No Bull Business Blog

Keeping the good employees that you hire

Excerpted from Why Good People Jump Ship - and What You Can Do to Stop Them:

Understanding and clarifying expectations is key to keeping good people. It should start at the time a prospective employee is first interviewed.

During that initial interview, the candidate should get a detailed description of the job, the work schedule and the type of environment the person can anticipate.

Job priorities, accountability and potential for growth and advancement should also be discussed.
Once a candidate is hired, it’s important to provide this information again in various forms, such as during an introductory meeting with a manager and a handful of co-workers.

A “welcome” packet, employee manual and other printed material is helpful to reinforce some of these expectations.

Whether an employee is brand new or a veteran, managers must strive to create an environment where questions are welcomed. Good people need to know they can always ask a manager to clarify expectations.

When good people are asking questions about expectations, it means they are concerned about getting results, too. If a manager doesn’t hear anything, it doesn’t mean things are rosy. And by the time you do hear the news, it may be too late to fix.

Practice communicating expectations early and often, and relating how those expectations fit into overall organizational goals.

Remember: Good people want to feel they are a part of something special – and “special” things are worth talking about!

DIGGING DEEPER
Keeping good people isn't an accident. It takes good managers who know how to create an environment that employees see challenging. For more help, check out the Executive Report: Why Good People Jump Ship - and What You Can Do to Stop Them.

Turn negative employees into positive ones

Excerpted from the executive report Handling Difficult Conversations with Employees: What Every Manager Needs to Know.

Conversations – especially those dealing with emotional issues – rarely follow a logical pattern or system. Every conversation is a little different.

You can’t shoe-horn a conversation into a pattern or system. What you can do, however, is develop a method for getting the other person’s feedback and moving toward a desired result. This five-part conversation method and system has worked for many managers when they’re seeking a change in behavior or performance. A step-by-step example of dealing with someone who’s always negative and critical of others’ ideas:

1. ‘When you ... I feel ...” You can use this to set up the problem: “When you say, ‘That’s a dumb idea,’ I feel as if you’re being disrespectful to the person who offered the idea, and you discourage others from speaking up.”

2. Wait for their input. This is one of those points when your silence can be golden and when you can put into practice one of the “don’ts” we described earlier – “Don’t feel as if you have to fill every silence.”

Let your “When you” sentence hang and wait for a response. And here’s where it gets a little tricky, because you can’t be certain of the response.

The person may deny it, in which case you’ll have to give examples: “I can describe at least three times in the last week ...” Or the person may say, sincerely, “I didn’t realize I was doing that.”

Sometimes, too, the person will offer an excuse – valid or invalid. For instance, the response may be, “I’ve been losing a lot of sleep because of migraine headaches, so that may account for some of it.”

If you believe the excuse is valid, take steps to help or accommodate the employee. That’s what supervisors are supposed to do. Even if you do that, you still can move on to the next step.

3. “I would like ...” Here’s where you describe, specifically, the change in behavior you’d like to see: “I would like you to come to the next meeting with at least three ideas of your own on how we can improve.”

That sets the standard and results in positive terms: “This is what I want you to do.” Instead of “This is what I want you to stop doing.”

Consider how that works in any number of conversations involving performance or behavior. For instance, the person who’s always
coming in late.

Negative: “I would like you to stop coming in late.”

Positive: “I would like you to be on time every day.”

4. “Because ...” In almost any situation, you have to provide a reason for requesting change (other than “because I said so”).

Again, try to stay positive: “Because I know you have a lot of good ideas, and I think we’d all benefit from hearing them.”

That beats the negative attack mode: “Because we’re tired of hearing your criticisms.”

5. “What do you think?” You’re asking straight-out for feedback here, and you’re doing so with more than one purpose:

• You don’t want the person to walk away with the feeling that he or she has been given some iron-fisted orders.
• You can move toward a commitment from the person to change.
• You’ll get a real feel about whether the conversation worked and you’re headed toward a desired goal.

Try this system the next time you’re in a difficult conversation, and see how it helps to get you where you want to go.

DIGGING DEEPER
Every manager has at least one negative personality on the staff. Who do you deal with those folks? For help, check out the executive report: Handling Difficult Conversations with Employees: What Every Manager Needs to Know.

3 questions that will boost motivation - and business

Excerpted from the Executive Report: Why Good People Jump Ship

Involved employees are motivated employees. So how do you make sure they're involved? Ask employees these three questions and you can boost morale and business:

1. Can you tell me our top three goals for this year? (To analyze the level of engagement, people need to be on the same page.)
2. If you were competing against our company, what would you do? (Managers are often surprised to learn that employees know right where the weaknesses are.)
3. What is currently impossible to do that if it were possible would change everything? (This forces people to think is there something different we can do? What drives us crazy and how can we fix it?)

DIGGING DEEPER
Making sure your best people stay is key to boosting business. To get help doing that, read the Executive Report: Why Good People Jump Ship - and What You Can Do to Keep Them