guest blogger, management advice, Motivation, Negotiation, Observations

Dealing With Conflicts within the Workplace

It would be great to think that you would always have a harmonious relationship with your work colleagues, but the reality is that relationships can sometimes run into trouble. This probably shouldn’t come as a great surprise, given the circumstances involved.

Unless you happen to be in a very lucky situation, it’s probable that you didn’t actually get to choose your work colleagues. It’s rather more likely that you were forced together and that there was an expectation that you would be productive.

New members of staff

When interviewers are looking at hiring new members of staff, they will frequently consider the work experience of an individual and will be looking to assess their abilities. It’s often more difficult, however, to identify whether someone will really fit in.

In part, that’s because each business will have its own ethos and working environment. It’s not correct to assume that it will be easy for everyone to adapt to the unique demands that are associated with a situation.

But conflicts don’t only occur when someone new joins the organization. In fact, it’s often the case that a level of stress, created by the pressures of working life, can cause a conflict to emerge. When we are under pressure, we may act in haste. We may so, or do, things that we later come to regret.

Remaining calm

Although it’s clear that the priority should be to keep calm and to avoid encountering such issues, it’s also true to say that it’s incredibly hard to avoid problems. What is critical is that you have a response that you can rely on.

In general terms, your aim should be to remain professional at all times. Although the issue that you have with another individual may make life uncomfortable and you may feel that the other person is acting unreasonably, it’s vitally important that you should avoid responding in a similar manner. That’s only likely to make things worse and it probably won’t be very positive to your career prospects.

Instead, you need to think about how you can handle the situation. It may be that a frank discussion with the other individual is all that’s required, but that may not be appropriate. You’ll need to judge whether that’s likely to make things better, or whether it may simply inflame the situation. You very clearly don’t want to make things worse.

A more realistic approach may involve reporting the situation to a senior manager. In this case, you need to be careful that you provide all of the facts and that you take a fully objective approach. It can be tempting to paint a picture of the behaviour of the other person that is intended to show them in a bad light. It’s usually best to avoid such a temptation.

Instead, explain the problems that you are having and how they are having an impact on the smooth operation of the business. This should ensure that your manager views the situation with the sort of importance that it clearly deserves.

About the author

Keith Barrett writes about workplace mediation and dealing with difficult situations. He believes that most issues can be resolved in a manner that is appropriate for all concerned.

CV Tips, CV Writing, PMO, Project Management, Project management CV, The CV Righter, The Lazy Project Manager

Your CV resembles a Jenga game

Nicola Caswell-Thorp Leave a comment

I really enjoyed reading Peter Taylor’s (The Lazy Project Manager) blog about our services and particularly like his reference to CVs being like a game of Jenga towards the end of the game. This is a fantastic analogy and is so true of CVs being sent to me for review.

For those unaware of the game, basically it starts off as a tower of wooden bricks each layer placed across the next in opposite directions – the aim of the game is to take bricks out from the lower layers and add to the top of the pile without knocking the tower over. So as the game progresses the tower becomes unstable on the lower levels as gaps appear, the higher levels become top heavy with bricks which leads to eventual demise of the tower.

Jenga

How very perceptive of Peter to describe a CV like this – as we work through assignments and change jobs we often add in detail to the CV but begin to lose consistency, we leave gaps further down the page, add in more and more detail working towards the top leaving the CV unbalanced and often lacking relevant information.

It is always good practice to revisit your CV on occasion regardless of whether you are thinking of making a career move or not – as it only became too apparent for a recent client of mine who had treated his CV like a game of Jenga then found himself made redundant. When I reviewed his CV it looked disjointed and in need of a great deal of work, he had made attempts to rework it but in doing so had managed to make it look very disjointed. When we talked through his feedback I teased out a number of interesting areas of work which he had failed to address in the CV and it quickly became apparent that he needed a sounding board to talk through his experiences enabling him to really draw out the kind of content which would see his CV placed on the top of the pile with recruiters.

As he had left it so long before working on the CV, he had forgotten a great deal of information and regretted not keeping on top of it. Also he now had an immediate requirement to get his CV out to recruiters and apply for roles as he was out of work – adding significant pressure to his already stressful circumstances.

After offering up key advice to him, he decided to have a go at rewriting his CV himself due to financial constraints, however after attempting to do this over the weekend he came back to me on the Monday asking if I could provide the CV writing service proposed.

Although it was not an ideal situation for him financially he had concluded that an investment in his CV would yield a much greater response from employers than he was currently receiving. So we worked together to really get to the crux of his core skill base and draw out achievements which demonstrate his ability to go above and beyond the call of duty – really emphasising his value to organisations.

The lesson to be learned here is that you should always have an up to date CV – don’t leave it until you are pushed to have to do something!

photo credit: Herman Rhoids via photopin cc

Book review, Change, guest blogger, Project Management Books

Best books on change management

Guest Blogger Leave a comment

Have you ever looked out for the numerous books that are available on the topic of change management? With such a wide range of options, how will one know which book to select and which one will be worth reading? Here are a few books that would be very worth your time.

‘Navigating Through Change’ is the title of one book written by Harry Woodward and Mary Becham Woodward. This book presents its readers with a guide to live through all periods of change that are specific to human issues. Woodward is a change management consultant to many big IT and medical firms. In this books, he also offers a detailed strategy for change management that you can apply to a number of situations to help get through change from the very first impact up to its lasting consequences. Harry Woodward has also written another popular book titled ‘Aftershock: Helping People Through Corporate Change’. This is a practical guide to help employees survive the painful process of change in the organization. It gives you different examples of change – such as technological innovation, new management and limited resources – and tells you how to survive in each particular situation. This book has been field tested and not only does it help employees but it also helps managers to develop crucial skills and strategies to deal with the employees’ reaction to change.
Another business consultant became the author of a book named ‘Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change’. In this book, William Bridges attacks that area of change which people not only avoid, but do not even recognize. This area is the human side of change. This book addresses both employees as well as managers in the business world today who are well aware that change is required to improve the performance of a business. William Bridges herewith emphasizes on the fact that it is humans who are responsible for making the change happen.

‘Leading Change’ is one book written by John. P. Kotter that gives another view on change management. His main thesis of the book is that the reason why strategies for change often fail is because the changes do not really alter the behavior of humans. In this book Kotter points out the most common mistakes that effect change and he also provides steps for overcoming such obstacles. The process of these steps includes analyzing competition and thereby creating a sense of urgency and the identification of potential crisis. In addition to this book, John Kotter has authored another well read book titled ‘Force for Change: How Leadership Differs from Management’. Here, he not only addresses the issue of change, but also how change management is closely associated with leadership and management differences.

The books mentioned above are all dealing with different aspects of change. Therefore, deciding to read these few books is guaranteed to give you an overall perspective of the issues of change management and how employees as well as managers should deal with change.

About the author: Eric Lewis is an experienced blogger in various fields. He loves writing articles about translation services and books. Follow him on Google+.

guest blogger, Motivation, Team building

4 Team Building Ideas For Your Business

Guest Blogger Leave a comment

If you are the owner of a business or a manager within a department, do you know your staff well? If the answer is no like many peoples answer then maybe it is time to carry out a team building activity. There are great days out that you can take part in across the country that will get you involved with the team and also help them to interact with one another. I am going to take a look at some of the best activities for team building in North East England:

Blind driving
If you know that your team would be up for an action packed activity then you should try out blind driving. If you really want people to have more trust in each other, there is nothing better than making them drive blind and only be able to drive safely by listening to somebody else. You could select the pairs of people who do not really speak to each other to encourage them to work together to make it round the course safely.

White water rafting
If you are still looking for something thrill seeking and involving water, then white water rafting is a brilliant choice. Not only is it an activity that will fuel adrenaline rushes but is a great way of getting people to work together. Making sure that you all pull together and do your bit to navigate around the course will ensure a really fun trip and colleague bonding.

Chocolate making
If you know that your team would not enjoy the thought of doing something thrill seeking, why not take them for a chocolate making session, surely nobody would turn this down? If new team members have joined it will be a great ice breaker and a way for everyone to improve communication skills in a calm and fun atmosphere. With the smell of chocolate in the air everyone should feel at ease and comfortably ask each other for help.

Maze
If you want to do something a bit active but due to the time of year you have planned it don’t really want to go outside, why not try an indoor maze? You could set up different teams and locate them in different parts of the maze; they then have to try and find each other in the centre and then get back out! Leaving different clues will help everyone to pull together and help find the exit.

These are four very different ideas but all have the same goal of getting everybody involved in something enjoyable yet challenging that will improve communication. Mixing up usual social groups and separating them and using small numbers if possible is a great way to make shy people feel more comfortable and for extraverted types to adapt to being in a different situation. Having a mix of personalities in tasks works well as each person will bring something different.

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