Posted by Sherman Updegraff on Thu, Jul 29, 2010 @ 08:12 PM
Have you ever had a co-worker with whom you just couldn’t seem to see eye to eye? Perhaps you had drastically different backgrounds or personalities or work styles, but for whatever reason, you clashed, and you dreaded working with that person.
Interpersonal conflicts can create stress and unhappiness in the workplace. The resulting arguments and gossip can disrupt the team dynamic and interfere with productivity. Luckily, there is a simple, effective way to avoid these problems within your organization: the DISCself online personality test (http://employeedevelopmentsystems.com/discself.html). If all employees in your company spend 10 minutes answering the questions in the DISCself behavioral assessment, they will better understand their personal behavior style characteristics, as well as those of their colleagues. A small investment of time and money will result in large benefits for the health of your organization with this employee development tool.
- Understand your own style, strengths and weaknesses.
Before you can examine your relationships with others, you must understand how you tick and why you react certain ways in certain situations. It’s interesting to learn more about your personality style, and these insights will help you see what your needs are and how your behaviors come across to other people. As you determine your strengths and weaknesses, you will be able to adjust your actions to get along easily with a variety of different people.
- Identify other people’s styles for better communication.
The resources in the online personality test will help you identify patterns and other clues to help you read people better and understand how they want to be treated. Once you figure out how others operate and what they need to feel supported and valued, your interactions with them will be much more positive and productive.
- Avoid and resolve conflicts.
Learning more about behavior styles teaches you strategies for practicing adaptability in interpersonal situations. For example, if you discover an employee works best in a collaborative, team-oriented environment, but you prefer a results-driven, analytical approach, you could adapt your own style to be more participatory for her benefit. She, in turn, may recognize your efforts and adjust her own approach to complement your needs. As adaptability increases in the organization, conflicts decrease and colleagues are able to work more harmoniously.
- Improve professional relationships.
As you become more adept at identifying personality and behavior characteristics within your organization, you will be able to build and strengthen a cohesive team. You will learn how to communicate effectively using different styles, how to balance your team based on personal strengths and weaknesses and how to prevent conflicts before they occur.
Learn more about the DISCself online personality test (http://employeedevelopmentsystems.com/discself.html) and how it can benefit your organization.
Posted by Sherman Updegraff on Tue, Jul 27, 2010 @ 10:29 AM
The success of your organization is largely dependent on the capabilities and leadership of your management team. Effective managers must be able to communicate with many different personalities to encourage productivity, achieve goals and create a positive working environment. It benefits everyone working for your company to invest in management training courses (http://www.employeedevelopmentsystems.com/c-17-management.aspx) that teach delegation, communications skills training, mentoring, conflict resolution, change management and other valuable skills. Through these programs, managers learn about employee development and how to lead individuals to work together as a team to reach common objectives.
If you want to start an ongoing conversation about best practices in management and leadership, create a business book club or a recommended reading list for your organization. This list will be a helpful supplement to the knowledge gained in training classes and a way to inspire an exchange of ideas among your employees. Consider buying a few copies of each book and circulating them throughout the office.
Five Business Book Club Recommendations
Jim Collins, co-author of Built to Last, and his research team delve deeply into how a merely good organization can be transformed into a great organization with long-term, sustained success. Good to Great examines almost 1400 companies, covering a wide variety of industries, to find the common factors that may surprise even the most seasoned manager.
The Tipping Point explores the causes of “social epidemics” – the small changes in a society that cause a ripple effect and result in significant effects in everything from crime to shopping trends. Malcolm Gladwell describes the importance of the three different personality types who are influential in reaching this “tipping point”: Mavens (collectors and communicators of knowledge), Connectors (social butterflies who bring others together) and Salesmen (charismatic persuaders).
David Allen, an executive coach and management consultant, boils down his workflow management system into simple, effective and easy-to-implement steps. He offers useful, common sense tips and techniques for channeling scattered mental “to-do” lists into concrete action plans to increase productivity and organization, both professionally and personally.
The authors study 80,000 managers in 400 different companies to discover how exceptional managers find, retain and motivate talented employees. The book uses case studies, interviews and diagrams to turn conventional wisdom on its head and outline what the most effective managers are doing right.
In Switch, the authors examine the conflict between the two major systems that control our brains—the rational mind and the emotional mind. The rational mind may want to make a big change in the company, while the emotional mind may fight to keep the consistency and ease of the existing routine. Chip and Dan Heath advocate strategies for aligning these competing systems and making hard changes a little bit easier.
Host informal discussions about the books on your company reading list, and look for ways to incorporate strategies into your organization. These conversations, paired with effective management training courses, will have a powerful effect on how your company operates.
Do you have any must-read business books you would add to this list? Suggest them in the comments below.
Posted by Sherman Updegraff on Sun, Jul 25, 2010 @ 05:07 PM
The cover of a recent Newsweek (7/19/10) says it all: Creativity in America. However, based upon the Torrance test, the creativity quotient (CQ) has been declining every year since 1990 which does not bode well for companies and organizations that are hiring, nor for our society. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No.1 leadership competency of the future. What are the culprits for this decline? Hours spent in front of TV playing videogames and a lack of creativity development in schools are two leading causes. Moreover, there is a focus on standardized curriculum and rote memorization in American schools, while the Chinese schools adopt a problem-based learning approach.
So if leaders need a creative competency and the education system is going in reverse, is this a lost cause? No, creative training can be a part of all management training courses. We employ a method in brainstorming known as the double reversal technique.
1. State a positive goal
2. Reverse the goal to negative
3. Brainstorm actions that would achieve the negative goal.
4. Reverse each action to create positive goal.
Guaranteed to yield creative and innovative ideas that could foster a cultural change in the organization.
Posted by Sherman Updegraff on Thu, Jul 22, 2010 @ 06:28 PM
As you grow older and become more established in the business world, you are expected to be a serious, professional adult while performing your job. Seriousness and professionalism are both valuable qualities in the workplace, but you might be surprised by how you can apply the simple life skills you learned in kindergarten to your current job and organization. Getting back to basics can improve your approach to leadership, management training courses and personal accountability, and the results will benefit your company as a whole.
Remember the old adage “treat others as you want to be treated”? It is just as true in business as it was in school. Be respectful of your colleagues, superiors and employees, and show appreciation for their time, talents and ideas. Avoid office politics and gossip; if you have a problem with a co-worker, address it calmly and honestly or seek mediation and conflict resolution assistance if needed. Employee development courses will serve you well.
Once upon a time, you were able to imagine a pile of sheets and pillows formed an imposing fort—drawbridge, moat and all. Now you can use your imagination to think of creative business plans, innovative solutions to problems and new products or services for your organization. When you are in need of inspiration, gather your team around a blank whiteboard or easel and let the ideas flow. Don’t be afraid to draw outside the lines and take some risks—you may be handsomely rewarded.
This rule can be interpreted both literally and figuratively: 1) Keep your work area tidy, and be respectful of shared spaces, and 2) Accept personal accountability when you make a mistake, and do everything you can to fix it. Learn from your errors, take responsibility for your actions and try not to make the same mistake twice.
As a child, it’s easy to find the balance between work and play, activity and rest. As an adult, the lines get blurred as you work long hours, take projects home and eat lunch at your desk. Recognize that giving yourself time away from work to rest and recharge is necessary for increased productivity and efficiency. Take breaks throughout the day, work reasonable hours and encourage healthy habits among the rest of your team.
What life skills did you learn when you were young that you still use as an adult? Add to the list in the comments below.
Learn more about personal accountability in the Powerful Choices program.
Posted by Sherman Updegraff on Tue, Jul 20, 2010 @ 07:57 PM
No matter what the size of your company or the scope of your industry, employees are the most important part of your business. Employees who feel valued and respected are more likely to feel invested in their work and willing to stay and grow with the company. Make strategic employee development a high management priority, and reap the benefits of improved retention, productivity and team performance. A supportive company culture encourages personal effectiveness in individual team members and benefits the team as a whole.
Effective Employees:
- Communicate well with colleagues to foster teamwork and collaboration
- Take initiative to create strategic plans and solutions
- Are accountable for their decisions
- Are responsive to employee development ideas and make an effort to learn new skills to improve continuously
- Know their strengths and weaknesses (and how to utilize or improve them)
Increasing Personal Effectiveness in the Office:
- 1. Listen to your employees.
The easiest way to show your staff you respect their professional opinions is to listen to their feedback, suggestions and ideas. Make time for a casual team meeting or a one-on-one conversation with individual employees. Ask specific questions and carefully take note of their responses.
For example: What processes or systems help the company run smoothly? What changes can be made to improve them? What kind of support would help them do their jobs? What are the most satisfying or dissatisfying parts of their jobs? Each employee knows his or her job best, and you may be surprised by the insight you receive. Encourage honesty and be responsive to all company and employee development ideas. Involve your team in creating solutions for the problems discussed, and keep them updated on steps you are taking to implement changes.
- 2. Allow them to make decisions (and sometimes mistakes).
An essential part of nurturing employee development at your company is empowering your staff to take on leadership roles and have ownership over projects. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of your employees, and tailor work accordingly. Whenever possible, let team members take responsibility over different parts of a project. They may make mistakes along the way, but they will learn from them and improve their personal accountability on the job (an important part of personal effectiveness).
- 3. Encourage critical thinking and innovation.
When brainstorming new ideas or solutions to problems, reinforce a “no idea is a bad idea” mentality. Sometimes what seems like a crazy notion is actually the best approach, so leave yourself open to creativity and innovation from your employees.
- 4. Provide opportunities to learn new skills and gain knowledge.
To retain the top talent in your organization, you must provide opportunities for employee development, allowing your employees to expand their existing knowledge, acquire new skill sets and increase their leadership and responsibility. Promoting continuous learning and management training courses shows you are willing to make an investment in your staff and value their growth and success. Keep your eyes open for potential employee development ideas, and encourage your team to do the same.
- 5. Give credit where it is due.
Everyone appreciates recognition for a job well done, so don’t be afraid to praise employees for quality work. Small signs of appreciation—an afternoon off, a thank-you note in the employee newsletter or even a simple “great job”—go a long way to improve morale.
Interested in learning more? Find out how the Increasing Personal Effectiveness course can improve your business.
Posted by Sherman Updegraff on Thu, Jul 08, 2010 @ 10:51 AM
Even with four generations in the workforce, there are generally accepted business norms that define professionalism beyond table manners and dress.
1. Business language should use clearly defined business terms in the correct context with meaningful objectives. As millennials countinue to enter the workforce, organizations need to understand styles and their business perspectives. However, "dude", "sweet", and "wasup" among other terms are not yet in the generally accepted lexicon.
2. Meetings are a necessary part of the business environment whether actual or virtual. They should be a setting that everyone is respectful of others' time and arrive on time. They should be an environment of collaborative employee development and not just criticism or oneupmanship.
3. Cellphones or smartphones can be a valuable business tool. However, they probably should be on vibrate-only during the business day unless that is the only means of communication. Personal calls should be at an absolute minimum. They should be turned off during meetings and no texting.
4. Correct spelling and punctuation define you as an individual. You are viewed as uncaring and unprofessional if you send correspondence whether snail mail or email or any other media that contains typos, because this reflects upon your employer.
5. Listen more and talk less. Listening is a skill that can be developed and by focusing on the conversation, your response is more effective.
6. Deadlines are necessary evils of the business world. If you consistently meet your deadlines, you will be viewed as dependable.
7. Add value by generating new ideas. Think creatively about new products, saving the organization money, or innovative customer service.
8. Time management is a hindrance if you don't schedule your time properly. Schedule a time each day for planning with most to lest important activities. You will get more done in less time.
9. Build your vocabulary. Start with a word a month and you will be viewed differently by your colleagues and your employer.
10. Avoid conflict by honing your communication skills training and becoming part of the solution and not part of the problem.
Posted by Sherman Updegraff on Tue, Jun 29, 2010 @ 01:19 PM
With unemployment remaining stubbornly high, foreclosures continuing to rise, and the global recession continuing, it is no wonder that workforce morale is low. However, couple that with a survey that was released last week stating that 26% of people say they find happiness and fulfillment in their job.
http://www.talentmgt.com/industry_news/2010/June/5225/index.php
With low morale and lack of job satisfaction, this is the perfect recipe for decreasing productivity at a time when organizations cannot withstand hits to the bottomline. A possible solution lies in the area of employee development and management training courses and an understanding of both business challenges and the drivers for the various generations in the workforce.
Ramp up manager training and require participants to bring specific business problems to class and with a collaborative effort have the participants create a plan to address the challenge and require execution of those plans after training. Involvement and successful execution will enhance fulfillment from tangible results. The proven manager will involve all of the members of the team to increase morale and enhance their fulfillment as well.
Communications skills training is an excellent way to start and Communicating to Manage Performance" href="http://www.employeedevelopmentsystems.com/p-157-communicating-to-manage-performance.aspx" target="_self">Communicating to Manage Performance is an excellent course for managers.
Posted by Sherman Updegraff on Fri, Jun 25, 2010 @ 02:33 PM
For individuals a crisis could be a health issue, the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, a disabling accident, or numerous other incidents. But for a company, are strategic plans in place that if this then that? BP had strategic plans, but they obviously were not based upon accurate assumptions and the trial-and-error method to find a remedy is hardly reassuring that their "plans" involved a significant number of possible occurrences and contingencies. Perhaps a root cause is a considerable lack of critical thinking. Why am I going down this path? I think every business entity should have critical plans in place. What happens if your headquarters is destroyed by a fire, flood, tornado, or hurricane? Easy, you have redundant storage of all records and files offsite and you're insured. What happens if the founder, CEO, or other key individuals are lost to an accident (Poland)? Again, easy if succession planning is in place.
Today, I read an article about sun storms returning and causing major damage. The Space Weather Prediction Center http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ says that we could face a very problematic two years. The economic damage could be "20 times larger than Hurricane Katrina" and cost trillions of dollars! Satellite communications, GPS navigation would be severely disruptive to the thousands of commercial flight daily. Utilities would be forced into rolling brownouts to save transformers for years. There is even a risk of the collapse of electrical grids in the United States that could affect 130 million people. The center says it is not a question of if, but when.
Critical thinking and personal accountability will need to be a component of all management training courses of all organizations going forward. Our Communicating to Manage Performance course stresses communication skills training and corrective feedback.
Posted by Sherman Updegraff on Thu, Jun 24, 2010 @ 12:12 PM
Certain kinds of change are always easy to make; increasing and decreasing budgets, maintaining strategic alliances, arranging a merger-The fact is that these bold strokes are not what create sustainable change in the organization; it is the long marches that pay off. Long-term, effective organizational change requires people to adjust their behavior. You can allocate resources for new product development or reorganize as a unit. Regardless, you cannot order people to use their imagination to solve the budget crunch or to work collaboratively with other members on the team, in the department, or within cross-departmental problem-solving teams. According to the author of "On Leading Change" (Jossey-Bass, 2002), there are seven classic techniques that leaders can bring to a changing organization.
1. Tuning in to the environment, through creating a network of listening posts, such as partnerships and alliances that allow you to gather and share information. 2. Challenging the prevailing organizational wisdom, through what is called "kaleidoscope' thinking; a way of constructing patterns from fragments of data available and manipulating them to form different patterns. Can you look at all of the available information and consider it in a new way? 3. Communicating a compelling aspiration. Changing anything requires a strong and genuine conviction, since there are so many forces to overcome. 4. Building Coalitions through the involvement of people who have the resources, knowledge and political clout to make things happen. 5. Transferring ownership to a working team. Once your coalition is in place, you can enlist others in the implementation. As a leader, you must remain involved, and don't expect your managers to take over all of the proceedings. 6. Learning to persevere. Everything can look like a failure in the middle. One of the major mistakes that leaders can make is to launch plans and then leave them. Stay with your crew. 7. Making everyone a hero. Recognition brings the change cycle to its logical conclusion, and also motivates people to attempt change again. These techniques are effective not only in facilitating change within organizations but also key to sustaining high performance in less turbulent times.
Management training courses that stress personal accountability and communications skills training will also facilitate the change process. Take a look at our
change management effectiveness profile.
Posted by Sherman Updegraff on Wed, Jun 23, 2010 @ 11:50 AM
Organizations want to retain their top talent and prepare their succession planning. A periodic management shuffle to move individuals away from their comfort zones and into areas with increasing responsibility, but requiring different skill sets and knowledge is very healthy. The adaptive process requires new employee development courses and management training courses , critical thinking, and innovation. Moreover, this process broadens the bench strength for the organization while challenging individuals so they don't become stale. This also allows for ideas from one area of the organization to be utilized in other areas which may result in greater productivity and denying the silo effect at the same time. The biggest plus of this talent management process is that it shows the individual that the organization has a keen interest in his or her career development and they are less likely to stray to greener pastures when the economy recovers.
Our new catalog provides many solutions to groom talent.