Enhance.training

How do you manage difficult employees of often asked in interview when:

 1.           The interviewer or hiring manager is judging how effective a manager you are

2.            You are joining a team with one or more difficult employees in it, and the interviewer wants to know how you are going to handle them

3.            The team you will be managing has one or more difficult people in it

 The reasons for being asked how do you manage difficult employees are wide so it makes sense to ask a clarifying questions first before answering this interview question. This allows to give a much more tailored answer, thus getting you closer to offer than a generic answer might. 

 When answering how do you manage difficult team members or any of the variations, it is important to manage your body language. If you look worried, hesitant, or scared or similar you will be putting yourself at a distinct disadvantage to candidates that answer this interview question confidently.

 I set out the 5 points you should include in your answer if you are the potential manager and if you are the potential colleague having to manage or work with difficult employees. 

 And of course, we provide an example answer so show you how to cover the bases properly. 

 Good luck in your interviews. 

What to do when staff or colleagues undermine you? It is horrible when you realise one of your colleagues is actively trying to undermine you and make you look bad in front of others. It can knock your confidence and trust in others and can be very demotivating. Worst case, your job could be under threat. To make this bad situation worse, the undermining actions are often subtle and hard to really pinpoint. 

 If you find yourself in this situation, there is a lot you can proactively do to stop the undermining behaviour. I cover 

·        what undermining signs to look out for

·        5 actions you can proactively take to stop the undermining behaviour as quickly as possible.

·        6 ways to Market your work internally

Repeated behaviour that puts you in a bad light or makes you look unprofessional is what to look out for at work. I give 7 examples of different types of behaviour that indicate that you are being undermined by employees.

 There are lots of reasons why a co-worker may try to undermine you. What to do when colleagues undermine you? Don’t do nothing or be passive – take proactive action to stop the behaviour while maintaining your professionalism.

 Because undermining behaviour is usually subtle, the first step is to start collecting evidence of the undermining behaviour. I appreciate that this may seem like overkill when you first become aware of the undermining, yet the sooner you start the sooner you can get the behaviour to stop.

 Finding others who are or have been undermined at work by the staff member is another important step. You have to do this carefully.

 Confronting the undermining colleague professionally can stop the undermining behaviour very quickly if done in a effective way.

 Next, speak to your manager and ask them what to do when co-workers undermine you. Your manager can be a great ally when approached in the right way. 

Finally you can escalate the matter to HR or further up the management chain if the undermining behaviour has not stopped after you and your manager have confronted the colleague in question. 

 I leave you with a number of ways to market yourself and the value you deliver at work more effectively, which is great practice generally, and even more so when staff or colleagues undermine you.

  Take action!

How to handle team members with bad attitudes? Disruptive team members are a problem we have all faced either when managing a team or working in a team. Other team member’s bad attitudes can quickly affect your attitude and performance and the team’s attitude and performance. Dealing with negative employees is energy draining at the best of times for those around them.

 Learn six tried and tested steps for how to manage disruptive employees successfully. The most important step when thinking about how to handle employees with bad attitudes is not to ignore the problem. It rarely goes away and usually gets worse if ignored.

 Plus the rest of your team will start picking up the same bad behaviour or habits. You must take action.

 Employees with bad attitudes can come about for a wide range of reasons. These reasons might be related to the working environment, colleagues or management or they may be a result of issues outside of work. Find out why the bad attitude has started before doing anything else. 

 The next step when planning how to handle employees with bad attitudes is to work out what the best plan of action would be. This very much depends on the situation and the person.

 Dealing with negative employees is a lot easier once you have set out your expectations for their behaviour. Put your expectations in writing and be clear with the negative employee what is acceptable and what is not. 

 Then support the individual to improve their attitudes or if they can’t or won’t change their bad attitude, move them out of your team and company. 

Deciding what questions to ask in an interview is always challenging. You will have plenty of things that you would like to know before starting and you know that you have to impress the interviewer with what you do ask. 

 Not asking any questions in an interview is a no no as it will give the impression you are not keen or interested, thus losing you the job.

 So how should we prepare our questions to ask in a job interview? To ask really good questions, you need to know something about the company. So do your research so that you have good questions to ask the interviewer. This takes a lot less time that you think. 

 Find out exactly how to prepare great questions to answer “Do you have any questions for me?” or “Do you have any questions for us?”

 If you are wondering what questions to ask at the end of an interview, I have listed out 10 great questions to ask in an interview when you have not done much or any research. 

 There are also a lot of questions that you should NOT ask in an interview. In fact doing so could easily loose you the job. I have listed out 10 question types you should avoid.

 Don’t worry too much about the number of questions to ask in an interview. An interview is a two way street and by asking questions, you are demonstrating your interest and keenness of the role and company. Take you cue from the interviewer’s body as to when to stop asking questions. 

 Good luck in your interviews!

Political skills for leaders are skills that are essential for anyone who wants to be more effective in influencing others. Building agreement, alignment and alliances with businesses enable you to deliver significantly more – which helps you, your team, and the overall business.

 Political skills in management start with yourself and developing personal skills. We cover self-awareness, self-control and being proactive which are all very important skills when thinking about how to influence others at work. 

 Influencing others  is not an underhand activity, or about manipulation. Being honest and sincere is a critical part of how to influence others as a leader. Other important interpersonal skills include listening, thinking before speaking, being curious and managing upwards well. 

 Being good at reading people and situation is very important in management and doubly so when influencing others and using political skills for leaders. Less than 10% of communication is in the words being said. 

 Political skills for leaders is also about building alignment and alliances between leadership team members and those in the various management layers. When you have leaders and managers aligned, you have massively better chance of delivering on your project or activity as everyone is support rather than pursuing their agendas and moving in different directions. 

 When influencing others, it is important to keep in mind the strategic direction and goals of the business and team. This keeps you on track and moving everyone in a consistent direction which produces better results. 

 You can get so much more done within a business when you are able to use political skills in management positions. 

 Even if you are not yet in management positions, you can use political skills when managing stakeholder and those you rely on and report to. Doing a better job and achieving more will move your career progress forward faster. 

 Enjoy practicing your skills!

“Why should I hire you?” is a common interview question. You might be taken back with the slight challenge implied yet will probably list out all your strengths with your answer.

 This interview question has a trap that many candidates fall into which to avoid needs some preparation. 

 Other variations on this interview question include:

·        Why should we hire you?

·        Why do you want to work here?

·        Why do you want to work for us?

·        Why do you want to work as this company?

 Knowing exactly what is being asked when answering job interview questions is the first step to giving a great answer. The interviewer is rarely after just the face value of the question. 

 Next, understanding how to prepare for Why should I hire you is also important if you want to give a very strong answer that will get the hiring manager thinking “I want to work with this person”. 

 Learn a three step process for preparing a great answer for “Why should I hire you” which you can use for each interview you attend which will give you a strong, memorable and original answer to this interview question.

 At the end, go through the example answers that a professional level and junior manager level candidate might give.

 Take the time to practice your answer. Speak out loud or video yourself. The delivery of your answer should be clear, structured, and confident. Do include at least one good example in your answer and use numbers to explain the scale of the benefit you delivered to the company you worked for.

 Good luck in your job search and interviews. 

How to execute and make things happen is the set of skills needed to turn ideas into reality. Many businesses place too much emphasis on those with good ideas which is maybe 5-10% of a solution and don’t emphasis the execution skills needed to turn ideas into concreate action and results – the 90%+ of the solution and the hard part.

In this podcast I share 8 key practical steps that will help you significantly improve how to execute and make things happen personally and through your teams. 

 Getting Teams to deliver consistently is hard work if you don’t know how approach the task. Execution or making things happen in the workplace is not taught as such. If you are lucky enough to have a manager who knows how to get colleagues to deliver and teams to deliver, then they may teach you about execution in business.

 How to execute is not hard learn. It does take practice and effort to develop the skills needed. Don’t be put off – executing in the workplace is a fantastic boost for promotional prospects and it will massively help you in your career progression. 

 The first step is to understand your team – what can they do and what can’t they do. Next work to get the right people in your team which makes your life as a manager a lot easier. 

 Understanding what your goals are, communicating your goals and getting all stakeholders aligned and agreed with those goals is another vital step. 

 Managing the team so there are clear owners for each step in the project or activity that you need to deliver, visibility of progress and the right support for each team member are also vital steps. 

 And finally, following-up so that you are signalling how important the project is through your actions and also being able to proactively support and help were needed is a step that managers rarely do enough of. 

 Use the steps we outline so you can deliver a lot more at work and get the rewards for achieving more. 

How do you manage expectations or how do you manage the expectations of your manager are both interview questions you should expect to be asked in pretty much any interview you attend.  

How you manage expectations at work is such a critical skill for everyone, and in particular anyone managing people.

 If you manage expectations well, then you will be:

1.            Easier to work with

2.            Colleagues will like you more - because you don’t let them down 

3.            You are perceived as 

       a.            more professional

       b.            a better team player

       c.            better at your job

 These are all qualities that any interviewer will want in anyone they hire into a professional or managerial role. 

 I take you through 8 suggestions of what to include in your interview question answer and at the end of the video, I share two example answers. 

 Before you start putting together your answer to the interview question “How do you manage expectations” it is sensible to understand why the interviewer is asking this question and what they hope to get out of your interview question answer. 

 With all interview questions and answers you are looking to hit all of the key points the interviewer is looking for in your answer. 

 “How do you manage your managers expectations” is another variation on this manage expectations interview question, often asked by your line manager for obvious reasons. 

 Your interview question answer should cover the same key points. 

 Choose the best and most relevant example to include into your interview question answer as this provides some “proof” that you can do what you say you can. 

 Good luck in your interviews!

Long term planning for business or strategic planning is the hardest type of planning because the timeframes are over years and a huge amount can change in that time. 

 I am going to take you through how to approach long term planning for business, what to consider, what to avoid and how best to approach each stage.

 When setting strategy or long term business goals you should undertake a realistic and honest assessment of the current business as well as understanding the external market, direction of trends and all the other likely influences on the business over the next 2-5 years. The aim is to create a picture of where you want the company to get to and include business goals.

 The strategic planning process is all about HOW we translate that strategy or set of long terms goals into tangible steps we can take to get us from where we are today to those strategic goals.

 I suggest several of the tools to use when thinking about how to create a strategic plan. Thinking about your internal strengths and weaker area is as important as looking externally to the company at market and customer trends etc. 

 It is well known that many leadership teams create strategies that they then struggle to put into practice. Alignment within the leadership is very important as is with the senior and middle management layers that are going to have to implement the strategy. Getting them involved or giving them a chance to input into the planning process helps gain their buy-in and improves the success of implementation. 

 When thinking through the strategic planning steps, keep the ability to implement the plan firmly in mind.

Forward planning for managers is an essential part of the job. The purpose of planning is to think through the steps we need to take to reach a goal, hopefully massively increasing the chances of reaching that goal and hopefully doing so quicker and more easily.

 The purpose of planning is so 

1.            we don’t let others down or damage relationships, 

2.            we use as little time, energy, and money as we can while still achieving our goals, 

3.            we know which steps to take when,

4.            we can co-ordinate many people or moving parts

5.            we take better advantage of business opportunities or avoid business risks

6.            we can consistently deliver thus building our credibility and reputations within the organisations we work.

 Learn about 4 key areas to cover in any planning process, what to avoid and what to do. I also cover 5 types of forward planning that managers are likely to be involved in starting with strategic planning. As the timeframes and complexity reduce as you go into tactical planning and then operational planning, planning for a manager become easier. 

 One of the key steps for any planning process in business is to define the goal you want to get to. The goal should be specific and clear rather than vague and general. This will help your planning process. 

Another key one of the forward planning techniques we cover is to get the individuals that well need to implement your plan involved in the planning process. This helps them own the plan alongside you, thus significantly increasing the chances of the success of that plan. 

 Implementation of any plan is always the hardest part, so it makes sense to take all the steps possible to improve your plan to make its implementation as easy as possible while still achieving the goal you have set out.

 Enjoy your forward planning!