Before you can effectively manage change within your organisation you must realise that there several different categories of change. The three main types include:

• Developmental change
• Transitional change
• Transformational change

Developmental change applies to times in which you recognize a situation that doesn’t need to be eradicated completely but needs improvement. Perhaps your marketing team isn’t completing certain tasks on time or your human resources department needs to find a better way to monitor employee hours. Sometimes you can find the right answer by making a simple modification that gives you the change you desire with little impact on the entire workforce.

Transitional changes occur when you are attempting to introduce a new phase to the organisation. You may be adding a new department or procedure or you may be doing something as simple (or complex) as moving your organisation to a new building. During these types of change it is important to keep a tight reign on your employees for a specified and controlled period of time.

Transformational changes are often the result of transitional change. Somtimes moving to a new phase in your organisation’s growth presents the need for new policies and procedures. Often times these needs appear very suddenly, so you’ll need to be on guard during transition so that you can react quickly if the need should arise.

What type of change do you see occuring within your organisation regularly? Are you constantly undergoing some sort of change or do things remain stable? Can you identify an areas in which change is inevitable?

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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

You’ll find that the way you deal with multiculturalism and diversity within your workplace as an individual may be different than your organisation handles it as a whole. You, however, will have the unique opportunity to work directly with each of your employees and your sensitivity to their individual needs is paramount. So what are some of the things you’ll need to do as an individual to show your support?

Start by understanding. It’s important to understand that “equal opportunity” does not mean that every single person is the same, wants to be treated the same, or should be treated the same. They should have the same opportunities, but there are fundamental differences between how people from different cultural groups live their lives and these need to be recognized as well. Think out of the box and be open to new experiences.

Be empathatic towards your new employees. You may feel uncomfortable working with a new person – whether he or she is of the opposite gender or comes from a different ethnic background than you’re used to dealing with. As awkward as you may feel, remember that he or she probably feels exactly the same way. You don’t know how to treat each other, so simply taking the time to help each other work through differences will make a huge difference.

Be as tolerant as possible. You may or may not agree with some of the things your employees do or believe in, but you do not have the right to judge them or hold them back. You don’t have to like their personal beliefs or systems, but you do need to learn how to work with them and not show your distaste. Your personal beliefs should not impact your professional performance.

As always, don’t forget to communicate. The more willing you are to communicate the better. Make sure your employees know they can come to you with their thoughts and concerns and make sure you professional express yours as well. You won’t be able to work with anyone you can’t learn to speak to. If you aren’t able to express that a person’s actions or words are inappropriate they’ll only continue until you begin to resent him or her or, in some cases, a more difficult situation develops.

These are some of the ways you can look at workplace diversity on an individual managerial level. Next time we’ll talk about some of the things organisations can do as a whole to show their support. Until then, have a great weekend!

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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

Being able to effectively manage the performance of your employees or team members rests largely in part on your ability to communicate effectively. Your team members need to know exactly how they will be judged so that they can set an individual goal based on those requirements while striving to achieve the standards you’ve set forth.

Simply put, you need to design and implement a definable performance standard. In most cases this means setting minimums for both productivity and levels of quality.

Setting minimum productivity levels means telling your employees that they must complete a certain amount of work throughout the course of any given day, week, or month. This may mean researching a set number of reports, making a specific number of sales or phone calls, or producing a set number of widgets. Productivity levels can be easily measured.

Measuring the quality of someone’s work is not quite as simple. You may have to create limits regarding the number of errors a person can make within a set period of time, the number of (justifiable) complaints management can receive about a customer service representative before corrective action is taken, or even the number of times an employee has failed to meet established performance standards.

I usually take the time to outline expected performance standards on an employee’s first day at work or as part of the team. I stress that I recognize it will take time to meet these standards, especially as he or she is learning their new job function, but that he will be expected to be able to meet these standards within a certain period of time.

No one person is perfect and everyone is going to make a mistake at some point. You may even find a need to adjust the standards you have set based on trial and error. However, without setting standards by which we can manage performance we will not be able to monitor our teams in order to encourage growth.

What standards have you set for your team and how often, if ever, have you had to adjust them?

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

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