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Understand that no matter how carefully you plan, periodically you will have to deal with conflict. Whether it be conflict between employees, with a vendor, or with a customer, conflict has a way of uniquely appearing, demanding that we acknowledge and deal with the challenge.

Just as you would not ignore poorly-produced products or inferior job performance, you can’t afford to ignore conflict. While it is unrealistic to think that you can create a conflict-free environment, you can learn more about how to resolve issues so that conflict doesn’t overwhelm you and impact your company’s productivity. With practice, you will become confident in your ability to resolve conflicts that typically arise in the day-to-day operations of an organization.

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What to expect when you begin to hold employees accountable

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There’s always a fairly good reason to procrastinate when giving feedback to a challenging employee. What if the employee pulls an attitude and holds you hostage? What if the employee gets hurt feelings and quits? What if the employee stops talking to you? Or, perhaps, there’s just no time. Be honest, there’s no time because you’re typically spending way too much time cleaning up the messes left by your challenging employee!

During our twenty years in the business, we’ve heard hundreds of great excuses for not dealing with performance issues. When managers get down to the real reason for procrastinating when giving feedback, they often admit to either not knowing how to give feedback, or lack confidence in their ability to provide feedback that will motivate the employee to improve. While there are many coaching models, perhaps the simplest approach is to focus on helping the employee develop their skills to achieve optimum performance.

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As leaders, we are responsible for making decisions daily. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), we don’t make our decisions alone. Over time, most of us have learned that the best decisions involve input from others. We’ve also learned that getting others involved takes more time than making the decision on our own. And, time is something none of us has in excess. So, gaining confidence and skills in the art of leading a group to consensus will ultimately save time, plus enhance your reputation as an effective decision maker.

Our experience has proven that the best way to reach a collective decision is by leading the group to consensus. When consensus isn’t used and management dictates the decision without employee input, people feel “talked at” rather than “talked to” and may even feel manipulated. If we involve people to a point, but ultimately vote to determine our course of action, we’ll end up with winners and losers. The losers will find it difficult to get excited about an action they did not vote for. Consensus, however, allows us to ultimately end up with a decision that can be supported by the entire group. While participants may conclude that the final decision is not their personal favorite, they agree that they can support the decision for the good of the organization.

Following these seven tips can help you effectively lead a diverse group of participants to consensus:

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Strategies for Uniting Cross-Departmental Teams

The stress of the economy has had a negative impact on organizations and has hampered the ability of employees to work cross-departmentally or divisionally as one team. In many cases, employees are working harder, faster and having just enough time to focus on their own survival. They don’t have the time to make communication with other team members a priority.

Recently, we have worked with several clients that are struggling with cross-departmental teamwork. We like to describe this phenomenon as misidentifying the enemy. The cross-departmental teams get into turf wars and start battling each other instead of working together to achieve shared objectives liked increased revenue, or improved customer service.

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10 Tips for a More Empowered Workforce

Empowerment is one of the most valuable tools a manager has in achieving positive results and maintaining a motivated workforce. Experiment with these ten tips to discover their effectiveness with your employees.

1. Trust people. The tap root of empowerment is trust. If you do not trust employees, it is impossible to empower them. Demonstrate confidence in people’s abilities and watch them rise to meet your expectations.

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The Perils of Moving Up the Corporate Ladder

In a recent survey, the number one concern of 100 new supervisors and managers promoted from within the organization was how to build a cohesive team when all individuals on the team are not in total support of the new boss. Newly appointed supervisors and managers promoted from within an organization are confronted with a unique set of challenges and problems. Some new supervisors felt so frustrated by lack of support and not knowing what to do to rectify the situation that they actually couldn’t sleep well.

Anytime a supervisor or manager is promoted from within his own work group, there is a chance that other team members might not be in total support of the new leader. Employees state various reasons why they do not provide support: 1) employee has more seniority; 2) employee feels he knows the job better; 3) employee was told by someone in the past that he would be considered as the next supervisor; 4) employee is just resentful he was passed over.

Whatever the employees’ reasons, the supervisor is left with the task of rebuilding the team and realigning the spirit of the disgruntled employees.

The following six suggestions have been helpful to newly-appointed supervisors and managers:

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Monday mornings can be difficult. You come back from a relaxing weekend to be bombarded by meetings, phone calls, and basically any other distraction under the sun. To help inspire you to seize the week, we send out a free Leadership Quote of the Week email on Monday mornings. Quotes from inspirational leaders will remind you of your role as a leader, and inspire you to look at the upcoming week in a new light.

Sign up here to start your week off with a little perspective.

Here’s a preview:

Never under-estimate the value of an open mind.

“I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.”

-Everett Dirksen, U.S. politician who helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964

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How to Tactfully Discuss Customer Complaints with Employees

We all want our customers to be happy and to let us know when something has gone awry, but do you know how to successfully handle situations where multiple customers complain about a long-term employee?

This can put you in a difficult position, but if you do not handle the problem correctly, it will just keep happening. If you don’t confront the behaviors that lead to customer complaints, you will lose respect as a leader from not only the employee we are discussing, but your other team members as well. The bottom line is you need people on the front line that every customer views as courteous, knowledgeable and dependable. Following the steps below will help you in dealing with this difficult situation.

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Expand Trust in your Organization

Good managers, supervisors, and leaders take specific actions to create a climate that is conducive to open and honest communication. In this open communication climate, people feel free to give their input and ideas, information is shared freely, conflicts are openly discussed and worked through, and people are more willing to express innovative ideas and to take risks.

The basis of the open communication climate is trust. The leader establishes an environment of trust within and among all the people in the group. To begin to build or expand trust in your organization and to foster an open communication climate, try some of the following tips.

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Invest in Employee Engagement: it will prove worth your while

The buzz word most associated with employee satisfaction these days is “engagement.” As recently as two years ago we were writing about the impending talent drain, as boomers would be leaving the workplace in masses for retirement. We stressed the importance of creating a workplace where employees would feel motivated, enthused and most importantly, “engaged.”

That was two years ago. Today the whole business landscape has changed. As of December 2009, California’s unemployment rate is 12.1%. Massive layoffs have had a profound impact on not only the way we do business, but on the employees who are left shell-shocked after layoffs, wondering if and when the axe may fall on them. We’re not hearing the word “engaged” much these days as it relates to employees. In fact, some leaders have been so bold as to say, “I really don’t care what employees think and how they feel. They have a job and should be grateful to have survived the last round of cuts.”

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