Top Business-Team-Building Tips

Top 10 Questions Managers should ask themselves

…..and their Team every day

Are you a great Manager?  How do you know that you are or are not?

Great Managers show their human side. They are willing and prepared to hear what their team are saying and interested in helping the individual for the benefit of the entire organization

Respected managers ask questions. If you really want to be a great manager ask questions as you meet up with everyone in your organization, in fact, make a point of meeting up with everyone

In order to find out how you, the individual and the entire organization are performing, here are 10 questions to ask

Ask around, your team, other managers, even those who are not directly part of the team, such as cleaners and of course yourself  at the end of the day:

1. What made you mad today?
2. What took too long?
3. What caused complaints today?
4. What was misunderstood today?
5. What cost too much?
6. What was wasted?
7. What was too complicated?
8. What was just plain silly?
9. What job involved too many people?
10. What job involved too many actions?

These questions should get you a fairly accurate understanding of the true running of the business or organization.  Answers to those 10 questions can be used to implement better processes and procedures in a very direct and practical way

4 Signs to identify a Leader over a Manager

“Stop Managing Your Employees and Start Leading Them”…writes Jacob Kache, earlier this year….

…and right he is!

There are generally not many natural-born leaders and when you find yourself put into a leadership position by default, developing leadership skills is one of the most important things for you to learn

We’ve pulled these 4 Signs to identify a leader from a Manager from an article published earlier in the year by Jacob Kache in Businesss2Business

1. Leaders Don’t “Tell,” They “Do”

Simply managing people is not leadership. The major difference is that a manager will want to delegate and work out how the team should be doing things. Leaders will lead by example and do it themselves first. It’s not about rules and regulations, it’s about pulling the team together by giving and being the example

2. Leaders Aren’t Afraid of Change

Great leaders are ready for change when the times or circumstances so demand. Leaders will recognize those times and be ahead of change. It’s in the type of culture a leader creates that change becomes part of progress

3. Leaders Do What Needs to Be Done

Great leaders will know when it’s time to do the right thing over simply going along with others. Tough decisions are made by what is best for all and for the long term. There is no blame but taking on the responsibility for a true leader

4. Leaders Lead People, Managers Manage Affairs

I really like what Jacob wrote for this sign:

Managers know the importance of the job that they do. They realize that they are in charge of making sure that things get done, and producing good results. But leaders recognize that results are brought about by productive workplace, and more specifically, a group of individuals. Each individual on the team, each employee in the company, is a unique person with unique needs, and crucially, unique skills

Definitely something I’ve always experienced and followed

We hope this gives you an insight on the difference between a Manager and a Leader and you can shape yourself to the one you need to show right now

The Hidden Costs of loosing Employees

It is generally known that costs associated with staff turnover are great but do you know where you feel it most?

Here are 5 areas deeply affected by staff leaving and how you can avoid it

1. Less Productivity

How are you going to manage the workload the leaving employee did? By simply putting the tasks on to other employees you may find they are becoming less productive as they have now more to do than they can handle and important work might be left behind – Make sure you’re clear on what will need to be put in place BEFORE an employee leaves you or you dismiss someone

2. More Work than they can handle

If existing employees have to stretch themselves to do more quality may go out the window…attitude is likely to suffer and what is saved in wages for one may become expensive in lost good will and loyalty to the business – Direct extra workload thoughtfully and make sure you give extra praise to those doing more

3. Knowledge lost

Probably a lot of people can do what the lost employee did but….do they have the very specific knowledge, the attitude and care and some unique ways of handling it? Writing code, or selling your product is only one part, it’s also about knowing the people, the traditions, the location of relevant information, what the boss likes and a million other things that come from working for a business for a long period of time – Creating processes can be helpful in this case, with notes on all details

4. The Costs of Training

Whether it’s the cost of sending a new employee to training sessions or for you or your managers to make the time to train someone new…extra time and therefore costs of training. And with new employees learning, someone has to check it gets done right – A very hard to avoid extra cost

5. Cost of Interviewing new potential Employees

If you do this yourself, it’ll eat into your time and cost what you could have achieved otherwise. If you use a recruiting agency then the costs are with that and you may or may not get a suitable new employee the first time

Hang On To Top Employees

The best way to keep your top employees is to know them better than they know themselves. Use this knowledge to create the career of their dreams, and they’ll stick to your company like glue. The new “biz-speak” for this is called Job Sculpting.

The concept of Job Sculpting as defined by career experts, Timothy Butler and James Waldroop, in the Harvard Business Review, is that good people will stay only in jobs that “fit their deeply embedded life interests—that is their long-held emotionally driven passions.”

To adopt this strategy, spend a lot of effort listening to your company stars. For each one of them, try to identify what life interests are dominant with them, and then offer them the assignments that satisfy this interest. It may mean simply adding another assignment to the existing responsibilities, or it may mean switching one set of tasks to another employee. It may even require moving your “star” employee to a different position altogether.

To learn what kind of interests you’re looking and listening for, use these

8 identifiable areas:

1. Application of technology
2. Quantitative analysis ability
3. Theory development and conceptual thinking
4. Creative production
5. Counselling and mentoring
6. Managing people and relationships
7. Enterprise control
8. Influence through language and ideas

If you have a top employee who has been working in the area of customer service, but lately seems dissatisfied, after talking with him/her you might learn they would rather be dealing with the vendors. Your star might be just the answer you’re looking for to find that latest innovative product that could be added to your stock (conceptual thinking), and employee B would rather interact with the customers. By a simple switch of responsibilities, you have two happy employees that feel they’re now contributing to your business and not just putting in time for a pay

It’s always more cost effective for the business, and better for employee morale to keep your existing employees happy with their careers. It takes a toll on your business when you have to fill an empty employee spot with a newcomer who has to be trained in the way your company functions.

Time is money, and time used to train a brand new employee is the highest cost of doing business. However, the time spent by you to find out what will keep your top producers happy to be working for you – is the best investment you can make in your business.