No Bull Business Blog

It's OK not to be polite

Excerpted from the Executive Report: Executive Phone Skills for Business - A guide to clear, concise and effective business conversations. 

 

Saying you're sorry is almost always the polite thing to do. But when it comes to business, don't apologize for calling someone.

 

You wouldn't be calling them if it wasn't important, so don't start the conversation apologizing for "bothering" them.

 

It immediately weakens your position.

 

The reason you're calling them is because what you have to say is important - to them and to you. It's business and you wouldn't have "bothered" them if you didn't need to.

 

So exchange pleasantries and cut to the chase.

 

DIGGING DEEPER

The phone is a critical tool in business, yet most people make the most of their phone calls. There is a guide that will help. Read the executive report: Executive Phone Skills for Business - A guide to clear, concise and effective business conversations.

5 ways to salvage a difficult employee

Excerpted from the Executive Report: The Supervisors Guide to Managing and Motivating Difficult Employees

 

Firing a difficult employee is always an option, but it's not always the best option. Salvaging the person and turning him or her into a productive and reasonably cooperative employee is often better for the company.

 

But to do that, you must shift the responsibility from you, the supervisor, to the employee. The employee has to become responsible for changing.

 

After all, it's the difficult employee who has to change, not you.

 

There are five key steps for shifting the responsibility for changing:

1. Clarifying expectations. Tell the employee exactly what you want, in the way of performance or behavior, or both. And make sure the standards can be observed and measured. That's why you don't want to say, "Fix your attitude." There's no standard of measurement for that.

2. Provide training. You can't push someone out to sea alone in a boat and expect good results. Arrange training, and work with the employee to decide what training is appropriate and reasonable.

3. Specify consequences. Let the employee know the consequences - the bad ones for failing to change and the good ones for implementing change. That gives them a goal to shoot for.

4. Provide feedback. You can't expect the road to change to simply have a start and a finish. There's a whole area in between where you have to let people know if they're making progress and how much or how little.

5. Remove obstacles. Ask the employee what's preventing change. If you can control and remove the obstacle, do so. If it's up to the employee to remove the obstacle, make that clear, too.

DIGGING DEEPER

Getting difficult employees to turn over a new leaf isn't easy. To get help, check out the Executive Report: The Supervisors Guide to Managing and Motivating Difficult Employees