Civility in the Workplace Part 5

Civility is one of the best ways to deal with difficult personalities in the workplace.

Civility sets the stage for effective communication.  In many ways, dealing with difficult personalities is simply a matter of setting and negotiating boundaries.  After all, difficult personalities are not “bad people.”  They just have a fixed way of relating and may need feedback from peers in order to adjust.

Civility creates a positive atmosphere that allows people to see beyond the obvious implications of behavior.  For example, many "difficult personalities" are simply people who have needs that are not being addressed.  You may see your co-worker as annoying when he or she simply craves attention and recognition.  It’s also possible that your difficult co-worker is merely channeling anger and frustration from his/her personal life into the workplace.  When you engage in civil behavior with your co-worker, you provide more opportunities for supportive interaction and empathy.

Cost and Rewards

While incivility can be perceived as innocuous behavior, it can significantly affect the company’s bottom line. Incivility has a direct impact on company productivity, sales, and customer retention among others. Civility, on the other hand, can improve all these areas and help create a high-performance organization.

Until next time...

 




Sheryl Tuchman, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
http://tools2succeed.com/

Work-Life Balance: Part 4

What needs to exist in your personal relationships?

• A "calm center" in life allows effective functioning on the job.
• The self confidence to admit your problems.
• Strength to ask for help with those issues you cannot resolve by yourself.
• Good, solid, loving relationships to help you when times are difficult.
• The ability to separate the big stuff from the little stuff

You will be in charge of your personal life when you do these things:

• Make decisions even if you're struggling with difficult choices.
• Try to keep your performance level high at work despite stressful situations in your personal life.
• Take responsibility for solving your own problems without complaining at work 
• Don't use your problems as an excuse to do a poor job.
• Maintain high self-esteem.
• Separate the big stuff from the little stuff.
• Get the help you need when you have a problem.
• Strive to maintain excellent customer service while working to solve a problem.

Until next time...






Sheryl Tuchman, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
http://tools2succeed.com/

What is Emotional Intelligence (EQ)?

*Emotional Intelligence is the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups.  Although the concept of emotional intelligence has received a lot of attention in recent years, its earliest roots can be traced to Charles Darwin's work on the importance of emotional expression for survival and adaptation.
*from Wikipedia
 
Although an individual may possess all of the necessary "technical" skills to perform a job, often it is a lack of emotional intelligence that hinders his/her performance at work.  High emotional intelligence is essential for high-performance.
 
Although life offers tremendous blessings, beauty, wonder, and joy, most of us need not look far to discover life's adversity.  Learning to create a state of mind that allows us to meet, conquer, and transcend the challenges of our lives will enable us to live and work from our vision and purpose, rather than being reactive to circumstances, events, and other people.  In our next blog we look at some strategies for understanding our adversities and dealing with them effectively.

Until next time...







Sheryl Tuchman, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
http://tools2succeed.com/

Defining A High Performance Team

We define a High-Performance team as "a self-managing, multi-functional group of people organized around a whole process and empowered with full responsibility for their success."

In traditional workgroups, employees are grouped by similarity of function.  This fragments work so that people over-identify with their own jobs and don't understand or care about the overall good of the company or customers they serve.

In traditional workgroups, power is centralized at the top.  Employees who are closest to the work have little authority to make significant decisions.  Managers are the thinkers and planners, and employees are merely the "doers."

Our team model includes 3 elements:

Charter -- Design -- Relationships

  

The Charter includes:

• Customers
• Purpose
• Team Goals
• Team Vision

The Design includes:

• Core work processes
• Roles and responsibilities
• Procedures/Norms
• Systems

The Relationships includes:

• Trust and respect
• Communication
• Cohesion
• Synergy

The elements of the model are interdependent, yet the above sequence must drive their development.

Until next time...

Sheryl Tuchman, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
http://tools2succeed.com/