Entries Tagged as 'Performance Expectations'

Management Skills: How To Deal With Attitude Problems

Many managers think they cannot measure attitude problems in their employees and therefore there is nothing that can be done. Wrong!  Once you have renamed those problems as professional behaviors, you can define them, measure them ,include them in job descriptions and even fire people with them!

 

You know the employees I mean. They may be technically capable and performing the specific skills that are measured on the job. They do the required amount of work; they make the required number of sales; they take the required number of calls. They may even be good with customers. But around the office or workplace they have attitude plus!  

 

They are the office nay-sayers, cynics and negativists. Or they complain about everything. They criticize every management initiative; they go to the union with every little issue. They are right out of Dilbert and they are driving you crazy. You are getting complaints from other employees who are affected and infected by their lousy attitude. 

 

Here are the steps to take to get a better handle on this issue and give yourself some solid   definitions to work with. 

 

Step One: 

 

Redefine the words attitude problem to professional behavior.  It’s perfectly reasonable 

[Read more →]

Customer Service: How To Project a Trustworthy Picture Over The Phone.

If 55% of the impact of a communication is determined by the visual aspects, how do staff members who work with our customers on the phone build trust and confidence in our products and services?  Only 7% of the impact of their communication  is the actual words, the content or the verbal message. Yet that is what we spend so much time carefully crafting!  

 

For phone personnel that makes that 38% impact of voice quality very, very important. Voice quality includes tone, softness or loudness, accents, grammar, volume, tempo, rhythm, inflections–in other words how we say it.  These figures come from a study done in 1983 by Dr. Albert Mehrabian of UCLA.  

 

It makes sense to spend some of our training time for 

[Read more →]

Are Men’s Ties Out? Do They Still Have A Purpose?

According to a recent Gallop Poll only 6% of men wear a tie to work every day.  Sales of men’s ties have dropped to a record low of 677 million as opposed to 1.3 billion in 1995. This and other  facts about ties was the subject of an article in my local paper, The Press Democrat. 

 

To Tie or Not To Tie!

Not many years ago ties were required in most fine restaurants. Now you see men with baseball caps on backwards and even gang attire. The only men who seem to consistently wear a tie are funeral directors, talk show hosts, news anchors and lawyers when they are in court. And why do talk show hosts wear a suit and tie anyway?  I would laugh just as loud at Jay, David and Craig if they were wearing dress casual. Wouldn’t you? 

 

On the other hand those comedians 

[Read more →]