Working out how to deal with an underperforming team member and then taking the right action is one of the bigger personal challenges any manager or leader faces at work. I would like to take you through the approached I used, successfully, time and time again in over 25 years of managing teams.

 The first step to take when confronted with how to deal with an underperforming employee is not to ignore the problem. You know it will be a challenge, unpleasant and possibly difficult, yet procrastination around poor performance at work ends up being much worse. 

 The individual’s performance is likely to get worse, not better. Your team will get fed up with you and the underperforming employee and are likely to lose motivations and team performance will drop. None of this reflects well on you the manager nor your poor performance management skills. 

 So take action. 

 On of the first steps to take when thinking about how to deal with a poor performing employee  is to talk to them and find out what the reasons are for the poor performance. Tell them why they are an underperforming team member, use examples and set out your expectations for them. 

 Work together to create a plan for how to help the underperforming team member improve their performance and how you are going to help them do this. 

 Coach and mentor the underperforming staff member, so they have the tools to enable them to improve their performance. The more effort you put in to this process, the more likely the team member will turn around their performance.

 Throughout the plan, give honest feedback and monitor progress. Share progress with the underperformer so both parties are clear on what has gone well and what still needs to be improved. 

 Not all underperformers are willing or able to improve their performance. If this happens, it is important that you take formal action to resolve the underperformance, even if this means the underperformer leaves the business. 

 Good luck.

Knowing how to prioritise tasks effectively is a daily challenge for all of us at work and becomes even more challenging once you have team members to look after too. 

 I would like to share with you 7 approaches which have really helped me in how to prioritise tasks at work, learnt and used in a 25 year management career.

 Learning how to prioritise tasks in the workplace and do it well is a key skill to improve if you want to become more and more effective and keep your manager happy. 

 Working out how to prioritize tasks becomes easier if you keep in mind the value to the business of doing each task you have to do. Another very useful approach is to prioritise tasks that support you achieving your objectives which are important to the business. 

 When thinking about how to prioritize tasks at work, it is very tempting to do the tasks we like doing, or are good at, first and put off the other tasks till later. Don’t. 

 Working out how to prioritize tasks when each tasks seems important and urgent can be difficult. In the “How To Prioritise Tasks Effectively”, I take you through several approaches that you can use in this situation. 

 The next level of difficulty come when you start thinking about “how to prioritise tasks for my team”. And the more direct reports you have and the larger the team, the more challenging this becomes. 

 Use your team members to help spread the prioritisation work where possible. Keep in mind your longer term goals  - this really helps in working out how to prioritize work and tasks. 

 Keep practicing your prioritisation skills and enjoy the benefits of being more effective at work.

Good decision making for managers is important to build trust, a reputation for competence, and to progress your career. The decisions made by managers and leaders can quite literally make or break - projects, careers, and businesses.  As a result consistent, good decision making at work really does matter. 

 To help increase the quality of the decisions you make, I want to share a really useful 6 step decision making process with you. 

 Good decision making as a manager is significantly improved by following a decision making process, especially for those complex or important decisions. 

 I have seen time and time again; managers and teams jump straight into solution mode when confronted by a problem without really taking the time to fully understand the problem or make sure they have the full picture. Dig into the detail can be an important first step in a good decision making process.

 Next, when decision making in management it is very useful to define the goal of the decision. What exactly needs to be achieved from the decision that you are making? Be specific with your goal. 

 When you are clear on the problem and the goal of the decision, then explore your options. I have included 6 questions to ask yourself to improve decision making skills and the options you create. 

 Deciding which is the right option rather than the most acceptable option is a hard step in making decisions. 

 And then finally, how you communicate your decision to those affected by your decision will determine in part how effective the implementation of your decision will be. 

 Enjoy good decision making at work!

Learning how to delegate tasks as a manager is vital for any management position. You can’t and shouldn’t do everything yourself. If you don’t learn how to delegate effectively at each management level, your management career will stall.

 Learning how to delegate work as a manager is not as easy as it first seems. In my first management role, I quickly learnt that just telling a team member to do x, y or z rarely got the result we needed.

 Learning how to delegate work effectively has more to do with knowing what to delegate and how and then taking time to support, to mentor and coach and then following up than it does with the traditional view of directing traffic.

 Delegating effectively and making sure the team member is set up to succeed is a vital part of creating great team performance and delivering consistently as a team and as a manager or leader. What you put in you get back with a lot of interest!

 We go through 9 key stages of how to delegate tasks as a leader or manager, which will help improve your delegation skills and make you and your team even more effective at work.

 Enjoy delegating even more effectively!

If you want to enter the management ranks and progress, a big part of your future success will depend on you learning how to influence others at work, how to influence your manager and potentially how to influence the leadership team.

 Unfortunately, just having an opinion doesn’t count for much – everyone has an opinion. To influence others at work, you need to back up your opinion with evidence that your opinion will lead to improvements or better outcomes. 

 Putting yourself in the other person’s shoes is a critical first step when using influencing skills. This gives you insight into how to position your proposal in a way that helps them. 

 Most people understand that trust is a key factor to influence your manager and to influence your stakeholders. Without trust, most other influencing tactics fall flat. Likability and professional competence go a lot way to build trust and significantly increasing your ability to influence others at work. 

 “How to Influence Your Manager & The Leadership Team” details 9 tactics that teach you how to increase your influence at work and 3 communication factors that will further improve your influence. 

 If you are thinking about how to influence without authority at work, then a 

give before you take approach - spotting opportunities to help others and building up a “favour bank” can work wonders. 

 I also cover 4 other key influencing tactics which add weight to your opinion and I have successfully used a lot to influence my manager and many others over the years. 

 Building your influencing skills is critical to progressing your career through the management ranks and into leadership positions whatever business you work in. 

 Try out each of the tactics in “How to Influence Your Manager & The Leadership Team” and practice them regularly. You will end up using these tactics naturally and you influence at work will only increase. 

Learning how to facilitate a meeting effectively is a great skill to develop for anyone who runs, organises, or attends a lot of meetings. 

 Facilitating a meeting effectively is likely to make the meeting a lot more useful for everyone - attendees are more likely to solve the problem or make the decision they are at the meeting for. And it is likely to be a much more enjoyable journey to get there for all attendees.

 In “How to Facilitate A Meeting Effectively” I share 9 meeting facilitation tips that will help you improve your facilitation techniques for meetings, making meetings more productive and useful to you, the team and business.

 It is very hard to undertake effective meeting facilitation and be a full participant in the meeting. Take one role or the other – avoid attempting both.

 The first action in how to be a good facilitator in a meeting is to stay neutral. If you don’t, you will not maintain the trust of every participate, therefore hampering your ability to be an effective meeting facilitator. 

 Stay apart from the meeting conversation and observe the dynamics of what is happening, the personalities in the room and all the non-verbal signals everyone sends. Listen to what is being said and help keep the meeting on course to achieve its objectives. 

 I share meeting facilitation ideas and questions that you use to keep the meeting moving through the agenda, overcome roadblocks and gain agreement from the participants. 

 Use my 9 effective meeting facilitation techniques to improve the results you get from your meetings.

Learn 20 Ways to Build Trust On Your Team. Learning how to build trust is a foundation for team happiness, effectiveness and performance – a key lesson I learnt in over 25 years of managing teams in corporates to SMEs. 

If you have a good manager, they should be able to teach you a lot about how to build trust in teams. For those of you that don’t have a good manager, this video will get you started with ideas and approaches to help you improve building trust in teams.

All 20 ways to build trust discussed in this video can be adapted for your management style and approach. You need to be genuine and natural in your approach and we don’t suggest trying to be someone you are not. 

Build trust with employees by behaving in an open and honest way. Be trustworthy in your actions and support and care about your team members. I know it sounds obvious – we have 20 different actionable ways to build trust on your team – put them into practice. 

One of the best ways to build trust directly with individuals and throughout the team is to spend time teaching, mentoring, and coaching your team members. Take any opportunity to pass on the skills and knowledge that you have built up in your career. Also help team member develop their stronger skills. This is a great approach and a key way in how leaders build trust on a team.

Get to know your team members on a personal level and let them find out about you. The better your relationships the more trust you are likely to build. 

Working with a team that you trust and that trusts you in return is so much more enjoyable. Plus you should get the benefit of noticeably increase team performance which will also help your management career!

Set the right business goals and you are much more likely to achieve success, outperform competitors, grow faster, and generate more profits and cash. 

 How to set the right business goals and then achieve those goals is unfortunately not so straight forward.  I have a 5 step process to make setting the right business goals and objectives easier and quicker, which also helps deliver better outcomes. 

 Setting business goals must start with the long-term business goals. This provides consistency of direction and effort which will more the business forward further in a given timeframe. Achieving business goals are also easier when you have a consistent activities, which you can improve over time. 

 When considering which long term goals to choose, I always think it very important to consider the purpose of the business. What does it exist for? And making money and growing are too generic choices and are outcomes rather than reasons. 

 When thinking about how to set business goals, think about how you are going to implement the goals. What resources and skills do you need and do you have the right ones and enough of these within the business to achieve the goals set?

 Break down your goals into outcome goals and process goals. Process goals support you achieving the outcome goals and these are much more in your control. This makes tracking performance against them a lot easier. 

 When thinking about how to set goals for your business, think about the metrics that you will need to track progress against those goals.

 Good luck in choosing your business goals. 

Being asked about your 30 60 90 day plans for interviews is a make or break question. This interview question separates the great candidates from the good to okay candidates. The candidate’s answer also provides the hiring manager with some insight and confidence into the value that would be created by hiring that candidate. 

 So planning your answer to “What is your 30 60 90 day plan?” or “How would you approach your first 90 days on the job?” is pretty crucial if you want to get that job offer ahead of talented competition. 

 In “30-60-90 Day Plans for Interview”, I take you through 4 mistakes that many candidates make with their 30 60 90 day plans for job interviews.  It is super important that you get the right level of detail, make your plan realistic and use it at the right point in the interview process. 

 Knowing how to build a 30 60 90 day plan, what you should cover and how to present it is also very important to give you a good chance to get the job offer. I cover what is needed within 30-60-90 day plan for interview and include examples for different levels of managers. 

 The further you progress in the interview process and the higher the level of role you are going for, the more likely you are to be asked how you would tackle your first 90 days in a new job. The interviewer can gain a lot of insights into the value you might provide, your confidence and your experience and judgement by asking about your first 90 days. 

 Prepare your answer and as you go through the interview process, keep coming back to your plan and updating it with all the new information that you have gained. 

 And of course a 30-60-90 day plan for managers is incredibly useful to make sure you start any new management job with a flying start that will set the scene for your career at this company.

 Make sure your plan really impresses!

In “How To Run A  Great Team Meeting” I take you through 9 tips on how to running effective meetings, saving time, and even more importantly, creating better more useful and valuable output from those meeting. 

 We have all been in meetings that wasted our time and didn’t seem to achieve anything. The average person attends 10 meetings or more per week and spends 31 hours in unproductive meetings per month. 

 How to run a meeting effectively can be learnt quickly and put into action quickly too. Try these tips on a small informal meeting and build from there to gain confidence and practice. 

 How to run a team meeting starts with having an agenda which is clear and circulated in advance so attendees can start thinking how they are going to contribute. 

 When thinking about how to run an effective team meeting, get the team involved, particularly with setting the behaviour rules for everyone to stick to. This step helps engage peer pressure. I run through some of the popular rules I have come across. 

 Plan who will facilitate the meeting, informally or formally. This really helps in how to run a meeting, particularly if there are a lot of attendees or everyone is very opinionated. 

 Next when planning how to run a team meeting effectively, is think about what the meeting is going to be for. What is the output you are seeking or is the meeting an information sharing meeting?

 If you are looking for a meeting with discussion, debate and decision making, then keep the number of attendees to a smaller number. 

 I also cover how to run a meeting with minutes, which is very helpful if keeping as many people fully engaged in the meeting. 

 Practice running effective productive team meetings! It does not take long and your team and career will thank you for it!