough information;
• You’ll be able to identify how good your organisation is at keeping up with current events and then updating its resources with the most up to date knowledge;
• Your audit will tell you how often your employees or team members are making use of information that is outdated;
• An audit will usually help you to identify areas in which people are holding on to valuable information that should otherwise be archived and shared with the rest of the organisation;
• Your audit process will help you to identify places where people are reinventing the wheel, or duplicating each other’s work, because they don’t all have access to the same knowledge; and
• You will be able to identify resources you may not have known you had available to you, including old pros and those who are experts in certain areas.

The conduction of a knowledge audit is essential to the success of your business. It is imperative that you keep your resources as up to date as possible so that your potential customers see you as a valuable source of information – and want to do business with you instead of your competition!

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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