Book IV
Increasing Productivity and Performance
In this book. . .
As a manager, you have ultimate responsibility for getting people to perform at their best and removing the obstacles that might get in the way. This book offers a wealth of ideas from inspiring and motivating with clear vision and goals to the practicalities of allocating resources, managing projects, conducting appraisals, delegating and saving time wasting with emails and meetings. All without major stress.
Here are the contents of Book IV at a glance:
Chapter 1: Leading People to Peak Performance
Chapter 2: Making Goals Come Alive
Chapter 3: Being an Expert at Performance Appraisal and Management
Chapter 4: Project Management: The Key to Achieving Results
Chapter 5: Looking at Staff Resources on Projects
Chapter 6: Finding Your Motivation
Chapter 7: Relax, Itâs Only Work! Stress in the Workplace
Chapter 8: Getting Things Done with the Help of Others
Chapter 9: Perfecting the Art of Delegation
Chapter 10: Organising Your Time and Your Tasks
Chapter 11: Making the Most of Meetings
Chapter 12: Dealing with Your Emails
Chapter 1
Leading People to Peak Performance
In This Chapter
Acting quickly when people donât meet your standards
Ensuring that people work to your standards
Coaching colleagues to higher levels of performance
Sometimes youâre going to find that leading people is a joy: you admire how everyone pulls together to scale new heights of performance and teamwork. At other times, however, leading people can seem like an uphill battle as they falter and fail to deliver the performance you expect.
Throughout this chapter we employ the metaphor of climbing to help you discover how to encourage your staff to strive towards achieving peak performance by setting standards for them and acting promptly when individuals fail to achieve those standards. You find out how to tackle the thorny issues of unacceptable behaviour and performance, as well as how to use coaching to lead people to even better performance.
Being a Great Role Model
Take a few minutes now to identify those leaders that you look up to and admire: perhaps you have direct experience of working with them or maybe you know of them only through books, magazines, television or other media.
Get a notebook and take a few minutes to capture your thoughts about each leader that you identify using the following statements as prompts:
The name of the leader and the position held.
The characteristics, attributes, principles, knowledge, skills or actions that you admire in this leader.
The effect that this leader has had on you.
This simple exercise allows you to identify the impact that role models have had on you, and prompts you to see that you have a similar influence on your staff. You find out about the importance of setting and maintaining standards in the next two sections.
Flying your flag on the summit
Youâre responsible for setting and maintaining the standards of work, behaviour and performance of your whole team and every member of it: youâre the standard-bearer for your team! You want your team to rally round your standards, uphold and protect them just as an army unites around and protects its distinctive flag in battle . . . even to the last man standing!
As the standard-bearer for your team, you also:
Promote and uphold your own, your teamâs and your organisationâs values.
Represent, promote and uphold the purpose, objectives and requirements of your team within your organisation to enable people to achieve the objectives and results expected of them.
Create a team identity that enables your team to feel part of something special.
Be a bold standard-bearer and carry your flag high: âfly it from the summitâ so that what you and your team stand for, in terms of purpose, objectives, values and standards, can be seen by everyone in your team and all the people your team works with.
Being a leader can be extremely hard! You need to set the standards for others to follow: you have to be the person that you want others to become in terms of your teamâs values and standards regarding the quality of work, how members of your team work together and with colleagues in other departments and so on.
Setting the standard doesnât mean that you have to be able to do every task that every member of your team does. As people do their jobs every day, they become experts. The range of your responsibilities and the size of your team are likely to grow as you climb up your organisationâs management structure and as your leadership and professional talents are recognised and appreciated, and you canât possibly be an expert in everything.
Your staff members are always watching you: your team and other work colleagues take more notice of â and tend to copy â your behaviour more than they take notice of what you say. Inspire members of your team to achieve your teamâs objectives by conveying your enthusiasm and commitment to succeed.
Avoiding the crevasse of double standards
You canât expect the people who report to you to work to or maintain standards that you donât keep yourself. Therefore, you need to avoid having double standards! Developing double standards without realising it is all too easy.
Be careful of unintentionally allowing double standards:
Donât make allowances for a person falling below your standard regarding an aspect of work or behaviour just because that person is highly skilled in other aspects. Some people are naturally more skilled or proficient at doing certain tasks than their colleagues, and you need to organise work to make best use of the collective talents of your team; but donât allow anyone to fall below the overall standards you expect everyone to achieve.
Donât show favouritism towards certain team members. Be careful about turning a âblind eyeâ towards people who fail to maintain the teamâs standards simply because you like them.
Noticing that the standards of work and behaviour in your team are falling can sometimes be difficult. Keep a constant lookout for early signs of standards falling because, just as a careless mount...
