Tip #512 - Tips for Better Employee Management

Employee management is, for all intents and purposes, the day-to-day engagement of employer-employee relationships on a professional, work-related level. To manage your employees well, you need to think of them less as the physical incarnation of their job roles and more as the people who make your business' success possible.

In the past, employee management was something of a more rigid experience. These days, successful businesses find that employing a little finesse to their management practices is much more effective. To that end, your friends at Dale Carnegie Training came up with six tips to get you started down the path to becoming a stronger leader:

1. Establish An Open Line Of Communication - The first step, if not the very foundation, of great employee management is to establish a line of open, honest and comfortable communication between employees, leaders and managers. The more uncomfortable an employee is with their employer, the less likely the two are to be on the same page. Comfortable communication comes from familiarity, so get to know your team. This will make working together feel much less like pulling teeth later down the road.

2. Focus On Strengths, Not Weaknesses - Every employee has individual strengths and weaknesses. It stands to reason that you hired them for whatever their strengths may be. That is why spending more time correcting their weaknesses or shortcomings is a waste of time and energy. You didn't hire the employee to spend all your time fixing their shortcomings or to fit a square peg in a round hole, so instead focus on actively fostering the growth and development of their strengths.

3. Be Reasonable With Your Expectations - Part of being a leader at your business is being a visionary - someone with big goals and big ideas. Unfortunately, it is easy to forget how much time, effort and energy goes into executing a new initiative or project, which can cause leaders to unintentionally overwhelm or overload an employee with too many expectations. This in turn can cause undue stress and frustration for the employee, negatively affecting your ability to manage them.

4. Plan Accordingly When Expanding Roles - The business world is still in a state of financial flux. With many companies regularly downsizing, many employees are required to pick up the extra workload. The trick to effectively managing the assignment of additional responsibilities is to plan accordingly so your employees don't feel they have been thrown in the deep end. It is better when an employee has time to acclimate to his or her new role and responsibilities.

5. Be Consistent And Reliable - As a leader or manager at your business, you have a lot on your plate-no one questions that. Information and ideas channel through you from a hundred different directions, not to mention new initiatives and projects that fall on your shoulders to develop. But even in spite of your own heavy workload, it is imperative that you be consistent and reliable when interacting with your employees. It may prove difficult, stressful even, but it is crucial that employees feel they can rely on you to get something back to them promptly.

6. Invest In Employee Training - Providing opportunities for employees to improve and strengthen their skills shows your genuine interest in investing in them. Naturally, any employee who feels valued is likely to be reciprocal when being managed. Paying for employees to attend skill-strengthening classes like those offered by Dale Carnegie Training reinforces the idea that you are invested in them as an employee and as a component to your business's continued success.

Employee management is by no means a walk in the park. It takes a lot of hard work and concentrated effort on the part of leaders and managers. But as with all things that come as a challenge, the end results of your labor will strengthen your company significantly. Good employee-employer relationships allow for better communication, which in turn allows for fluid, dynamic management.

Tip #511 - Managing Stress and Goal Setting

Goal setting is a worthwhile and necessary function on the road to success. But over-striving to meet goals often results in more stress, and thus, the need to find ways to reduce it.

When attempting to reduce goal-oriented stress, your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of Western Connecticut recommends first examining the goals you've set for yourself. Goals should be difficult, but achievable with persistent effort. Goals that are too far fetched, such as doubling your income in one year, nearly always lead to failure and discouragement. 

Attainable goals work because you persist and focus your efforts in a specific direction. Without that direction, we'll often find ourselves bouncing from one task to another like a pinball, more at the mercy of outside forces that have no stake in our welfare or success.

The good news is there are ways available to us to combat goal-induced stress. The first line of defense is to eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly. Also try to establish a firm time each day that you won't work past. Pre-plan vacations and weekends so that you have something to look forward to outside of work, and schedule social events with friends at least once per week. However, be mindful of not over-booking social activities so that you can build in some time rest and recuperation.

Also keep in mind that goals need to be set for all aspects of your life, including relationships, finances, home, physical and mental health, as well as spiritual development. Be specific and reasonable when setting goals so that you don't invite more stress into your life. The more you regularly review your goals and focus on them, the more likely it is you'll meet them. 

Write down your goals, read through them periodically, visualize them and consider keeping a picture journal that represents your achievement of those goals. And don't resist making adjustments to those goals when necessary. Career plans seldom unfold exactly as plotted, and you need to be flexible and adaptable in order to keep an overload of stress from creeping into your life.

Tip #510 - Creating a Strong Leadership Image

Being a strong leader is a combination of a number of things. For some, it is a natural gift-a magnetism that gravitates others to them and makes them an effective leader. For others, leadership is a quality built up over time, constructed and refined and practiced until it gains effective gravity.

First Impressions are Everything

The first thing someone notices about us is our appearance and behavior. They see how we dress, hear how we speak, and notice how we hold ourselves. Then they add all these all up to make a first, initial assessment.

However, in addition to your appearance, it is important to consider other elements that define your leadership. Here are five tips from your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of Western Connecticut to help you or someone you know develop a stronger leadership image:

1. Maintain Balance - Smart leaders know how to strike a balance between being both strong and supportive. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done, as you have to straddle a fine line between being a leader who can take a joke and one that commands respect and authority. Whatever you do, never toggle between the two types in extremes, or you will lose your employees' respect.

2. Avoid Self-Absorption - Whether your company consists of three employees or three hundred employees, the moment your business becomes more than just you, it becomes a team moving toward a mutual goal. Remember, isolating yourself from your employees is never a smart business move. Strong leaders are inclusive, not exclusive.

3. Show Interest And Energy - A disinterested and lethargic leader can expect more of the same from his or her reports. Strong leaders possess a genuine passion for what they do that turns the daily grind into a welcome challenge.

4. Practice Your Speaking Skills - Take a moment to Google public speaking and vocal training. If you can, attend a Dale Carnegie Training course that teaches vocal training techniques. The ability to speak articulately is a powerful tool that lends itself well to projecting credibility as a leader, and as such is something you should not take lightly.

5. Communicate With Clarity - In addition to the ability to speak well part of strong communication is communicating with clarity in written form. The rule of thumb here is to "write like you speak, speak like you write." Be conversational, be concise, and have a logical flow to your written documents.

Your leadership image is comprised of many elements. Your appearance, your behavior and mannerisms, the way you speak and the way you communicate all contribute to the concept of you as a leader in your organization. Business leaders should treat each of the items above with equal regard, and give serious consideration to every component mentioned if they strive to present themselves as a strong, competent, dynamic leader in the business world.

Tip #509 - Tips for a More Effective Hiring Process

Most managers agree that hiring is one of the most important aspects of their job. It also tends to be one of their least favorite responsibilities. Ask any manager what their strategy for hiring is, and most will just shrug and tell you they really don't have one. This is because the hiring process is an exhausting one. There is paperwork to be filled out, rules to adhere to and even time constraints to consider.

In order for your business's hiring process to be more effective, you need to streamline it. It needs to be broken down to its essential steps so that hiring is quick and easy for everyone involved, from the manager down to the new employee. Here are seven tips for accomplishing that from your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of Western Connecticut:

1. Put An End To Long Delays - Just as you are considering more than one candidate, they are considering more than one potential employer. Like many other aspects of business, recruitment is competitive. That means there is no time for passing paperwork throughout an organization before taking any real action. Top talent won't stay available for long, so managers need to address the hiring process sooner versus later.

2. Don't Rummage Through Résumés - Sifting through stacks of résumés from unqualified applicants is a waste of time and energy. Make sure that your recruiters understand the job requirements thoroughly so that every applicant they forward to you meets the minimum requirements. This expedites the hiring process right from the start.

3. Improve Your Interviewing - Good interviewing is a lot like good conversation. Both require a balance of push and pull, and, in the case of interviews, both formal and casual conversations are appropriate. Also, keep in mind that candidates who make good interviewees do not necessarily make good employees. We suggest crafting interviews to be multifaceted, so you get to know the employee as a person as well as a worker.

4. Come To An Interview Prepared - Managers should never go into an interview blind, especially when dealing with top talent. Smart candidates will come equipped with both market research and competitive benchmarking, hoping it gives them an edge, so managers should conduct their own research in order to go toe-to-toe with candidates.

5. Minimize Documentation - Part of what jams up the hiring process is excessive paperwork. Sure, certain legalities need to be recorded, but a lot of this paperwork is just useless and never looked at again. So why bother having it?  Slimming down employment paperwork so that it is less of a hassle for managers means less of a hassle for everyone.

6. Observe What Does And Doesn't Work - In larger businesses, several managers may have hiring responsibilities. When this is the case, these managers need to be in communication with one another. They ought to swap hiring success stories in order to put together a more effective hiring strategy based on experience, instead of just theory.

7. Give Managers More Control - Many managers feel disconnected from HR, which can sometimes cause them to lose a top candidate. They claim that the offers approved by HR just aren't competitive enough. At the end of the day, hiring a new employee should be about strengthening your team, not saving as much money as possible. Hiring based on dollars and cents is never wise, so give managers better salary survey data, and afford them more control over how high their offers can be.

Ultimately, hiring rests on more than just a manager's shoulders. Managers, HR and recruiters need to work as a team to make the hiring process fluid and more likely to bring a new, ideal hire into the fold. This requires the process to be streamlined - disassembled then reassembled so that all the fat has been trimmed off and the hiring process has been made quick, easy and painless.

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Tip #508 - 4 Cost Effective Ways to Re-engage Your Employees

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to do someone else's job for a day? Some organizations take this question very seriously and use it as a means of employee engagement. This is one of several low-cost tasks that management can do to increase employee engagement and discussion about job satisfaction in the workplace.

If you're looking to reinvigorate your employees, or even if you just want to change the corporate culture, consider these creative, inexpensive employee engagement solutions from your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of Western Connecticut:

1. Change Your Company's Wardrobe - While your organization might allow the typical "dress down Friday," you might want to switch things up a bit. Consider allowing a sports jersey day, a Hawaiian shirt day, or a company colors day when appropriate.

2. Interview Employee Day - Have you ever looked at someone's job title in your organization only to wonder exactly what it is that person does? Set aside some time for your employees to "interview" each other about their roles in the organization. This will inspire personnel to achieve new goals in the company and to make new contacts within the organization.

3. Change Your Music - Most offices/warehouses allow employees to listen to music as long as it is kept at a low volume or via headphones. While this can boost productivity, it can also create a level of isolation. For a change, allow employees to appreciate each other's musical tastes by asking everyone to contribute a song to an office playlist for the day. Alternatively, you might want to consider using a free web-based service such as turntable.fm, Pandora or Spotify.

4. Have Your Staff Switch Jobs For a Day - Job swapping is a great way to enrich your staff as it allows your staff to explore other areas of interest and gain appreciation for what their coworkers do. Additionally, it inspires individuals to communicate beyond their own teams as they get to learn about new departments. This can also reveal a great deal about your employees' interests. To best accomplish this, coordinate a 30-minute meeting between employees so they can learn about the essential job duties and what must be accomplished within the work day.

Employee engagement does not have to be a large or expensive program or process. Most employees are curious about the jobs and interests of others, and you can learn a great deal about your employees' goals by allowing them to learn about each others preferences and job duties.

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