How to ask great questions as a leader is a skill that you can absolutely build no matter where you are today. Asking great questions as a leader gives you knowledge, insights, action, direction, opportunity, feedback, trust, and more

Take these 8 actions to keep asking better and better questions as a leader at work

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How to ask good questions? What are great questions to ask?

Great questions get the other person thinking. There is a good pause before they speak, and you can see them deep in thought. Great questions give you the information or insights you seek. Ask great questions and you often get action in the other person, or you feel you can now take action. 

As a leader, you cannot and should not know everything nor be an expert in everything. Even if it were possible, it would be a long way from sensible. A leader harnesses the skills and expertise of others to create better results or outcomes for the group.

To enable the leader to harness the skills of others and do it very well, that leader needs to know a lot about the person, their skills and how best to use them in a given situation. Being able to ask great questions is how they gain all this information. Good leaders ask great questions all the time. 

Leaders and managers are ten times more likely to ask good questions if they develop a curious mindset. Be interested in everything going on in your team and you will naturally ask a lot of questions.

Asking questions is one thing. Asking great questions with a purpose is another. Make the time to figure out what are the main levers for business success or what are the main issue behind team member behaviour and actions. Then ask questions with these in mind.

Great questions are usually a series of related questions. One builds on the previous question. You are digging into the detail or situation so you can try to understand what is going on and more importantly why. 

How you ask questions matters. The words you use are important. Your tone and pace of voice, your facial expressions and body language are even more important. Be conscious of how your non-verbal communication is impacting the other person.

Asking questions is only useful if you listen to what you are being told. Listening is a lot more than just hearing the words being spoken. 

Finally, asking great questions is a skill and to get good at skills, you need to practice. 

If you have any questions on “How To Ask Great Questions As A Leader” please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

Get your best employees to stay and you are likely to have a better performing team and a happier team.  Your best employees stay because of relationships and loyalties as much as being in a good working environment where they feel they are progressing and developing.  

I explain 6 ways to get your best employees to stay.
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6 ways to get good employees to stay starts with who you bring into your team. Recruit for fit, culture and values as much as technical skills. New joiners that enjoy a similar culture to your team are much more likely to be happy, successful and stay longer. The rest of the team will be happier and more productive too. 

Another great way of making it easy for employees to stay is to find out where they want their careers to go and who they want to be. When you understand each team members interests, ambitions and strengths, you can then organise work that plays to strengths and interests. This keeps employees happier and more successful, plus develop the skills to meet their ambitions. An important way to retain your best employees.

Third, for retaining employees, spending time with each team member, listening to them, using their ideas and making them feel valued is another of the brilliant strategies for employee engagement and retention.

Another key way to stop good employees leaving and improve employee retention is to empower your employees. Empower employees through the frameworks you create as well as your decisions, actions and behaviours within the team. 

A great way to provide a fair exchange for hard work from the team is to work hard to develop staff. There is loads any manager can do – delegating work intelligently, personally mentoring and coaching team members, buddy systems and more. Help your team improve their skills in any way you can. Development is vital in how to retain employees. 

Lastly, work hard to create a positive team environment so employees have the best chance to do great work and are motivated to do so. I share 7 practical actions you can take to create a more positive working environment. 

If you have any questions on “6 Ways To Get Your Best Employees To Stay”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

How to give corrective feedback to an employee is a scary prospect when you don’t know how to do it or when you have had bad reactions with previous attempts

If you don’t provide critical feedback, then it will be: 

1.         Harder for the other person to improve quickly

2.         They may not realise that they are missing expectations

3.         You are not really treating them fairly if they are underperforming or have poor behaviours

I share 4 key ways to give negative feedback without offending or upsetting the other person which maximised the chances they will take action. 

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How to give feedback has to start with your mindset and approach. The whole purpose of giving corrective feedback to get action and improvement from the other person. To do this, they need to listen to what you say, take it in, understand it and then be committed to actioning it. 

You massively improve the chances of all this happening when you give feedback with the genuine aim of helping and improving the other person.

Next, we go through what to cover when giving feedback to employees. You have to make your negative feedback as useful as possible. You also want to avoid having lots of difficult conversations.

How to give critical feedback to an employee starts with being specific. You must describe what the employee did in some detail, so they know exactly what they did wrong. Giving critical feedback doesn’t have to be an ordeal for both parties when you know how to approach the conversation. I share key ways to give critical feedback.

Don’t make the corrective feedback about the person. Make the critical feedback about what they did or didn’t do. 

Finally, try to avoid stating your opinion when giving feedback effectively. Aim to use examples and evidence rather than you opinion. I explain how to do this so you are clear on the difference and provide examples. 

If you have any questions on “How To Give Corrective Feedback To An Employee”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles
Enhance.training 

To be able to speak with clarity and confidence at work makes you more effective in your role and you are seen as more successful. To speak with confidence at work takes a little know how and some practice. That is all.

I share 5 steps to help you speak with clarity at work. Speaking to others are key communication skills for any role and job

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To speak confidently and clearly knowing your audience really helps. Make the time to think through what the other person might be thinking and feeling right now. How does their role influence their viewpoint and what pressures does it create. The better you understand your audience, the more clearly you can speak to others so they listen, understand and take in your message. 

Preparing in advance, even if it is only a few seconds to think through how you are going to structure your points gives you confidence and enables you to speak clearly. Rambling, long and overly detailed talks or emails are very hard to follow and understand. Create a structure to what you say so that it is easy to follow and easy to communicate. 

How you speak or your speaking style can be improved quickly with a little practice. This will help you speak confidently in meetings and with groups. I share tips on how to practice to speak confidently and clearly.

The four step in making your communication more concise – that is having the same meaning in a lot less words. Even those that ramble a lot right now can become concise in how they communicate. I share an simple exercise to practice regularly that will build your conciseness skills quickly.

Finally, your body language, particularly your facial expressions and how you hold yourself communicate a lot of meaning alongside the words you use. Focus on how you use your body language when communicating more than the words you say. Both are important. When you look confident speaking, you will feel a lot more confident. 

If you have questions on “5 Steps to Speak with Clarity and Confidence at Work”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

You should value a positive attitude before skills at work. I am going to explain why this is so important as an employee and as a manager thinking about who to promote and who to recruit.

Work on your positive attitude. I share lots of tips of what to do and what to look for to build positive team cultures and get the best from your team in the process.

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Most team members appreciate a teammate with a positive attitude at work. Positivity lifts everyone up and creates a nicer working atmosphere. It is so important to develop and maintain a positive attitude at work. This is great for teams and for individuals.

I share 5 signs or behaviours that indicate a positive attitude plus plenty of tips of how to be positive at work and stay positive at work. 

The more you have a positive mindset at work, the more likely colleagues will be positive towards you. Being positive is more likely to result in better relationships and receiving more help from those around you. This is brilliant recipe for being personally more effective at work. In addition, those that have a positive attitude are much more likely to get promoted at work. It pays to develop a positive attitude before skills at work.

Next, for managers, it pays stay positive at workplace to demonstrate how you would like your team to behave and operate. Creating a positive team culture starts with the leader and their decisions, actions and behaviours. Always focus on being positive at work. I also share 7 key benefits you will have from creating a positive team culture. Take a look at the links above for more details on how to motivate teams. 

Finally, when recruiting staff - put attitude before skills at work. You can teach skills. It is very hard to change a person’s attitude. This is why it is so important to focus a good portion of your time during the recruitment process working out what character traits the candidates have and how positively or otherwise they view the world. 

If you have any question on “Why You Should Value a Positive Attitude Before Skills At Work”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

Successfully managing employees in their first few months is crucial for their success, and have an impact on the success of the team. New joiners first few months are critical to creating a good impression, building positive relationships, getting to grips with their role – all of which set them up for success over the coming years.

When new employees are successful, the team is more successful, with reflects very positively on you as the manager.

I share 5 tactics that every manager should employ to get the very best from their new employees. 

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Managing your new staff successfully has to start with helping them build relationships with team members and then colleagues across the business. Nearly every job relies on teammates and colleagues. With better relationships, you get better teamwork, trust, and interdependency. These in turn produce better results at a team level. 

During the probation period of a new joiner there is lots you can do to help your new staff member build positive relationships which don’t take much time to organise. It is in your interest to help your new employees be successful.

Next when managing employees first few months, it is really important to give them very clear direction and set clear expectations and personal goals. This is vital at any point but none more so when managing new employees.  When managing an employee during probation you both need goals to assess performance and progress in a fair and collaborative way. 

Helping the new joiner be as productive as possible as quickly as possible is in everyone’s interests. There is a lot a new employee needs to learn, regardless of how much experience they have prior to joining. Help them get through this learning process as quickly as possible plus remove problems and provide the resources then need to be successful. 

A good manager plays chess, not checkers. To know what your new employee is capable of and what their real character is like, you need to get to know them. Spend time with them. Work alongside them for a bit. Get to know their strengths, weaknesses, ambitions and interests. I share 7 areas that I want to learn about with any employee

Finally, holding your new joiner accountable for performance and their attitude is also very important. A new employee should be on their best behaviour and working hard to impress. If they don’t demonstrate the right level of ability, work ethic and attitude, take action quickly.

IF you have any questions on “Successfully Managing Employees In Their First Few Months – 5 Tactics”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

Working out what your most valuable work is and do that work! Everyone has the same amount of time. What you do with the time you have is the most important thing to move from okay performance to amazing performance. Work out you most important priorities at work.

I share 4 crucial prioritisation tips for managers. 

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How to focus on your most valuable work starts with understanding that increasing team performance is the most important goal for a manager. This is easily the best way any manager can add significant value to the business in which they work. There are a lot of options for how to increase team productivity. The most important will be specific to you and your team. Common routes include removing problems, training and teaching, creating a positive work culture and supporting and helping your team.

Prioritisation actions for managers must start with what can I do to increase my team’s performance and output. The bigger your team, the more time and effort you should spend directing and supporting your team.

The next best time management strategies and for setting priorities at work is to solve problems your team faces that stop them doing their work or slows them down. These might be outdated processes, low value work, problem employees, lack of resources etc.

Find and solve your team’s biggest problems – a key for how to organize plan and prioritize your work as a manager. This is also a useful approach for how to prioritize tasks at work.

Next for how do you prioritize your work – think about alignment. What tasks, activities and projects are directly supporting the business reach its goals and which ones aren’t helping as much. Focus as much of your and your team’s time and effort on the work that supports the business reaching its goals. When every team in the business aligns their work well, the business performs much better.

Finally, one of the best time management strategies for managers is to teach, mentor and coach team members to develop management and leadership skills. Doing this takes the pressure off you, gives you personally more time and increases team performance.

If you have any questions on “How To Focus On Your Most Valuable Work - Prioritisation Tips For Managers”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

Managers need to improve team results. The main reason a company employs a manager in the first place is to improve team results by more than the cost of employing them. You, as a manager, are in a great position to help your team get the best results.

I share 4 practical and very effective ways to help your team to their best results.

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There are lots of ways to help your team to get great results. As a manager, you time is precious and working out what actions and initiatives you take to maximise improving team performance from your actions is really important

You are in a brilliant position, as manager, to improve team productivity because you have more influence and power to make changes to what the team works on and the problems team members encounter.

How you serve your team – that is how you help each individual and the team overall – improve skills, remove problems, guide, direct … is critical to your success as a manager. A manager works through their team, not directly, to create value. It is all about your team and not you. I have found adopting this mindset and the actions and behaviours to support your team, is the quickest and surest way help your team to get great results,

Next help your team to improve team results by living your expectations. A well co-ordinated team that is working in a common direction is a lot more effective and produces much higher value than individuals doing what they think is best. Setting and maintaining expectations, standards and goals are essential to help your team to improve team results. Living your own expectations, rule and standards are essential to setting and maintaining expectations. If you don’t live them, why should any of your team?

The third way for improving team results is to leverage your time intelligently. The work you do should be focused on making each individual more capable, effective and productive. Increasing each team member’s performance by 10% creates a lot more value than increasing your own productivity by 20%.

Lastly, to help your team get the best results, help your team be a team. I have worked in many amazing companies and most teams I see are not really teams but groups of individuals working alongside each other. Teamwork includes high levels of communication and co-ordination, high levels of mutual support and help, a lot of trust, clear direction and goals and more. Great managers build teams rather than just co-ordinating individuals.

If you have any questions on “Improve Team Results – 4 Ways To Help Your Team To Their Best Results, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

How to keep your career moving upwards is a question most of us think about. We all want some progress, so we don’t get stuck doing the same job for ages. There are a lot of factors in how to keep your career moving. Climbing the corporate ladder starts with working hard and doing a good job. More is needed so you don’t lose momentum in your career. 

I share 4 key approaches that will massively help you in how to keep getting promoted.

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Climbing the career ladder is a lot easier when you choose a career goal and then stick to this goal. Having a consistent goal means you put a lot more effort and energy into everything that helps you reach your goal and less into other activities which don’t help you reach your goal. Being more focused means you get to your career goal faster. 

This advice is simple to give yet hard to keep putting into practice every month and year through your career. Those that stay focused get a lot further ahead and gain a lot more career advancement.

It is hard to make sure you don’t lose momentum in your career. There are ever changing hurdles to overcome and developing a learning mindset is a really important way to keep overcoming hurdles and challenges as quickly as possible.

Another really important aspect for how to move ahead in career is to ensure you keep a positive attitude at work to as much as you can. Positivity is energising for those around you, great to improve teamwork and looked on very favourably by bosses. Look for the positives in all the situations you can. 

Very important in career advancement strategies is to be ready to move company when the opportunities at your current company don’t materialise. Moving is very important to keep climbing up the corporate ladder, so your career doesn’t suffer delays or get stalled. The key to being able to move easily is to invest in learning how to write a knockout CV and be good at passing interviews. Both are skills that can be learnt fairly quickly. See the links above.

If you have any questions about “How to Keep Your Career Moving Upwards – Career Advancement Strategies”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

How to influence people who don’t report to you is a really important skill to make you more effective at work. As you rise through the ranks, you are increasingly expected to influence without authority to deliver results and desired outcomes. 

The ability to influence employees who don’t report to you and influence people in other teams enables you to be a lot more effective in your job. You can get more help exactly when you need it from colleagues in different teams. 

Learn 5 important actions to build influence without authority. 

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When you manage people who don’t report to you, using social influencers is much more effective that trying to rely on the limited power of your position. People like to work with people that are nice, pleasant and easy to get along with. It makes the workday more enjoyable and go quicker. When you manage employees who don't report to you, be nice, be respectful and be useful to them. 

Another very important action when you lead people who don't report to you is to be interested in them and their world. As a manager you want to get to know them so you can understand their strengths and weaker areas, which enables you to get more from them. Being interested in them also create the bonds and obligations of relationships. The more they like and trust you, the more influence you will have with them. You can influence without authority.

Another incredibly important action is the use reciprocity. That is offering them value first. Look for ways to help the other person and help them. Then you can ask for help in return and be much more likely to get that help. A brilliant way to influence at work.

People are much more likely to do what you ask when they are sure you are working to help the wider group, which indirectly helps them, rather than if they suspect you are trying to help yourself. Create and communicate clear common goals. Even better is to link those goals back to how achieving them helps the other person. 

Finally, becoming an influential person builds more influence by itself. Other people know that you are in a better position to help them than less influential people. This gives you more opportunity to influence.

If you have any questions on “How To Influence People Who Don’t Report To You – Influence Without Authority”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training