Enhance.training

How you manage incompetent employees is essential to improving team performance and reducing the time, effort and hassle you experience in dealing with poor employees.

Use these 4 steps to be fair to yourself, your team and your business 
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You might take over a new team with an incompetent person in it, or a person may become incompetent over time with increasing demands of their role and they fail learn and grow. 

There are loads of reasons why you might have incompetent people in your team. Incompetent employees are those who perform noticeably below peers – by 20-30%+

Incompetent team members are, unfortunately, toxic to team performance and career progression as a manager. If you want to do a good job, you can’t ignore incompetent people at work.

Always make the time to ask questions and find out what is behind the incompetence. A surprising amount of the time, the issues causing incompetence are very fixable. This is the quickest way to improving team performance and is a good demonstration of your management skills. 

The second step for how to deal with incompetent people is assess the potential. Some people have lot, and some don’t. You manage each differently. I go through the factors you should consider.

The third step in how to deal with incompetent employees is to think about what other jobs in the company could I move this person to in which they could do a good job. For the right type of situations, offer to move the incompetent employee. 

Finally, when dealing with difficult people and incompetent people and you run out of other practical and sensible options, take steps to remove the employee from your team.

Take action today. You cannot afford to ignore incompetent people in your team.

If you have any questions on “How to Manage Incompetent Employees – 4 Essential steps to Take Today”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

Run great weekly team meetings and staff will want to attend, the team meeting will be useful to everyone, and holding the weekly team meeting will actually improve team performance over time compared to not holding them.

I share what I have found works really well for how to run staff meetings effectively. Get  better staff meeting ideas and start improving meetings today.

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One-on-One Meeting Booklet (13 pages)
Learn exactly how to run brilliant one-on-one meetings for better relationships, increased development and improved indiviudal performance - all of which helps you improve team performance. Learn more here: https://enhance.training/lm-lp/one-on-one-meeting-agenda-ulp030/

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Running team meetings is not easy. There is so many different ways to run weekly team meetings. Too many managers find themselves the only one really talking during the meeting and staff look bored, looking at their phones or otherwise not really engaged.

Effective meetings are where everyone is clear on the purpose of the meeting, everyone is engaged and participates and at the end of the staff meeting, everyone has actions or next steps to go and do. 

Team meetings are super useful in increasing communication, co-ordination, support and teamwork. I view weekly team meetings as part of the core foundation of communication and prioritisation needed to improve team performance over time.

How to have a great staff meeting starts with communicating what the meeting will achieve, and what is expected from everyone who attends. Running effective meetings is also about who attends. If they are not going to participate, they don’t need to be in the meeting. 

Aim to keep weekly staff meetings short. You have them each week so wasting time is a no no. Create a clear agenda and circulate prior to having the meeting – a key practice in how to run a team meeting effectively.

Effective meeting management should make the meeting about creating actions and improvements in the work the team does. Ensure that each meeting attendee leaves with an action. 

The first agenda item sharing results achieved since the previous weekly meeting. Next, set goals to achieve for the next weekly team meeting. Third share challenges and organise help and lastly, celebrate wins and successes.

I go into detail on how to use each agenda item so you know how to run team meetings effectively. Make the weekly team meeting as useful as possible to everyone attending!

If you have any questions on “Run Great Weekly Team Meetings - How to Run Staff Meetings Effectively”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

How to set OKRs with your team and use them to deliver the right goals quicker and better will make you and your team a lot more successful. Using the OKRs or Objectives and Key Results system helps prioritisation, creates a focus on results rather than activity and aligns everyone’s efforts to deliver the right goals.

I share 6 steps for how to set OKRs with your team and achieve the right goals.
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What are OKRs in business? The OKR system is an approach to goal setting that creates visibility, goal alignment and help improve team performance. The objective is the what you want to accomplish. The key results part is 1-5 projects or initiatives that talk to HOW we achieve that objective. That is the OKR basics or OKRs explained.

To set OKRs, the first step is to understand the wider business goals (or your business unit or functional goals). Alignment of goals means everyone is moving and working in the same direction. This is very important to maximise effort towards achieving common goals and in performance management. 

Then you can set team OKRs. How to set OKRs for your team starts with considering how your team can best contribute to achieving the wider goals and what areas of responsibility and activity your team covers. I have included OKR examples in the podcast.

Once you have chosen your objectives, you should work with the team to set the key results via a small number of projects. These need to be specific, realistic and the results to be achieved very clear. 

Assign who is doing what, starting with the leader of each project. Don’t spread your team too thin otherwise you will not achieve your goals. Focus of effort is really important. 

Goals are great but without constant attention, they are quickly forgotten. Create visibility of the OKRs. Keep referring to them, tracking them, talking about progress. Don’t forget to praise great results. 

Finally, constantly follow-up with your team and provide help, support and coaching to ensure they achieve the results desired as quickly and painlessly as possible. This is a vital step that too many managers spend too little time on. Work alongside your team to deliver the best results you can as a group!

If you have any questions on “How to Set OKRs With Your Team and Deliver the Right Goals Quicker”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

Key result areas or KRAs are a very useful tool to increase employee understanding and accountability for the results they are being asked to deliver. KRAs help better align employees work to wider goals and make better use of resources. At an employee level KRAs focus individuals on delivering results rather than undertaking activity. 

 Learn what are key result areas and 5 great ways to use key result areas to improve team performance. 
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Key result areas for team direction should align to company strategy and the function or business unit KRAs. Alignment is really important to maximise everyone efforts in the business to hitting targets and goals. I have provided some key result areas examples at company and team levels.

For performance management, less KRAs in number increases the focus – which is good for results. When setting goals for individuals, align these directly to the team KRAs. 

Next think about the time periods over which you need the results. Set team KRAs that create the most valuable results to enable the wider function or business goals to be achieved. 

Then set individual KRAs which relate directly to their roles and aligned into the team goals. This creates good performance management tools both at a team and individual level. Results are usually easier to track than activity. The KRA in performance management terms should has specific and clear measurable output.

Finally, always spend as much time planning the activities, initiatives and projects that will enable the individual to deliver the results set out in their KRAs. The employee is much more likely to deliver results when they have a clear plan or set of plans to enable them to deliver. 

I view this final planning step as super important for success in improving team performance. 

Creating good key result areas is a very useful tool to focus time and effort into the right areas. As a manager, you then need to work at keeping the KRAs front of mind and influencing what the team focuses their time and effort on. In the modern workplace, there are so many distractions, new initiatives and shiny projects that forgetting about the KRAs is easy to do unless the manager is constantly reminding the team. 

Use KRAs to move employee thinking from activity to delivering results which are more aligned to the wider business. 

If you have any questions on “5 Great Ways to Use Key Result Areas or KRAs to Improve Team Performance and Ownership”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. 

 Jess Coles

Enhance.training

Keeping team members happy, motivated, and performing is great for you and great for your team. Better team performance and an great working environment come from a happy team. Keeping staff happy is within your control as a manager and you can implement each of these actions quickly.   

I share 7 ways to make your staff happy at work that every manager can implement easily.

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Keeping employees engaged and happy starts with communicating openly, honestly and frequently. Employees what to know how their job fits into the bigger picture and understand that what they do is valuable. 

Keep team members happy by communicating what is happening in the company, how the company is performing ... in short share the news. Direction makes everyone’s job easier.

Listening to your employees is one of the best way to make your employees happy. You get a ton of valuable insights that really helps you increase team performance. Use the ideas, suggestions and solutions team members come up with. You increase team productivity while keeping everyone that much happier. 

Treating your employees how you want to be treated is timeless advice, yet how many mangers really avoid the many common mistakes that damage trust, happiness and appreciation. I share tips to help you get into the right mindset. 

Focus on solving employee problems as a manager. It’s a brilliant approach for how to make your employees happy. You also leverage your time and create significantly more value for your business by helping your team members work better, faster and smarter. 

Do you praise enough? Research as shown that keeping employees happy requires you to praise them at least 3 times more than criticise or give corrective feedback. This ratio is even higher in high performing teams. Positive reinforcement is a great way to build higher team engagement and better team performance. 

Finally, publicly demonstrate that you value your employees, their contribution, their skills and the results that they deliver. 

If you have any questions on “Keeping Team Members Happy – 7 Actions Every Manager Can Easily Implement”, please email me at [email protected]  and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

How to focus your team on the KPIs you measure is as hard as choosing the right KPIs in the first place. Greater focus from the team means more time and effort directed at what drives the KPIs, which will increase team performance. 

I share 5 key tactics to get your team laser focused on the key performance indicators you measure.

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KPIs or key performance indicators are how you measure and track progress against the goals you have set. KPIs are a very useful too in performance management and business management and widely used as a result. 

Setting KPIs that change behaviour of your team and align effort and action on the tasks, activities and projects that will best help the team reach the goals set is a critical first step.

Most businesses have information overload. After goal setting, working out which kpis and metrics to track to drive results is not easy. 

Once you have chosen your key performance indicators, educating your team to why you have chosen these specific KPIs is the next step. If they don’t understand how the KPIs link to the goals and the why behind them, they will not be nearly as engaged and focused on undertaking activity in the right areas to maximise progress.

Next explaining to the team exactly what they need to do to improve a KPI measure is a must. Don’t expect them to know this or understand everything about what is needed. Explain and educate them. When the team know exactly what to do and how to do it, they are much more likely to deliver what you need. 

In our extremely busy and distracting workplaces, it is not enough to talk about KPIs and goals a few times and expect the team to stay focused on delivering against them. You need to constantly remind them. I share 7 ways to do this very effectively.

Finally, to add even more focus on the tasks, activities and projects that will best progress the team to reaching goals, link all the benefit you can into kpi progress and reaching goals. There is a lot of benefit that don’t need budget and of course many that do. Clink a range of both to improving kpis and achieving goals.

If you have any questions on “How to Focus Your Team on the KPIs You Measure to Drive Better Performance”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

What stops you making decisions at work? Work decisions can have big consequences, big impacts or are very public, making deciding on what to do harder. 

I share 7 common reasons for not making a decision at work, and 3 practical ways to overcome decision paralysis at work. Improving your decision making skills today.

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There are loads of reasons that stop you making decisions at work. Fear of failure is a major reason for struggling to make a decision at work. As we progress our careers, the impact of our decisions become more and more public. Embarrassment, consequences, reputations, job security … stops you making decisions.

When you have confidence decisions are made a lot more easily. When you are struggling to make a decision at work break down the decision into smaller parts and make lots of smaller decisions. 

Lack of information is a reason many end up struggling to make a decision. Rarely do decisions makers have all the information than want. Another challenge is focusing on making the right decision. In business there is rarely a binary decision or a right or wrong decision. For how to make decisions focus more on the best outcome rather than right or wrong.

Worrying about what others think stop you making decisions. You cannot please everyone and at work, putting the business and team before individuals when struggling to make decisions is sensible. 

For how to make decisions at work reference the company direction and strategy. The more aligned your decisions to wider goals, the easier they are to make. Lack of direction makes it a lot hard for employees to make decisions. 

For how to make tough decisions, think about which options will make the company and team better off compared to the other options. This mindset is very useful how to make decisions at work. 

Those that make decisions quickly and decisively are very good at reframing and changing their perspective. This helps them overcome their fears and mentally move themselves forward to make a decision. You can use exactly the same techniques to make decisions quickly and decisively

If you have any questions on “What Stops You Making Decisions At Work & What To Do About It”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

Being in middle management is a tough job. Middle managers are also vital to the success of your business, translating the business goals and strategy into day to day activity and performance to reach those goals. 

Businesses with their middle managers in the top quartile of performance on average delivered 3 to 21 times more shareholder value than middle managers in the other quartiles. A massive reason to invest to make your middle managers more successful.

I share 4 vital ways to make your middle managers successful, each with practical tips of how to implement and get the best from your middle managers.

How to make middle managers more successful starts with be really clear about what you want from them. Explain very carefully the goals and invest time to ensure your middle managers understand the company strategy and how the company will achieve success. 

Make middle managers more effective by working with them to develop the projects and activities needed to implement the strategy of the business. They will appreciate your time and you will know more about what is happening in the business. Clarity of direction is very valuable – a perfect way to invest in the success of your middle managers.

Second, undertake management skills training with your middle managers. They will develop management skills a lot quicker, which means delivering more value quicker. Great news for the business and you. Develop their leadership skills through coaching and mentoring. Management is one of the few professions with little or no training given, yet managers are expected to perform and deliver great results. This is crazy. Getting management skills in business does not happen quickly by osmosis. 

Next provide responsibility and flexibility to your middle managers. If you drown you managers in rules, processes, administration and bureaucracy, how can they do a good job. Every person and situation they face will be slightly different. The real value of middle managers is their skills and knowledge and ability to effectively deal with a massive range of people issues – give them the right tools for success. Give them responsibility and flexibility. 

Finally, work at measuring success and accountability. Visibility increases accountability on its own. No-one wants to let colleagues and team members down or be bottom of the pile. Creating visibility and measuring success and accountability will give you the confidence to free up middle managers from rules and regulations. Cutting down the bureaucracy is a great way for how to help middle managers set teams up for success.

Successful teams = a successful business. Just what everyone wants!

If you have any questions on “4 Vital Ways To Make Your Middle Managers Successful”, please email me at [email protected]  and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles
Enhance.training

Learning how to talk effectively to higher ups is a big deal for your confidence and career prospects. Once you understand the elements of communicating effectively with executives and senior management, you will find it easier and easier to effectively communicate with higher ups. 

I share 6 tactics to talk effectively to higher ups giving you practical actions to help you improve quickly.
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Communicating effectively with higher ups starts with focusing on impacts and benefits. This is what they care about, not the process to achieve these benefits which is your responsibility. When communicating effectively with executives, add numbers and be specific with what you say.

Talk clearly and concisely to upper management because they don’t have time to long winded poorly structured messaging. When talking to higher ups be clear what you want from them and make this easy to understand.

Get straight to the point when talking effectively to higher ups. Then you can provide the context and detail as needed.  I share exercises on how to make clear and concise points like a boss.

How to talk to higher ups includes focusing on the top concerns. Frame what you are talking about in terms of benefits to them, not you, when communicating effectively with others. They care about their world so talk to them in terms of how they, their team or the business will be impacted.

A big part of how to communicate with higher management is to work out the flaws before they do. Work out what questions they might ask and have good answers for these. Make time to look at what you are communicating from different perspectives and find the weaker areas or flaws. This gives you time to work out how to avoid them or mitigate them. Taking this step increasing your credibility and standing very quicky with executives and higher ups

Believe in what you are saying. How confidently you talk to managers and leaders will determine the level of challenge and questioning you get. The best way to build confidence is to do your homework, work through likely questions and build good data and insights to back up your position or request. 

Finally, be open and honest. Experienced managers have an amazing knack of asking the right questions to expose problems and shortcomings. Be honest in how you answer question. Any dishonestly or trying to hide issues will cause a lot more damage than being open about problems to be resolved. 

The more time you spend practicing how to articulate your thoughts clearly, the quicker and easier you will find talking effectively to higher ups. Effective communication is a brilliant way to get noticed and gain the respect and trust of higher ups. 

If you have any questions on “6 Tactics To Talk Effectively To Higher Ups” please email me at [email protected] I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles

Enhance.training

Being open minded at work, in my view is a critical career success factor, for any professional or managerial role. Being open minded means you learn faster, are more empathetic, build better relationships faster … in short, open minded people usually do better jobs and are easier to work with.

I share 4 ways to be open minded at work and maintain an open mindset.
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How to be more open minded starts with your mindset and attitude. Our brains love patterns which creates a tendency to be closed minded. Feeling that you are right is the enemy of learning because you don’t look any further. The solution or approach you use doesn’t improve.

I share three different techniques to break this pattern – all critical ways to be open minded and keep becoming more open minded. Be more open minded to speed up how quickly and how well you learn.

Great managers work hard to maintain their open mindedness. They know that their teams have a lot to offer so being open minded allows them to maximise how they use the strengths of their team, which in turn leads to significantly better team performance. Use the exercises I share to develop a great attitude and see the best in your team members.

How to be open minded includes learning how to stop, consider, evaluate, and then make up your mind, even when you have an immediate solution. Being open minded is a necessary first step to enable you to constantly get better at what you do. If you are not open to what others offer or to better ways of doing things, how will you improve?

Be open minded by creating the habit of asking and listening. No-one knows everything. Nearly all of us rely on those around us to help us to do our jobs. We receive information, work and ideas from them as much as give these to others. We are a society of specialists working together so the group does better than having lots of generalists. Relationships, communication and relying on others are all critical. 

Learn more, do a better job and get on with more people by asking a lot of questions and listening to what you are being told. This is a brilliant way of demonstrating your open mindset to your team and colleagues every day!

If you have any questions on “4 Ways To Be Open Minded At Work – A Critical Career Success Factor”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you.

Jess Coles

Enhance.training