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Giving negative feedback to employees is one of the most feared tasks of managers. 43% of 2,700 leaders surveyed found giving corrective feedback is a “stressful and difficult experience” and hence the majority of managers don’t give negative feedback. 

 In an Officevibe survey from thousands of companies, 83% of employees really appreciate feedback, regardless of whether its positive or negative. And a Gallup Poll found that employees receiving negative feedback were 20 times more likely to be engaged that those receiving no feedback at all. 

 Employees need and want feedback so they can learn and improve. I am sharing 7 actions for giving negative feedback to employees. These will help drive corrective actions while keeping the employee happy. Take these actions and it is must less likely the employee will be upset or cause problems.

 When thinking about how to give negative feedback to employees, the first action is to always give negative feedback in private. You wouldn’t want other broadcasting your negative points.

 How to give feedback at work definitely includes giving feedback quickly. The value of feedback decreases with time – we forget, other things come up etc. When giving negative feedback, give it quickly. 

 The next action for negative feedback is super important – tailor your feedback style to each person. A direct style will be appreciated by one person might be offence for another. Know your team and adapt your style of communication. 

 When thinking about how to give negative feedback to employees, it is really useful to explain the impact of what they are doing or not doing. This puts their actions or choices into context and will add weight to your feedback. When giving negative feedback, you are essentially asking the other person to change. Explaining the impact helps the other person put in the effort to change. 

 When giving negative feedback to employees it is vital that it teaches and improves them. You must not give negative feedback to express your anger, annoyance, or other emotions. Give negative feedback to help the other person learn and improve. This action alone will help you avoid most of the negative consequences associated with giving negative feedback.  

 When giving negative feedback at work, take the time to listen to what your team member tells you. You can learn a lot by actively listening. For example, many negative behaviours at work are symptoms of other problems. If you don’t listen, you would never know what these are.

 Finally, to give negative feedback to employees and make sure it has a useful outcome, plan actions together after giving the negative feedback. It is really important that the other person comes up with the actions – this will mean they are a lot more likely to own them and put them into action. 

 Good luck giving negative feedback to employees. 

Pressure at work is next to impossible to avoid, not matter what job you do. Therefore learning how to deal with pressure at work is a pretty sensible skill set to develop. 

 Your ability to productively manage pressure at work is as important to your career progress as developing many other more obvious skills. I take you through 6 tactics to deal with pressure at work, which will help you with managing stress in the workplace.

  The first tactic in learning how to manager pressure at work is to know your pressure threshold. This is the point at which healthy pressure and stress – which gets you motivated and productive – starts turning to unhealthy pressure and stress – which leads to exhaustion and worse.

 The second tactic in how to deal with pressure at work is to prioritise ruthlessly. You only have so much time, so making the most of your time to do the most important tasks makes sense. Ruthlessly prioritise and I share a couple of tools to help. This helps manage too much pressure at work. 

  A great method when thinking how to work under pressure at work is to turn big tasks into small tasks. We have all faces what seems a huge daunting task. We don’t know how we are going to complete it. When faced with this at work, think about the first small step to take on the journey to completing this task. Then the next and so on. This is great in how to handle stress at work. 

 Setting boundaries between work and home is another good tactic in how to cope with pressure at work. Getting very clear with what the expectations on you are, is also very important in how to manage work pressure. Uncertainty and vague expectations are a source of stress and pressure in themselves. 

 Working out how and when to ask for help is also essential in how to deal with stress at work. There are lot of people you can ask for help in and out of work. I share my tips with you.

 To give you concreate actions on how to cope with pressure at work I go through 9 practical pressure management techniques that I have used very successfully for years. 

 Feeling under pressure at work and not know how to reduce the stress and anxiety that comes with this is a horrible feeling. I have unfortunately been there at work. 

 Having sensible tactics to deal with pressure at work is extremely useful to stop yourself getting exhausted and everything getting too much. 

How to Write a CV For Professionals to consistently get interviews for the jobs you really want demands a slightly different approach. Updating your CV and hoping this will get you to interview is not enough.

 When you write your CV, you are giving the reader an example of your work. The CV writing skills you demonstrate are another area you can compete on  - in addition to what you have done – which give the reader an indication of your likely work skills and approach.

 How you write your CV for professional roles gives the hiring manager personal experience with quite a few of your skills - which will trump anything you write down on your CV. 

 People going for professional roles have had to study hard and gain specific qualifications. They get paid well and professional jobs have great career development opportunities. These factors make them very competitive as a lot of people want these great jobs.

 On top of that, professionals have good written communication skills and can effectively articulate their skills to a hiring manager. These skills and the fact that they are hard-working and are good at learning, means developing strong CV Writing skills is even more important. 

 When thinking about How to write a cv for professionals there are 7 skills that you can and should demonstrate when you write a cv for professionals.

 Each of these skills are desirable, and being able to demonstrate them on you CV will put you ahead of those who just state them on their CV.

 I cover cv writing tips for experienced professionals, so you send positive hidden messages to the reader of your CV. Your CV is an example of your work, so the look, the professionalism, the structure of your CV plus your written communication skills, the persuasion used, the proof you offer etc all combine to provide a strong impression of you. 

 The assumption is that the skills used (or lack of them) in writing your CV will translate directly and be used while doing the job being applied for.  

 So when thinking how to how to write a good resume, you must think about the impression the example of your work will give.

 CV Writing for professionals covers a number of preparation steps you should take before you even start writing your CV. Omit these and you will almost guarantee yourself an average CV at best. 

 How to write a resume that will get you hired need to start with going through all your experience with a fine tooth comb and building lots of credible examples so you can demonstrate or prove the skills you claim you have. 

 Next when thinking about how to write a cv for experienced professionals is that you must choose a target role before writing your CV. You need to be specific. Marketing Manager is not enough. In what sort of company? With what development opportunities? B2C or B2B? Products or Services? 

 Get as specific as possible. Then you are in a good position to work out the problems that this role will have to overcome. When you understand the problems, you can write a CV focused on demonstrating you can solve those problems.  

 Watch the video to find out more about these steps and 8 other crucial steps plus other cv tips for experienced professionals.

 Give yourself the best chance of getting to interview again and again for exactly the job you want!

My manager doesn’t like me is a horrible feeling to have. The good news is I have 5 tactics for you to use to change this quickly.  

 Having a good relationships or at least a professional relationships with your manager is so important for your career and it makes going to work each day much more enjoyable. 

 I share 10 signs your boss doesn’t like you. If your manager doesn’t like you, you will be in the receiving end of at least some of these signs and your team members won’t have the same treatment. If everyone gets treated badly then the manager may be difficult or even toxic.

 When you are thinking “My boss doesn’t like me” focus on building a professional relationship first. Ensure you are doing at least and average job, you are positive towards your manager and team members and you visibly support your manager. Do all these well and there are very few managers that won’t like you on a professional level.

 If you feel “my manage doesnt like me” a must do to change this is to do a good job. If you are doing a below average job, you are causing problems for your manager. Deliver good quality work, on time and in the right way. I have 8 actions you can take to be good at what you do.     

 Another how to make your boss like you action is to ensure you are not the problem. I have included a checklist of 9 actions which you should make sure you are NOT doing. Do any of them and it won’t be a surprise you feel my manager doesnt like me!

 The next action to if your boss doesn’t like you is to help your manager be successful. Very few people dislike those that help them be successful. Take a look at the team goals and ask your manager what theirs are. Work to help deliver these objectives or help your team members deliver them. Make sure you boss knows about your efforts.

 When your manage doesnt like you become a problem solver. This is another way to directly help your manager. Look out for problems and think through at least one practical solution before speaking to you manager about both. Manager love having problem solvers on their team – it makes their life a lot easier. 

 It does take some confidence to start implementing each of these actions. Please start with at least one, work hard to put it into practice and then add a second to this. Keep going until you are doing all 5 tactics. 

 I have used these tactics for over 20 years with a huge range of personalities. Each tactic absolutely works. 

 Enjoy the feeling that you manager is starting to like you!

Mentoring skills for managers is about HOW you teach and transfer knowledge and skills to your team members.

 Using mentoring skills in the workplace can be a great way to leverage your time and skills as a manager by upskilling your team so they can do more. 

 I take you through how mentoring helps you, 4 essential mentoring skills and touch on 10 key skills that will help you be a better mentor. 

 So why should you use mentoring in the workplace? Firstly using mentoring at work is a great way to upskill your team. Mentoring helps your team members to improved performance, feeding into improved team performance. You also have better stronger relationships with team members and a host of other benefits that drive overall team performance. 

 Good team performance is good for the manager – in recognition, better bonuses, promotion, and satisfaction. 

 To successfully mentor team members you need to put in time. Mentoring employees in the workplace is a time intensive (and results intensive) upskilling approach.

 When using mentoring skills for leaders, decide on the goals to be achieved with the mentoring programme with the person you are mentoring. When you have agreed goals, then plan out how you are going to help the team member achieve those goals. 

Your mentoring sessions should be structured and have purpose if you are going to drive results with your team member.

 When involved in mentoring programs in the workplace, it is critical that encourage, praise and compliment good actions and choices made by the team member you are mentoring. Positive reinforcement drives behaviour. 

 Being a mentor also means you have to give useful feedback to steer and teach. You can’t afford to beat around the bush or give vague or watered down feedback. Learning how to be direct as well as kind and considerate with you feedback is an art. I give you tips on how to do this. 

 And finally, when thinking about how to be a mentor at work, 10 key skills that will help you develop stronger mentoring skills are listed and explained. 

 Mentoring skills for managers are so useful to develop and very personally rewarding. 

 Do enjoy mentoring your team!

Coaching skills for leaders and managers are super useful to drive the accountability and performance of team members. 

 I share 5 coaching skills for leaders and managers to help you get more from your team and make your team members happier in the process.

 Coaching skills in the workplace are quite different from the more traditional training skills and mentoring skills. Coaching skills give you another very effective way to manage and develop team members.

 One of the best outcomes of using coaching skills for managers is that you leverage your time even further. This helps you and the team deliver more and deliver smarter. 

 To develop coaching skills for leaders, developing your own self-awareness is vital. If you are not aware of your beliefs, your strengths, your limitations, your values, your emotions, and your reactions then how can you help others discover these very same things.

 Next, I take you through 4 behaviours take support the effective use of coaching skills in the workplace.  These are behaviours that good managers will already demonstrating day in day out. Trust and a good relationship with your team members is needed for using manager coaching skills effectively. 

 At the heart of coaching skills for leaders and managers is asking the right questions. Questions get the other person thinking while keeping responsibility for solutions and decision making firmly with the coachee. Accountability is massively improved as the solution is their idea not yours. 

Learn about the different types of questions and I share lots of examples.

 Another vital coaching skill is active listening. I view listening as an underrated secret weapon for manager and leaders as you can learn so much by effective active listening. Learn what active listening is and what it is not and how to start building your active listening skills.

 Finally, I take you through the GROW Model, which is a very useful framework to structure your coaching sessions with team members. The GROW model is focused on defining goals and then working towards achieving those goals – very useful in coaching for performance. 

When to use training, mentoring and coaching at work is important as each of these staff development approaches are different. These terms are used interchangeably at work by most so it is easy to be unsure of the differences between training mentoring and coaching.

 I hope everyone has experienced training as it is widely used in most business as the go to method of staff development. Training is the cheapest method of development mainly as it is short in duration (hours to a few days) and can be given to many people at once.

 Mentoring and coaching are both different to training in many respects and usually occur on a one-on-one basis. Mentoring is an expert giving tailored advice and help to a less experience person. Mentoring is a form of training on a personalised basis. 

 Coaching is facilitating a person’s learning. The coach does not need to an expert which is required by training and mentoring. The person being coach creates the solution, driving much higher ownership of the solution and retention of the learning.

 Coaching vs mentoring is quite different, though as you might expect, both mentoring and coaching can be used in the same development session.

 So how to use training mentoring and coaching at work. Which development method you choose depends on several factors:

1.      How many people you need to develop

2.      What the skills and attitudes are of those being developed

3.      The skills and knowledge you need to improve

4.      The importance of the learning being retained

5.      The time you have available to develop others

6.      The budget you have available

 These 6 factors help you decide on training vs mentoring vs coaching.

  Mentoring and coaching are both time intensive, are highly personalised forms of development and give you significantly better results in terms of skills, solutions, and knowledge retention. 

 How to drive team performance depends a lot of assessing what skills gaps can be closed by each development method. Identifying and then coming up with a clear plan of how to close the gaps and why these will give you increased team performance.

How you go about managing high performing employees is every bit as important as having high performers on your team.  High performing team members add that secret sauce to the team, help drive the rest of the team further, and are a key part of the team delivering great results.

 I take you through 7 actions I have found to be super important in managing high performing team members.

 When thinking about managing high performers, setting expectations and goals together is a great starting point. Getting their input drives ownership of their goals, which in turns improve performance against those goals.

 High performers at work also need to be constantly developed to make sure you can keep them in your team for as long as possible. So constantly work on development. This is the best way for how to retain high performing employees. A great example is innocent drinks which have 70%+ of the HR team focused on staff development.

 What managing a high performing employee, delegate problems not tasks. Problems require the high performer to think, plan, make decisions and implement solutions. Delegating tasks alone doesn’t require them to think, plan and make decisions which is a waste of talent and your time, plus does not development the high performing team member in the same way.

 Next, it is important to what out for high performers burnout. High performing employees are the most like to burn out in my experience. As their manager you have to tread the line between keeping them challenged and learning and guard against overloading them with work or pressure. 

 Investing time coaching and mentoring high performing team members (and all team members) is the best way I know to increase performance of the individuals and the team. You will get back your investment many times over. Plus you can stay close to what they are working on without risk of micromanagement and build better relationships with them. 

 High performing employees want to be rewarded for what they deliver. Praise, compliments, prizes, and many other forms of reward which are easier to provide than money should be considered.

 And finally, you do need to pay high performers well otherwise they will leave. There is high demand for high performing employees so another company will be happy to meet their expectations if you don’t.

 High performing employees are a pleasure to work with. They do take every bit as much effort and through to keep them happy as other staff and it is twice as important that you take the time to keep them developing and staying within your company. 

 Enjoy managing your high performing team members!

I share 7 secrets to progress your career quickly.

 You probably know many people that work really hard, do a good job yet don’t seem to get promoted. Getting promoted is like playing a game – once you know the rules, playing the games gets a lot easier and you get promoted.

 Advancing your career does take hard work, yet hard work alone is not enough. You have to work smartly too and work out what skills and experience are needed for the next level up and proactively seek out this experience. 

 Progressing your career is helped a lot if you have a clear career goal. You are putting your efforts into areas that matter in getting to a single goal rather than not making the best use of your efforts because you are not sure where you are heading. 

 To progress you career, you need to do a good job. Doing a good job is the entry point to getting promoted. How you do your job and meeting or exceed your objectives is equally important and I give you a list of = behaviours that help. 

 Drive your career progress forward by ensuring that everyone’s perception of you fits in with the level you are trying to get promoted into. Fitting in is crucial.

 Your career progress is influenced heavily by your manager. With a strong relationship with you manager, your career will progress much quicker. A poor relationship and you will be lucky to see any progress. Proactively build a good relationship with your manager.

 When thinking about how to get promoted at work, the strength of your relationships with your manager’s peer and their managers is also important. This group will be deciding who get promoted. If they know and like you, your chances of promotion at work are a lot higher.

 Finally, choosing the play the game takes effort and a willingness to push yourself out of your comfort zone, learn and adapt. Getting promoted also means giving things up that have a personal impact. Continuing to learn and adapt requires drive, ambition, and motivation. How are you going to increase these for the right reasons?

 Proactively manage your career progress by working to give yourself the best chance of promotion at work.

Having effective one-on-one meetings with team members is one of the best tools – in my opinion – to drive
1.Better relationships with team members
2.Improved engagement
3.Improved performance
4.A culture of giving feedback
5.Individual and team development

Setting aside time to specifically develop team members, give feedback and build relationships sends an incredibly positive message to the entire team.

I share 5 actions for effective one-on-one meetings with team members, so you get the most out of the time you invest in these meetings.

--- Resources
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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One on one meetings with employees allows you to spend quality time with team employee, giving you the platform to build strong trusting relationships which are vital to give you the full benefits of all the other actions you undertake as a manager. 

One to one meetings are also great opportunities to provide and receive feedback from team members. We all need feedback so we can improve what we do. 

1 on 1 meetings are super useful in setting direction for each individual employee. For senior team members or high performers, agreeing direction is a better approach. 

1:1 meetings also give you both a private setting to share information to help each other do their jobs better. 

I suggest that you book weekly one on one meetings with staff so you both have regular and high quality touch points to go through all the above. 

Always have your one on one meeting in private where you will not be disturbed. The one on one meetings should be between 45-60 minutes long. 

Preparation for your 1-on-1 meetings will make the meeting more effective and you will be able to cover more. In this video, I take you through a one on one meeting structure. There are lots of ways to structure you meetings – make sure what you choose works for both of you. 

Effective one on one meetings ensure that both parties contribute to the agenda. Aim to talk less that your team member during the meeting which ensures they get good value from the meeting. 

Start the one on one meetings with direct reports with a check-in and some small talk. Find out how they are feeling, what they are working on and what is happening with their favourite hobby or activity. 

Take the time to share information so you both can do your role more effectively and then review how progress towards goals are going. 

Don’t forget to provide plenty of feedback during your 1 on 1 meetings with employees and ask for feedback too. Praise where you can.

Spent the majority of the one-on-one meeting coaching and mentoring to improve the skills of your team member, engage in problem solving and making decisions. 

After the one-to-one meeting, make sure you follow up on actions agreed. This makes the meeting valuable. A nice chat is not the purpose of a one-on-one meeting – you ultimately need to improve performance and results on an individual and team level. 

Enjoy having effective one on one meetings with team members!

Jess Coles
enhance.training