0 An Introduction To Building Effective Teams Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 7:07 PM

A manager's role has changed dramatically over the past 10 to 15 years. This change stems from the realization that old management techniques and styles are no longer effective given the changes taking place in peoples' attitudes about work. Today's employees are in tune with what other companies are doing in terms of empowering employees and establishing teams to solve problems, refine processes, plan and make decisions about how particular segments of the business will be managed and other facets of managing the organization. The manager of the 90's and beyond will need to be an effective builder of teams whether the team is his/her work unit or specialized teams formed to plan, refine processes, solve problems or carry out some other task.

-Old management styles or techniques tended to be more controlling and dictatorial. The management styles and techniques that fit in today's business climate will need to be much more facilitating in nature.
-Managers cannot see themselves as the sole source for decision making although they will probably be the final authority in most decisions.
-A facilitating management style includes coaching, encouraging, listening and teaching.
-This is clearly the preferred style in today's business climate.
-Interpersonal skills are very important to this process. Effective team building starts with effective communication and facilitation. Many people who have risen through the ranks have been more task-focused than people/goal-focused. Making the transition can be difficult, if not impossible, for some people.
-A controlling leadership style generally has adverse effects on a team's communication effectiveness and morale. Remember that, in general, high morale = high productivity.
-Subordinates of a controlling manager tend to be motivated by fear. While in the short-run, employees motivated by fear might produce well, they are often reluctant to express opinions that they perceive run counter to the manager's and/or will attempt to hide problems. Upward communinication diminishes and the information being shared becomes less accurate and less meaningful. In fact, team members will tend to select communicaton that heads off punishment since they are part of a punitive environment.
-Power struggles, back-biting, excessive conformity, diminished creativity, withdrawal and other negative results can occur under the leadership of a controlling manager.
-Controlling and facilitating leaders view authority differently. A controlling leader views it as power and usually will not share it. A facilitating leader looks at authority as something to be shared and used in a manner that will help empower the team.

Exercise

The following chart illustrates the difference in leadership styles. If a manager/supervisor placed an "x" along each attribute continuum to best describe his/her style, an overall picture of leadership style would emerge. Take a few minutes to place an "x" along each continuum. Example: if you feel you tend to sell decisions or ideas to subordinates more so than tell them what the decision is, you would place an "x" closer to the "Selling" end of the continuum. The "x" can fall anywhere along the continuum.
Selling____________________________________________Telling
Diplomatic_________________________________________Direct
Gentle____________________________________________Harsh
Laid Back_________________________________________Demanding
Loose____________________________________________Controlling
Patient___________________________________________ Impatient
Long Fuse________________________________________Short Fuse
Social____________________________________________Private
Soft Spoken_______________________________________Loud

Do your "x"s tend to be more to the right or more to the left? If they tend to lie more to the left, your style is more facilitative. If they tend to lie more to the right, your style is more dictatorial. A word of caution is appropriate at this point. Being too far to the left is just as dangerous as being too far to the right. A style that tends significantly to the left indicates that you could be too "soft" in your approach to managing people. There simply are times when being direct is important, for example. But it is how being direct is delivered that counts. Knowing what kind of style you present in the workplace is critical to effective team building. This exercise is intended to help you think about what type of style you bring to managing people.

-Facilitating leaders generally produce better results because their team members are empowered. They will tend ot use creativity and brainstorming to improve and perform at higher levels. They tend to become thinkers. Controlling leaders tend to suppress independent thought and creativity.
-Almost without exception members of a team led by someone with a facilitating style will be more likely to support decisions (buy into them) and work harder to carry them out. Why?
-Because they were involved in the process in some manner.
-Does this mean that employees are involved in every aspect of every decision? Absolutely not. But when appropriate, the team is engaged by the manager to provide input and assist in planning and making certain decisions. -Because responsibility for implementing decisions is often shared, the talents and knowledge of all team members tend to be more fully utilized.
-Conversely, teams led by more controlling styles tend to work against the leader because they want to have input, but the manager is unwilling to relinquish enough or any authority.
-Your goal is to increase productivity and performance through enhanced employee satisfaction.

There are four keys to effective team building:

1. Lead with a clear purpose. The goals of the organization must be clear to all employees since these drive the focus of the various work units. But employees of any work unit or team must know why they are doing what they are doing. Therefore, each team must have well defined, actionable goals and expectations. In developing these goals and expectations, it is appropriate that team members have input into their development. These goals and expectations must be written and distributedto all team members. Here is an example of team gaols for a warehouse and shipping team:

Goal 1 - Maintain at least a 95% customer service level.
Goal 2 - Achieve on time shipments 98% of the time.
Goal 3 - Achieve outstanding customer service ratings from our shipping surveys.
Goal 4 - Process and ship all orders received by 1:00 p.m. by no later than 4:00 p.m.

In short you need to develop a focus for the team. Communicating expectations for the team in terms of cooperation and teamwork is equally important. Here are some examples:

-Be a team player. No one individual is more important than another. We have common goals and you are expected to be a part of a team. Remember, big team, little me.
-Be highly responsive to fellow employees. When they request something from you, provide a time when you will get back to them if you can't provide it immediately. Get back to them as promised even if you don't have the information requested to let them know you are still working on it. Customer service starts with each other.
-Never become confrontational or defensive with a fellow employee. Put your ego away and have a strong spirit of cooperation.Disagreement can be healthy but do so in a professional, respectful manner.
-Hold all employees in high regard and show respect for all employees. Pettiness will not be tolerated. We are a team and will work as a team. Healthy exchanges of ideas and viewpoints are welcomed. But, do not put down fellow employees or talk behind their backs. These examples point out the importance of establishing clear expectations about how team members should interact and work together.

2. Empower the team. Ask more than tell and listen more than talk. This is a good rule to remember. Employees should feel as if their opinions matter. Ask for input. Charge the team with proposing solutions. Resist having the last word in every situation. Hold regular team meetings that are designed to create an open forum for idea generation and input to decision making. In general, get the team involved with the decision making process as appropriate. Reinforce good ideas and successes through sincere and well timed praise. Praise as soon after the event as possible. Be specific. One word of caution; false praise will cause any praise to lose its effectiveness.

It is critical that team members feel as if their input is being heard. To ask for input and constantly ignore it is a prescription for discontent among employees. When appropriate, get employees involved with decision making and allow them to help make decisions. It is important to let employees know that their opinions are important and they will be involved in many decisions. However, they will not have input to all decisions. Some decisions have timing, confidentiality or other factors associated with them that preclude managers from asking for input. Employees need to understand that up front.

3. Build consensus. In building consensus, the leader helps the team move toward general agreement. This does not mean that all employees will agree with a particular decision. That simply won't happen very often. Disagreement is natural in a team setting. Your job is to direct the process so that these disagreements are positive, but open and honest. Get all issues on the table. Continually probe for additional input until you feel most or all of the issues have been brought forward. Allow employees to express their opinion, but keep the discussions on track if you are in a group meeting. Keep the conversation focused and moving. Stress the desired outcomes and results. Focus on team and company goals in helping to bring focus to decision making.

4. Direct the process. To be effective in directing the team and its efforts, you will need to give clear direction, intervene as necessary to resolve conflicts and to keep the team focused on goals, suggest alternatives if they haven't been presented and in general provide the steering mechanism for the team. You provide the rudder to the ship. Your job is to direct the process toward consensus and buy in. Let employees know that no idea is a bad idea. Encourage open and honest communication. Integrating many personality types into a team environment can be challenging, but certainly not impossible. Remember that you are dealing with people. Your job is to observe very carefully how the various personalities on your team play off of one another.

-Hiring decisions are critical to building an effective team. Ask yourself when hiring anyone if that individual will "fit" with the rest of your team. While that individual might have good experience, they might not have a personality that fits well with the rest of your team. This is a crucial factor in building a team. To hire someone with strong skills, but who otherwise would be a poor fit personality-wise is a mistake. What is gained in good skills is lost in the person't inability to help perpetuate a high morale, high cooperation environment.
-When you have an employee who is a barrier to effective team work, you must deal with that employee and clearly communicate the issues.
-Because people are involved, there will always be conflicts in organizations. Handle conflicts carefully. Don't stir up trouble that might not exist. When you intervene understand that you are not a referee. You are a facilitator in helping to resolve conflict. Listen to both sides of the issue first and put biases you might have about the employees aside. You might be tempted to side with one employee over another because of past history or personal feelings. Don't!

Exercise

1. What, if any, "symptoms" have you observed within your organization or team that might indicate that your people are not operating as a cohesive team?

2. If you don't already have team-oriented expectations and goals, write down at least three possible expectations and three possible goals for your team.

3. How can you more effectively bring your employees into the decision making process?

0 Develop A Training Plan Based On Skill Gaps Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 2:18 PM

Since training is an expensive proposition, it is critical that training dollars be spent wisely. We find that far too many companies allow their employees to select the training they will participate in or they put everyone through the same training.

It is a fact that very few employees are a perfect fit for the jobs they hold. This means that they will need to be coached and trained to help strengthen skills they might lack or be deficient in. Understanding where each employee's "skill gaps" are is important to developing a training plan that helps enhance overall company performance. Putting employees through training they don't need is a waste of money. There needs to be a very targeted approach to training employees. A shotgun approach is wasteful and frustrating for all involved.

For each employee develop a good understanding of what skills they lack to perform the jobs they hold. This can take some time to develop and are often uncovered over a period of time. A coaching assessment tool can be of great assistance inspeeding up this process by identifying the deficiencies of the employee against job requirements. The Prevue Assessment is an excellent tool for creating a training plan for new and current employees by uncovering areas where the employee lacks sufficient skills or tendencies.

A training plan will help focus training on skills that are critical to employee and company success. And it will be based on specific and individual needs rather than generalized ideas about what training is needed. The training plan should take the form of a matrix that shows each employee and the specific type of coaching or training required. Once this is determined, the task is to find training programs that meet your needs in terms of delivering excellent quality at a reasonable cost.

We are firm believers that sending someone off to a public seminar or workshop is rarely as effective as individualized coaching, mentoring and training. An employee must be mentored and coached to higher levels of performance and a one or two time exposure to concepts and theories is usually not retained and, therefore, not very effective.

Look for training providers that offer individualized and group training with follow-up and mentoring. Mentoring helps isolate the specific needs of the employee and allows the mentor/trainer to instill specific skills over a period of time. This approach helps immensely in getting the skills to "stick" with the employee.

Remember that training should be focused, individualized and carefully planned for. A haphazard approach to training will only frustrate you and your employees.

0 Invest Wisely In Information Technology Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 10:05 AM

The rate of change in information technology is staggering. It seems that as soon as you purchase and install a new piece of hardware or software, its replacement is hitting the market. This is one reason why using a Web-based performance review system, such as ReviewSNAP, would be highly beneficial. ReviewSNAP requires no implementation on your company's server and changes can constantly be made at no cost to you. Because information technology can be a real help to a business in terms of providing better efficiency, better analysis of operations and marketing efforts and better customer service, it is an essential part of the business world. In fact, many businesses have learned how to gain a competitive advantage by utilizing technologies such as data warehousing and geographic information systems.

But it is critical that businesses carefully evaluate how information technology will be applied. In many cases, old systems are slow and inefficient and simply don't perform at acceptable levels any longer. Or the business has grown or changed enough that old software isn't compatible with the way the business operates. In these cases, it is wise to begin looking at newer technologies and solutions. But before you select a particular system or software package, do your homework. Major software changes or upgrades can disrupt business if not carefully planned for. Software vendors are notorious for selling product with promises that don't get met. Don't let a vendor sell you software that won't do what you need it to do. If modifications are necessary to the software, make sure they are well defined.

Gather as much input as necessary from those who perform the actual work on a daily basis. They will be able to tell you what works and doesn't work so well with the existing software or system. Develop a specifications list that defines exactly the functionality required to mesh with current and anticipated operations.

Try to avoid buying more or less technology than you will need. To approach the implementation of technology with fingers tightly wrapped around the wallet will only hinder your ability to function in the future. And, conversely, buying more technology than you will need is simply a waste of money. In terms of desktop technology, it is important to buy (or lease) equipment that will sufficiently handle the amount of work pushed through it. It makes little sense to save a few dollars and sacrifice processing speed. What little is gained in initial outlay is more than lost in inefficiency.

Also, be careful not to apply new technology to inefficient processes. Before applying a technology such as imaging to a process, work on refining the core processes so that the technology is applied to as efficient and user friendly processes as possible. See Refine Processes the Easy Way for more information on process refinement.

0 ReviewSNAP™ Announces New Features Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 1:00 PM

The Web-based performance management system, ReviewSNAP™, announces the addition of several new modules. These additional features will help organizations make their performance review process even more effective and productive.

One of the new modules is a comments suggestion tool designed to offer competency-specific suggestions to managers as they complete a review. David Arringdale, President of ReviewSNAP™ parent company Applied Training Systems says their research indicates that managers often get hung up on what to write in support of their ratings. “We have learned that a high percentage of managers doing reviews would feel much more comfortable in the process if they had a better idea about what to write to back up their specific ratings. When preparing a review, our system allows the reviewer to pull up a list of supporting comments related to various ratings levels for the competencies in question. They can then choose one or more of the comments to insert into the comments and suggestions area for that competency group. The system will then automatically insert the comments. Of course, they can be modified as desired. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and managers are finding the process of reviewing employees less frustrating and more rewarding.”

Research also indicated that many users of the system wanted a solution that allows its subscribers to go entirely paperless with their performance management process. To that end, the company has added an e-signature feature that provides managers and employees the opportunity to apply an electronic verification or signature to the review. This capability virtually eliminates the need to store paper copies of reviews.

Some other important additions to the ReviewSNAP™ performance review system are:

• The ability to add a logo to make the system appear specific to the organization.
• Allow for the import of competencies that organizations may already have in place.
• The ability to define a probationary review period in addition to other defined review periods.
• An export feature that allows for exporting statistics to an Excel spreadsheet.

A key ReviewSNAP goal is to offer the most robust on-demand performance management solution at an affordable price. Arringdale added, “We are completely in tune with the current economic situation and our pricing levels have always been and will continue to be the lowest available. This will allow even the smallest organization the ability to automate their performance review process and make it far more effective and fruitful for all involved.”

Automating the review process can significantly reduce HR and managerial staff time. Streamlining this process can cut an organization’s expenses, ensure more timely
reviews, and improve morale and productivity which should help enhance the bottom line.

1 Don't Just Talk About Customer Service Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 12:50 PM

There is so much lip service being paid to customer service these days with very little actually being done about it that it is almost laughable. How many organizations do you see promoting themselves as leaders in customer service or just generally bragging about how well they serve their customers? The truth is most organizations are not coming close to delivering even average customer service, let alone outstanding customer service which is what they should be striving for.

Just talking about customer service and telling your employees that they are to provide outstanding customer service is not going to affect the level of service to your customers enough to make any sort of positive difference. While some short-term buying decisions are based on price, over the long-haul customers will often base their decisions about who to buy from as much on the quality of service they receive as price. In fact, it appears that the relationship between business failure and poor customer service is dramatic. Conversely, those organizations that understand how to deliver outstanding customer service can often times overcome competitive pricing strategies by their competitors and still maintain strong gross profit margins.

Outstanding customer service is generally viewed as an added value by customers. Why? Because it is so rarely encountered that it leaves an impression when they do experience it.

Look closely at the level of customer service being delivered by your organization. It's not the perception of you and your employees that count. Rather, it is the perception of your customers that matters. Ask them how they feel about the quality of your customer service. Remember that you won't hear from many disgruntled customers. They just go away.

Do your employees really understand how to deliver outstanding customer service? Do they really understand what is expected of them? Does the company understand how to achieve outstanding customer service? Outstanding customer service stands out. It can truly help you differentiate your organization from your competition. To achieve it takes constant care and nurturing. It must be measured. Outstanding customer service needs to become a "trademark" of your company.

Hiring customer-oriented employees is the starting point for delivering outstanding customer service. Some employees will have a difficult time being customer-oriented because of their personality. Putting people with poor basic people skills in a position to deal with customers is a common mistake in the business world. Think about your own buying experiences and the people you encounter. How many really deliver outstanding service?

Look at your customer service quality objectively. Does it need work? How much work? Develop a plan for correcting deficiencies. Make outstanding customer service a part of your culture. It will pay dividends.