When I first started offering my Dealing with Difficult People seminars, I assumed that “off the wall” clients would be the most difficult group in the workplace. My second guess – was difficult workmates or colleagues. Was I wrong in making those assumptions! I found that overwhelmingly, their supervisors and managers were the most difficult people faced by the 55,000 participants of my seminar!
Why is this the case? Because most of their supervisors, managers, foremen/women, department heads, executives and even C.E.O.s of companies had not received the basic training necessary for them to successfully supervise others. This is a world-wide problem.
These difficult supervisors made the following mistakes:
- Embarrass their staff by disciplining them in front of workmates or clients.
- Label staff’s behaviour (stupid, dumb) or make sarcastic remarks, instead of trying to correct the actual behaviour of the staff member.
- Don’t give recognition for a job well done. Instead, they concentrate on the two percent of the things their staff do incorrectly, instead of the ninety-eight percent they do properly.
- When dealing with customer complaints, they don’t back up their staff and don’t give employees a chance to tell their side of the story before acting. (Who should say to the client, “Let me investigate this and I’ll get back to you.”)
- Don’t provide an up-to-date job description with key performance indicators and standards of performance for the tasks performed by their staff.
- Don’t provide the necessary training to fill the gap between job requirements and employee’s skills.
- Conduct performance appraisals on staff without a proper job description upon which to base their evaluation. (If the employee doesn’t know what’s expected of him/her, and the supervisor doesn’t know either – how can a fair evaluation of the performance be conducted?)
- Have one set of company rules for staff – another for themselves. Bend the rules when clients go over the head of front-line staff, causing embarrassment for staff members.
- No set policy and procedure manuals available. Rules and regulations of the company are not clearly defined.
- Harass staff (either through bullying or sexual harassment).
- Do nothing to improve the employee’s interest in their jobs. Some are afraid their staff are now ready to compete for their job, so do as little as possible to develop their skills for their next step up. (It’s a proven fact that more supervisors are not promoted because there is nobody prepared to take over their existing job.)
- Are not available when their staff need their help. They say they have an “open door policy,” but are always “too busy” to deal with their staff’s problems.
- Won’t listen to their staff’s suggestions about better ways to complete tasks. The person doing the job normally has the best ideas on how to do the job better, faster, and more efficiently.
- Are perfectionists and expect everything to be done perfectly. Just because they can do the job in ten minutes (they have fifteen years’ experience) they expect the newcomer to do it in the same amount of time with the same amount of accuracy.
If this describes the actions of your supervisors / managers, seriously consider providing them with the necessary tools to do their jobs properly – otherwise you’re setting them up to fail! If this is you making these mistakes – get the training yourself or you too will fail.
If you are not able to obtain the training, you might consider buying Roberta Cava’s book Survival Skills for Supervisors and Managers – Guidelines for Business Success that she has written that discusses all the topics (plus more) that are covered by her seminars.
Topics covered in this book are:
Chapter 1 – The Role of the Supervisor / Manager
- What is a supervisor/manager?
- Qualities of a good supervisor
- Why supervisors/managers fail
- Role of the supervisor/manager
- The person in the middle
- Responsibility
- Authority
- Accountability
- My role as a supervisor
- Supervising former peers
- Socialising with your staff
Chapter 2 – Leadership Styles
- Leadership
- Use of leadership skills
- Good leadership
- Bad leadership
- Leadership styles
- What is your leadership style?
- Theory Y vs. Theory X
- Getting to know your staff
- Leadership behaviour
- Alternative leadership approaches
Chapter 3 – Delegation
- Delegation
- Excuses for non-delegation
- Risks of delegation
- The delegation process
- Delegation Do’s and Don’t’s
- Sample delegation problems
- Demotions
- Standards of performance
- Position descriptions
- Knowing your employees better
- Analysing your job
- How much do you delegate?
Chapter 4 – Motivation
- Motivation
- What motivates most employees?
- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
- Altruism
- The need Hierarchy at work
- Herzberg’s Theory
- Problem employees
- Understanding frustration
- Common ways we see anger expressed at work
- Keeping an employee’s desire to contribute
- Performance appraisals
- How often should performance appraisals be done?
- Pet employees
- Job enrichment/enlargement
- How do you motivate your staff?
Chapter 5 – Time Management
- The Busy man
- Areas of life
- Principles of time management
- Time log
- Bottlenecks
- Different kinds of tasks
- Swiss cheese approach
- Complex long-term assignment
- How to choose priorities
- Bring forward file
- The in-basket
- Reward vs. punishment
- Daytimers and “to do” lists
- Solutions to time wasters
- How to manage interruptions
- How to prevent interruptions
- Are you at fault?
- How to control crisis
- Assistant’s suggestions to bosses
- Procrastination
- Five types of procrastinators
- Lateness
- How much time do we have?
- Time breakdown
Chapter 6 – Interpersonal Skills
- How to listen
- Tune outs
- Blocks to effective listening
- How do you rate as a listener?
- Improve your listening skills
- Qualities of a good listener
- How do you rate as a speaker?
- Communication tips
- The communication process
- Message loss through repetition
- Communication process
- How to avoid being misunderstood
- Skill of paraphrasing
- Skill of feedback
- Process of feedback
- Feedback steps
- Non-verbal communication
- Space bubbles
- Territory
- Physical clues
- Employee’s body language
Chapter 7 – Problem Solving and Decision-Making
- Three criteria required for problem solving
- Sample problem
- Dealing with your own problems
- Problem solving and decision-making guide
- Driving and restraining forces
- Brainstorming
- Planning for problem solving
- The importance of planning
- Planning factors
- Jobs skills inventory chart
- The change process
- Meeting objections head-on
- Making change happen
- Conflict resolution
- Creative problem solving
Chapter 8 – Training and Development
- Qualities of a good trainer
- Teaching adults
- Characteristics of adult learners
- Differences in adult/child learners
- Learning process
- How to ‘lock in’ training
- One-on-one training
- Determining training needs
- Testing abilities of employees
- Dimensions tested
- Manpower planning
- Training needs of supervisors
- Learning a new skill
- Training of others
- Retention of information
- Training vs. development
- Career development
- Training procedure
- Tangible/intangible behaviour
- Setting objectives
- Sample objectives
- Identifying costs of training
- Methods of instruction
- Methods I use
- Preparing for a seminar/workshop
- Group vs. individual activities
- Technical vs. life skills
- Theoretical vs. practical training
- Bridging
- Timing of training segments
- Use of training aids
- Re-enforcement of training
- How to keep participants motivated
- Instructor’s apparel
- Presentation skills
Chapter 9 – Meeting Skills
- Conducting meetings
- Role of the chairperson
- Planning a meeting
- Using and developing group’s unique talents and abilities
- Overcoming cultural or personality differences
- Evaluate
- Follow-up
- Preparing for a meeting
- Avoiding planning blunders
- The use of questions at meetings
- How to chair a meeting
- Types of meetings
- Meeting traps
- Problem participants
This book and 60 other titles by Roberta Cava are available world-wide with Amazon Books. Just go to www.amazon.com website and type in Roberta Cava which will bring up all her books.