Planning your work week as a manager is the different between doing a great job and doing an okay or even a poor job. The more people you manage, the more moving parts, demands and deliverables you have to stay on top of. Planning ahead at work gives you a ton of benefits.

I share six actions for planning your week as a manager to be really effective in your job.

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How to effectively plan your week at work starts with be very aware of the team, functional and company goals. Consistently ensuring what you are working on aligns to the wider business goals increases the value of your work to bosses. You also meet more than one goal with the same piece of work – a great way to leverage your time and value creation. Very effective productivity tips and time management tips for managers. 

How to effectively plan your week as a manager is about prioritisation. You will always have more to do than time permits. How to plan your day week and month must include separating the important and urgent tasks from the unimportant and not urgent tasks. How to be productive at work is not about doing more but about doing more valuable. 

How to effectively plan your week as a manager also includes what you are going to do yourself and what you are going to delegate. Delegating is not always a time creating activity. I share tips on time management for managers.

How to plan your day for success should include how you use your calendar and organisational tools to reduce the number of disruptions you get. The average office work is interrupted every 3-11 minutes. I share tips on how to minimise disruptions which kill productivity. 

In management roles, the unexpected nearly always happens. Something will come up to disrupt your plans. One of the essential time management tips for work is to build in contingency time to account for requests, challenges and problems that arise. 

Finally, at the end of every day, take 5 minute to review what was achieved against your plan and what was not. Replan so that you always have up to date weekly plan in place. 

If you have any questions on “6 Actions for Planning Your Work Week As A Manager -Boost Productivity”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

I am sharing 5 people skills to become a great leader. The ones I am discussing today are some of the most important people skills; the ones that every really great leader displays. 

Great leaders have the leadership skills to bring something out of us. To become a great people leader, encourage, inspire and motivate through how you make people feel and what you motivate them to achieve.

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Communication is one of the most important skills for leadership. I share 5 communication skills that I view as essential people skills for leaders and good people skills in the workplace for anyone with ambitions. 

There are a lot of skills needed for how to become a great leader at work. Leadership is about change. Being courageous is a requirement for leaders. It takes courage to change, to do something different. It takes courage to speak your mind, to share your ideas. Courage is needed for how to become a great team leader.

Demonstrating integrity is also a very important skill. I share 8 different ways to demonstrate your integrity (and there are plenty more). Integrity builds trust, it creates safety, it means staff members will be treated fairly.

People follow people they admire and who help them bring the best out of themselves. Being yourself, being authentic is needed for people to relate to you, to learn about you. Trust is massive when leading others. If you are not being true to yourself, how can others trust you?

Finally, flexibility is a critical skill of many management skills. Leadership skills for managers and leadership skills training focus on different approaches to the massive range of situations and personalities any manager faces at work. Work on the flexibility of your approach because everyone and every situation is different.  Work at your people skills training and learning and in particular these 5 core people skills to become a great leader.

If you have any question on “5 People Skills To Become A Great Leader”, please leave a comment below and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

As a leader or manager, how do you build great management skills in your organisation? How do you encourage the coaching of great management skills, so you are developing the next generation of managers AND upskilling the managers you currently have?

I share tips and actions to help you encourage managers to develop their teams and in particular their manager direct reports, which in turn will drive increasing team and business performance. 

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To incentivise coaching of management skills, it is really useful to identify which skills leaders should be encouraging their managers to develop. I list out 7 of the key skills which are great management skills training.

Next to encourage managers to develop their teams work to create a development culture in your team. There is lots you can without budget to get every team member learning and especially you managers. For example spending time mentoring and coaching your managers is great to incentivise building management skills.

To incentivise management skills coaching throughout your organisation, create a management skills development plan for each manager. A development plan provides clear direction, activities and projects for development plus gives you the ability to hold both parties to account (manager and line manager) to deliver that plan. 

Finally, I share 4 practical actions to encourage coaching of great management skills within your manager population. Each are great in how to develop team lead skills. For of these skills, I list out practical actions to take and activities to encourage the practice of management skills which will improve management performance and the performance of the teams your managers lead. 

Developing better coaching skills is another way to incentivise managers to coach their teams. Get them to pass on the skills they have learnt. Incentivise management skills coaching!

If you have any questions on “How To Encourage The Coaching Of Great Management Skills In Your Team”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training,

Start quickly and successfully by implementing 5 actions for first week success as a new manager. Have a good first week and you set the stage for your ongoing success, you feel a lot more confident in yourself and your team will be a lot happier and more confident in you too.  

I share 5 actions to take in your first week – all great first time manager tips

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Start your first week as a new manager by focusing on the new 20%, not the old 80%. Chances are you will be doing a lot of your old role as a new manager. For first time manager success, focus on your new responsibilities – the management part, rather than stay in your comfort zone. I share 5 steps to take to start doing this brilliantly for first time managers.

Next, for first week success as a first time manager understand the goals and expectations for your team. Maybe obvious, yet so few bosses provide clear goals and expectations. I share tips for new managers to work with their boss to get clear goals. 

Third, the next of my first-time manager tips is to start with a team focused attitude. Success to become a manager is all about growing yourself. As a manager, success is growing your team first.

For first time manager in their first week, don’t make changes too soon. There is a lot of pressure on managers to make their mark, impress, and prove that hiring or promotion them was the right choice. Too many managers make the wrong changes too soon as a result. For a first time manager success guide, I share how you should go about making your mark quickly.

The last of my new manager first week tips for success is to focus on building relationships. Probably the most important action for the first few months in any new role, and particularly so as a manager. I share tips on who to focus on first and how to go about building the right relationships in the right way. 

If you have any questions on “5 Actions for First Week Success As a New Manager – 1st Time Manager Tips”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

Resolving organisational conflict makes everyone’s lives better, more enjoyable and more productive plus it adds significant profit onto the business

I share 4 ways and 10 steps to resolve organisational and inter team workplace conflicts. I also cover what is organisational conflict and provide organisational conflict examples. 

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Learning how to handle organisation conflict (organisational conflict management) starts with understanding how a lot of conflict occurs within the workplace. In my experience, more conflict occurs because of decisions, organisational setup, goals and processes that have not been designed carefully enough. You see the impact through individual getting into conflict, yet the cause is external to them. 

I share 7 classic causes of conflict in the workplace. 

How to resolve workplace conflict starts with understanding what is happening and why it is happening. Separately, speak to both parties is essential, ask lots of questions and listen carefully to what they tell you. Understand what is happening. Figure out why it is happening. Understanding is essential for managing conflict and organisational conflict resolution.  I share 5 steps to practice for this stage. 

Understand what organisational conflict types you are dealing with – conflict between individuals, conflict within a team or conflict between teams. A lot of conflict management in the workplace is redesigning goals, objectives, policies and procedures so individuals and teams are more aligned and not set against each other. 

To resolve workplace conflict, then bring the parties together to get them to create solutions. I share 5 steps to follow for this meeting and process. 

If you have any questions on “4 Ways of Resolving Organisational Conflict: Reduce Workplace Conflict” please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

Use 5 techniques to speak with the confidence of a leader. Communication skills are probably the most important skill set for leaders and managers. At the heart of leading others is building relationships, earning trust and making the lives of those you lead better.  

I share 5 techniques to speak like a leader, so you can feel more confident when speaking with executives, when public speaking or presenting to the board of directors. 

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To sound like a leader you must know your audience. Put in the time to do your homework and think through the challenges, pressures and desires the audience has. To speak like a CEO or leader, speak to the audience’s fears and hopes. This is a key part of confident communication and presentation skills.

To be an effective leader, building and keep trust with the teams you are leading is essential. The same can be said when speaking effectively with executives. The greater the trust levels, the easier it is to do your job without questions and challenge slowing down the results you can produce. Always speak with as much openness, transparency and honesty as you can. 

One of the essential public speaking skills to master is creating clear digestible messages that are easy to understand. Creating concise well-structured communications will help you speak like a leader and are great public speaking tips and tricks.

When speak in public, to large audiences, and if you want to sound like a leader, your practice is your performance. That is the more you practice out loud before speaking, the better your performance. I share 4 key mental tricks and practices to reduce your nerves before speaking publicly or to large audiences. 

Finally, to speak confidently, you must master your own non-verbal communication. These are the facial clues, how you use your voice, the pauses, your body positioning etc to convey additional meanings with the words you use. I share 6 areas you need to be aware of and practice improving as you speak. 

If you have any questions on “Speak With The Confidence Of A Leader – 5 Vital Speaking Techniques”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

There are lots of people problems managers can’t ignore if they want to have a happy and productive team. People problems in your team usually get worst over time if left alone and they will easily damage team performance. 

I share THE top 5 people problems managers shouldn’t ignore (in my opinion). 

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How to Manager Difficult Employees (1 Day Course) 

Learn how to manage and improve any difficult, underperforming or problematic employees quickly and effectively. 

Find out more here https://enhance.training/lp/manage-difficult-people-usp015/ 

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The first people problem managers can’t ignore is bullying and any behaviour intended to put others down. Any form of bullying that the manager ignores is deadly. No action will destroy team trust, motivation and performance. This drop in performance can be quick and dramatic with these people problems at work.

Always take actions quickly to stop any form of bullying in your team. It is one of the worst people problems that impact performance. 

The second of the people problems to always look out for is individual undermining team members or you. Undermining can take many forms – usually a pattern of behaviour to attack another person credibility, confidence, standing etc. Use an escalating set of steps to make it unappealing for undermining to happen in your team.  

The third of the people problems managers need to spot is individuals taking credit for others work. This behaviour damages trust, relationships and teamwork. For those take credit for others work, they may get short term gains, but they nearly always lose out long term. Demonstrate how to give credit by praising good work, ideas and actions across your team publicly. Don’t put up with team member unfairly taking credit. 

Fourth  of the people problems that kill team performance is no or poor communication. Communication is at the heart of relationships, co-ordination, collaboration, teamwork, solution building and more. I share 7 actions to encourage more communication within your teams. Help coach team members who struggle to communicating and give them opportunities to practice. 

Fifth of the damaging people problems for managers is conflicts between team members. Conflicts can arise for all sorts of reasons. Often it is not the fault of those in conflict. As a manager you are very well placed to help all parties resolve conflicts quickly, fairly and openly. I share steps to take. 

If you have any questions on “The Top 5 People Problems Managers Can’t Ignore For Happy & Productive Teams” please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles 

Enhance.training 

You are in control of many of the factors that go into how to develop a winning team at work. You don’t need amazing people or big budgets to develop a winning team at work. 

I share 4 development strategies for team success and for developing team capability. 

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 Leadership success depends on growing others because the majority of the value you create in leadership roles is delivered through others. Developing teams becomes a must. 

How to develop your team at work starts with understanding what development is needed. There are three important factors to be considered and balanced, one being what development the individual wants and needs. Planning and delivering staff development is a massive part of motivating staff to work harder and improve the quality of their work. 

There are lots of ways to develop a winning team. Building skills in a team is as important as building knowledge and experience. I explain 3 key reasons this helps you personally and share 6 skills to build in developing teams and effective leadership. I also talk about how to develop a team at work. 

You also have to do you part in building a winning team culture and one of the key strategies is working to remove all the basic repetitive low value tasks the team does. Doing this frees up time for to spend on higher value tasks and provides staff development all by itself. There are 4 main ways to remove these low value tasks – are you working at all of them? 

Lastly, another important of the development strategies and important in how to develop a team at work is to create a team culture where peers develop each other. This reduces the burden on you, giving you development too! I share 5 key activities to enable you to build a great team culture and brilliant for how to motivate your team at work. 

If you have any questions on “How to Develop a Winning Team At Work – 4 Team Development Strategies” please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles 

Enhance.training 

How great leaders hold employees accountable is an approach, a process and set of actions that works together to create accountability in individuals and teams.

 I share 5 interdependent actions essential for creating a culture of accountability in teams.

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How great managers hold employees accountable starts with creating and maintaining really clear goals and expectations at a team and individual level. Know exactly what is expected is essential in building accountability in teams. I share tips on how to communicate verbally, non-verbally and writing to set really clear expectations and goals your team pays attention to and owns. 

Next in creating a culture of accountability in teams, build team capability. If staff members don’t know how to reach a goal, they are unlikely to reach that goal. Ensure they have the knowledge, skills and resources to be able to achieve goals – a key part of how to hold team members accountable.

Next in how to make my team members more accountable, create a lot of visibility of progress towards goals. Clear goals, objective measurement of progress and visibility is great in creating accountability. Work out how you track progress against team and individual goals and share this progress. 

How great leaders hold staff accountable includes undertaking a lot of follow-up and providing a lot of feedback. Both activities provide a lot of guidance and support and well as communicating exactly where each employee stands. 

Finally, in holding employees accountable, create clear consequences for missing goals and expectations and for beating goals and expectations. If there are no consequences for either, there will be little accountability. 

How to hold your team accountable requires the continuous application of all 5 elements. Miss one and your team and team members will not be nearly as accountable. Don’t let accountability slip through the cracks. 

If you have any questions on “How Great Leaders Hold Employees Accountable – Use 5 Essential Actions” please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

5 steps to ask for your next promotion at work takes you through how to prepare to make asking your boss almost a formality. Asking for a promotion is daunting enough. Learn exactly how to prepare so you are confident and much more likely to get a yes.

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Before you work out how to ask for a promotion at work, make yourself ready to be promoted. Think about the skills and experience you need to demonstrate for the role you want to be promoted into.  How do you compare right now? Work out your gaps and close them before going for a promotion at work. I share 5 methods for working the gaps out.

Getting promoted at work is showing you can do a lot of the role before you ask for your next promotion. Think about the tasks, activities and responsibilities of the role and the level at which you need to operate at. Work out how you are going to demonstrate this - key steps to get your next promotion at work. Make yourself ready for a promotion at work!

Next, build your list of achievements and how much value (revenue and profit) you add to your business. This is really important for your conversation with your boss and your bosses conversations with others deciding on promotions. Achievements that make you stand out really help with promotion at work

How to ask for a promotion at work includes preparing for objections. There will be objections: there is not a role available, you are not ready yet, we don’t have budget etc. These can all be big blockers to your next promotion at work. I share tips on how to prepare and overcome objections to your promotion. 

When to ask for a promotion is also important. There is never a perfect time. There are plenty of bad times to avoid which I go through. Choose a good time and book a meeting in with your boss and ask for that promotion. 

Good luck!

If you have any questions on “5 Steps To Ask For Your Next Promotion At Work”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training