Leadership Development – Page 10 – STL

“Every day is a school day” is a great saying. This is quite true, because whatever your level of experience as a manager, there are always new things to learn and skills to improve upon. Attending, and more importantly, using tools and ideas on a great course, can help. After all, good management training leads to quality service. One such course is our Introduction to Management, which will give you a range of practical, tangible tools and strategies to help you succeed as a manager, and ultimately lead to quality service – but how?

Understanding the manager’s role

What do you consider yourself to be? A manager? A Leader? A supervisor? Whatever you consider yourself to be, the truth is you need to be all of these things and more. Adapting your style to meet the situation, task, or people is key. Being able to adapt is fundamental to being a successful manager. It will ensure that your team is optimised and therefore more collaborative, productive, engaged, and innovative. All of which leads to quality service, and all influenced and role-modelled by YOU!

Effective communication

All managers must be able to communicate effectively. Those who are vague, inconsistent or send mixed messages will only create an environment that is doomed to fail. Communication is a vast subject. It really boils down to how you actively listen, ask great questions and how transparent and authentic you are. Are you personable and approachable? Can you adapt to each person’s own communication style so that they feel engaged? If so, you are effective and can make an impact. Everything you do is role-modelling behaviour and is noticed and remembered.

Developing and leading the team

You are only as good as the people around you, and great managers know that developing their team is absolutely essential. How can you do this? Here are some ideas:

Establish clear roles and responsibilities
Empower the team and include them in decision making
Coach them
Listen and give (and ask for) feedback
Foster trust and inclusivity
Develop your and their Emotional Intelligence
Delegate and share your power
Ask for ideas
Encourage autonomy and independence

As a good manager, you want people that willingly want to follow you. Therefore, you want a team that are positive, self-motivated, efficient, result-oriented, and inspired to achieve. You have to be seen as honest, ethical, competent, forward thinking, have courage, be decisive and inspirational. You cannot insist or just expect it. People judge you on results and not what you say, so it’s necessary to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

Final thoughts

An excellent and thought-provoking question to ask yourself is, “What would my team say about me to others?” So, what would they say? What would you want them to say? How could you ensure that the answers would be positive and encouraging? One way is by learning more about yourself.

These are the key ingredients and practical tools that can assist you in becoming the type of manager everybody would want to work for. This all contributes hugely to a team and organisation that would provide high quality service. STL can show you how good management training leads to quality service.

If you need to make an impact in your meetings, you’re going to need some tactics. Our Facilitation and Meeting Skills and Effective Communication courses discuss some ideas to help you do just that.

Statistics reveal that 11 million meetings take place every year. 91% of staff admit to daydreaming, 95% admit to missing meetings altogether and 39% of employees fall asleep in them!

The following 8 tips and appropriate responses to 4 challenging behaviours in meetings will help you to ensure that meetings remain productive.

Tips

Have an agenda – An agenda adds structure to a meeting and helps keep to time. Ensure your topics are on the agenda before the meeting so that they are raised.
Don’t wait too long to get in – Be assertive and ensure you make your comments heard. If you delay, the conversation will have moved on and you will miss your chance.
Keep to the point – Be succinct and concise, don’t waffle. Be brief but accurate and informative.
Encourage your colleagues to contribute – Help others to be heard as everyone should be there for a reason and useful input from all should be encouraged.

Actively listen – Pay attention, make notes, and show your interest non-verbally through eye contact, facial expressions, and nodding.
Clarify, confirm, and summarise regularly – This helps all and keeps the meeting on track and on point.
Ask open questions – Want detailed answers? Ask good questions! Start with who, what, why, when, where and how.
Respond quickly to questions but take time to think if needed. If you don’t know the answer, say so – then move on.

Dealing with challenging behaviours in meetings

Unfortunately there are some who make meetings tedious and downright annoying. Here are some ways to deal with these frustrating behaviours:

Divide and rule
This device entails the passing of conflicting information to individuals before a meeting with the intention of creating antagonisms.

Counter: Recap on the facts. Find out who is spreading misinformation. Be prepared when in the meeting to re-establish the facts to clear up misunderstandings. Suggested things to say: ‘Where did you hear that?’ or ‘Who provided that information?’

Domination
By speaking in a loud voice and interrupting, a dominant person may try to undermine the confidence of less dominant attendees.

Counter: Challenge the dominant person with a firm request for orderly conduct. Suggested things to say: “May I request that everyone listens and respects their colleagues and behaves in a professional manner.”

Bluster
This time-wasting device involves somebody speaking loudly and at great length about a subject irrelevant to the one under discussion.

Counter: Isolate a potential blusterer by avoiding eye contact with them. Suggested things to say: “Thank you XXXX but we are discussing YYYY and as time is of the essence we need to press on.”

Anger
Some people use anger as a tactical weapon in meetings in order to halt the discussion and have the meeting adjourned to a later date.

Counter: Stay calm. Suggested things to say: “I can see you have strong feelings on this, but we need to (reach our objective) by X o’ clock today.” If the behaviour persists, it may be necessary to ask them to leave the meeting.

Conclusion

Remember, if you don’t really need a meeting, don’t have one! But if you do, try these tips to ensure they are productive and efficient. People will thank you for it!

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