Tom had been working on a major project for two weeks, carrying his laptop between his home and the office and putting in countless hours of overtime. The report he was working on was likely the most important of his career thus far – his boss had never assigned him and his team a project of such magnitude before this one.

One morning Tom walked into the office, set up his laptop, and walked away to get a cup of coffee. He was starting to feel the pressure of the looming deadline and had begun to become frustrated with the slow pace some of his teammates were taking with their contributions to the research. As he was settling back into the office to begin working, a member of his team came in and sat across from him at his desk. They began discussing files and the team member reached across to grab and handful of relevant papers. On his way back across the desk, he accidentally knocked over Tom’s cup of coffee – the one he had placed just a little too close to the laptop.

After a frozen moment of terror, both men watched as the coffee settled into the small keyboard, working its way into the computer’s mainframe. There was an ugly grinding sound before the computer halted to a stop and the screen went completely blank. Tom’s project was destroyed – no one would be able to recover the lost document in time.

Tom went absolutely crazy. He couldn’t think straight, began yelling obscenities, and blamed the poor soul on the other side of the desk for his misfortune. His behavior escalated until he had progressed from anger to outright rage. It took three members of upper management to calm him down.

Tom was understandably upset, but was his rage justified? It was not. There is never a good reason for behaving in an inappropriate manner at work. Tom was devastated because he was in a new management position, was coordinating his first project, and felt as though he had just failed.

If Tom had remained calm and collect, he could have mourned his first draft and then collected his team for a meeting to determine the quickest and most effective way of recreating the work that had been done thus far. Each member of his team had a role in the process and, with a little bit of work, what he had done so far could have been duplicated. Instead, he ignored his feelings of frustration until he was pushed over the edge by a single incident. This is a terrible example of anger management.

My example about Tom’s situation is a slight exaggeration. Most people won’t react quite as harshly when they lose their tempers, but their anger will still be blinding. Anger is a natural human response to a bad situation, but you can control your anger and choose your own reaction.

How will you choose to respond?

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

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

Workplace diversity comes in many forms. One such issue you’re likely to encounter at least once or twice is the issue of religion in the workplace. In most scenarios, there will be question regarding whether or not your company or organisation will make accommodations for workers of varying faiths.

Take XYZ Corporation, for example. XYZ has three shifts, and employees are rotated monthly so that no one person has to spend too much time on the late shift or early morning shift. A problem arose when Joe, who had thus far only worked the early or mid-day shifts, was suddenly required to work the late shift. What was the problem? He was a strict follower of a certain Jewish sect and needed to be home before dark on Friday evenings. A meeting with his supervisor was held to draw up an effective time management plan. Fortunately, there was another employee who was able to trade shifts with Joe and management was flexible enough to make an exception based on his needs.

We’ve heard of similar stories. In the United States, there was a factory in a town with a heavy Muslim population. Some wanted to stop working during business hours to pray, while others wanted to leave work during the day on Fridays to attend a prayer group. The managers of this organisation, sensitive to the needs of both their company and the community, were able to juggle employee schedules so that everyone had the time they needed without missing extra hours of work.

You may be faced with similar issues at some point during your career. You’ll find men who refuse to work for a woman in a superior position. Others will refuse to adhere to dress codes that they feel conflict with their religious practices. Some employees will stand firm in their beliefs, while others will be more likely to compromise. The question is whether or not you’re prepared to sit down and speak with your employees in order to get a better understanding of where they’re coming from and what they need. Effective management means being sensitive to your work group.

Have you experience something similar to this in the past? If so, what did you do to remedy the situation? I look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

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”