Quickly build your six key Interpersonal Skills
Management Style
Inter-personal skills
There are many managers who come from a technical background or where a previous manager was a poor role model, meaning they had little opportunity to develop the six key interpersonal skills that are essential to both Traditional and High-Performance Management. (Futcher Principle™).
Here you can quickly learn how to develop those six essential skills.
How to quickly build trust.
The approach is to strike a balance between appearing as warm and competent so that you come across as credible and human. Staff are generally aware of their manager’s background, namely, the credentials that gained them their current management position. With credibility established, it’s now time to demonstrate some vulnerability and show that you are indeed a fallible human being. The combination of competence and warmth will make you seem more trustworthy. If you want people to trust you, demonstrate your knowledge and capability, then show them your human.
Counsellors often employ one of three tactics when first meeting a new client, they spill their coffee, drop their pad or embarrass themselves somehow to show they are fallible. By making yourself vulnerable, it is possible to build trust quickly. You must demonstrate your credibility first before you exhibit vulnerability; otherwise, it doesn’t work.
Things to consider:
Commitment is the flip side of the trust coin. (“I give you a commitment, you trust I will do it.”)
‘Working from Home’ teams need to establish trust early to improve their communication and ability to manage conflict in the absence of face-to-face time.
To earn trust, you must demonstrate trust.
Trust means making yourself vulnerable.
Trust must be accompanied by accountability.
Trust someone until such time you have evidence that you can’t.
Set expectations for a team culture based on trust.
Learn to trust your intuition. (If something doesn't sound right it probably isn’t.)
How to rebuild lost trust.
Sometimes we accidentally say or do the wrong thing and can lose the trust we have built up; here is a quick solution.
Act quickly.
Be candid.
Accept responsibility.
Apologise.
Outline a remedy.
Don’t blame.
How to quickly earn Respect.
You need to show respect first; experienced managers know that respect isn’t an entitlement linked to a job title.
Lead by example. Demonstrate the qualities and characteristics you expect from the people you manage. It’s essential to exhibit the traits you want others to adopt, such as honesty, creativity, being forthright and industriousness.
Be humble. No-one cares about where you went to school or past successes. Egotists are boring and turn people off. Get over yourself and do it quickly. Avoid conversations that entail self-promotion; they are obvious and do damage to your reputation.
Show commitment every single day. Get into the trenches with the troops and get your hands dirty with your team members as often as you can. Work alongside them. Work longer and harder than they do. Get out of your office and visit staff workplaces. Talk to the staff, get to know their names so you can address them personally, ask them how things are going, ask what their top three issues are and make a note for follow-up.
Share your expectations of others. People want to know what your expectations are of them, that way they can work to meet or exceed expectations.
Help people succeed and advance. Help team members gain exposure and give them opportunities for development and advancement. Be a mentor, focus on those people who are bright, hardworking, dedicated, reliable and creative, and have skill sets that you don’t or those who show potential. Mentor them at work or support programs that allow them to earn a new skill or certification
Balance delegation: Keeping tight control of everything deflates employees and tells them that you don’t value or trust their judgment, try to find the middle ground.
Teach and encourage creativity. It’s expected that team members should take calculated risks. Recognise and discuss failure noting that having a go was more important than not.
Recognise success. Institute a team member and broader staff recognition program, such as a monthly ‘best performance’ award for someone who exceeded all expectations. People want to receive credit for a good job, especially in front of their others.
Compromise. Compromising is not weakness; nothing could be further from the truth. Managers who can compromise come across as caring and someone who puts others before themselves and who appreciates understanding a differing point of view.
How to have good Body Language.
Nonverbal behaviour, or body language, is a language, so think about it as a form of communication. Your everyday body language is often what determines whether people like you or not and when someone has made up their mind about you, it’s all but impossible to change; therefore, body language must work for you.
Consider the five following common mistakes.
1. A firm handshake. A firm handshake makes an essential first impression. A firm grip displays confidence and establishes you as someone to be taken seriously.
2. Meet someone's eyes. A failure to look someone directly in the eye makes you seem shifty and untrustworthy. But too much eye contact can put off some people. If you want to hold someone’s gaze, look at the point just above their nose between their eyes. To the other person, it appears as if you are looking directly into their eyes.
3. Hand gestures. Your hands can be used to enhance words. But don’t fuss as this can make you look nervous, distracted, bored or rude.
4. Crossing your arms. This says you are on the defensive, it's a sign of disinterest, being closed off and unapproachable.
5. Nodding too much. You can’t be taken seriously if you nod too much. Even when agreeing with what’s being said, nodding can be off-putting. It is, however, a very good way to show that you are listening, but you need to be subtle.
How to quickly learn to Persuade people.
A primary management activity is the ability to persuade people to do things they either don’t want to, have a fear of or think they will fail at. The key to persuasion is motivation.
Tell them that what you are looking for is that they ‘have a go’ and that this is more important than what they achieve.
Talk about what they'll lose if they don’t do the activity.
Draw on their past actions as examples of their ability to do the activity.
Tell them that nearly everyone is doing it or soon will be.
Use “we” to include yourself as an involved party in the activity.
Ask for a 100 when you only want 10.
Talk about the counterargument before they do, that is, the pros and cons of doing the activity.
How to quickly develop Charisma.
Charisma is believed to be an innate personality trait that cannot be learned, you either have it, or you don’t. However, a manager that possesses gusto and alacrity, is curious and always upbeat in front of staff and team members can be perceived as being charismatic, or possessing what I call resonance. Putting forward a positive attitude also infects peoples thinking and feelings.
One of the strange benefits of being a consultant for 40 plus years and having worked in many workplaces, is that I can tell virtually from the moment I walk in the door of a new client, just what sort of workplace it is. I can sense something that I call ‘resonance,’ the energy being produced, the vibe, electricity, vibrations in the air. Resonance is the product of a workplace where the Manager exudes an energy that infects the workplace to the extent that the staff also possess it. Resonance is a form of charisma. It’s when you are ‘present’,’ in the moment’ and have emotional buy-in created from being positive. It’s when you display an attitude of getting things done and no problem is insurmountable.
You can tell if you have resonance.
Team members and staff feel energised, motivated, good, after speaking with you.
Your presence creates a sense of resonance in others.
When a team member is asked to come to your office, they drop everything and walk fast if not run to you.
How to quickly develop your Emotional Intelligence (EI).
Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of yourself and others. It is the ability to be able to identify and express feelings, perceive and evaluate others' emotions and use emotions to facilitate thinking.
Daniel Goleman, the author of ‘Emotional Intelligence,’ researched models from 181 different job roles from 121 companies and discovered that 67 per cent of the competencies deemed essential for effective performance was "emotional" competencies. Emotional intelligence skills are developed through learning from real experiences.
Become more self-aware by paying attention to how your emotions are affecting your decisions and actions.
Pay attention to managing strong emotions such as excitement, anger, frustration and distress.
Improve your social skills by being curious, start a conversation by asking benign questions like:
“That’s an amazing tie, where did you get it?”, “Those are fabulous shoes, where did you but them?”
Focus on being more empathetic by actively listening for ‘emotional’ cues/words from people.
Work on motivating yourself to do things you don’t like or starting difficult tasks. It’s most often a lack of confidence and self-doubt that stops you doing things. Break a task into small chunks and just do a bit at a time.
How to manage Conflict.
Conflict is unavoidable, it is also useful and needs to be managed constructively and professionally. A clash of ideas is the beginning of innovative thinking, being overly dominant with your ideas; is being selfish and diminishes creative thinking. The team must learn how to settle and decide between competing ideas.
“In surveys of European and American executives, fully 85 per cent of them acknowledged that they had issues or concerns at work that they were afraid to raise. Afraid of the conflict that would provoke, afraid to get embroiled in arguments that they did not know how to manage and felt that they were bound to lose. So how do we develop the skills that we need? Because it does take skill and practice, too. If we aren't going to be afraid of conflict, we have to see it as thinking, and then we have to get really good at it”. Margaret Heffernan.
High-Performance teams resolve conflicts professionally and constructively. They focus on extracting value from their differences and use this to arrive at better decisions. They actively thrive on conflicts as they know they can convert it into new opportunities by using the points of difference as new possibilities. Managed, mature conflict is essential, it underpins innovation and creativity.
It makes sense, therefore, to see conflict resolution as a form of debate with an agreed decision-making process if a stalemate occurs. Spirited debates around the table should be encouraged, not denied. A good approach is ‘it’s not what you say, but how you say it.’
Decision-making process.
A good decision-making process can be used to diffuse conflict. Team members should agree on a method for the team to adopt. With practice, something like the following should become intuitive.
a) Clearly and unambiguously state the objective or goal.
b) Collect available information and evidence.
c) Consider the consequences of the proposed decision.
d) Make a final decision.
e) Is the decision low risk or high risk, if high risk, what risk mitigation needs to be put in place?
f) How does it reflect on team members accountabilities?
Problems need to be addressed as they arise. Working out problems as a team builds camaraderie. If the problem is personal, care needs to be taken to ensure that a team member does not feel unfairly judged. Problems need to be dealt with openly and transparently. The manager is the final arbitrator who needs to resolve a problem calmly and without any team member gaining an undue advantage.
Says Keith Ferrazzi, CEO of Consulting firm Ferrazzi Greenlight. “Teams do not progress when conversations are too polite, people are not challenged, ideas are not questioned. A lack of candour will inevitably diminish decision making, creating a hierarchical culture where people only speak their minds in private.” The firm studied 50 large companies and found the highest-performing teams were the most forthright.