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4 Key Reasons That Stops Staff Performing at Work & What To Do About It · Enhance.training

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: There are four key reasons that stop staff performing at work.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time, the manager of a team can influence or remove the reasons that stop staff performing.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Nine out of ten employees want to do a good job.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: They want to pull their weight, contribute to the team and feel valued by their colleagues.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: One or more of these four key reasons stops them performing as they would want.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Firstly, a lack of direction and expectations.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, too few resources to do a good enough job.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Third, lack of skills.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And fourth, the will is missing.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: On paper, it should be easy to remove these blockers to employees performing.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: In practice, it is a lot harder.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Managing teams involves balancing a ton of conflicting demands in the best way possible.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I.e., managing others is not an easy job.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: For each reason that stops staff performing, I will share suggestions of what to do about it, which I have gained in over 20 years of working in top companies and at all management levels, from junior manager through to board director.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: The first key reason that stops employees performing at work is a lack of direction and expectations.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: A lack of direction, or more likely, confusion about direction and expectations is a performance killer, literally.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: In a team with poor direction, employees work on what they think is needed, and you have plenty of conflicts where one person hinders another.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Without clear and reinforced expectations, those with lower energy levels or lower motivations will do less work.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Both lead to lower team performance, which often carries on dropping.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of managers that set direction and expectations with their teams and then forget about it for a few weeks or even months.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: This in practice is almost as bad as not setting direction in the first place.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: It is so easy for employees to get distracted with the day-to-day pressures, new requests or the latest project and forget about what exactly is needed when.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Managers need to invest a lot of time constantly reminding the team of expectations on a day-to-day or at worst week-to-week basis.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Managers also have to live the expectations they have set and show the team the goals are important by constantly keeping team goals in everyone's minds.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Work hard to ensure the team direction and goals are clear and everyone knows what they need to do each week to help achieve them.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Clear direction significantly increases team and individual performance.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: The second key reason that stops staff performing at work are too few resources to do a good enough job.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Staff rarely have all the resources they would like to really perform.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Every business operates with resource constraints, and this feeds down to teams and individuals.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Problems occur when precious resources are not allocated in a sensible way or are hoarded by individuals or teams.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Problems also occur when the expectations set are unrealistic and staff members don't or can't negotiate more realistic expectations.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Resources that we rarely have enough of are time, secondly, capacity, i.e.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: enough staff members to do the work needed.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Third, support from colleagues, managers and other stakeholders, and then fourth, cash or budgets.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: When staff have too few resources, it is very hard for them to do a good enough job.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: As a manager, fight hard to get a reasonable level of resources for each staff member and also help them negotiate realistic expectations with their stakeholders, including you.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Being realistic with what can be delivered with resources available helps everyone, increases motivation and generally increases performance as you have less of a start-stop working pattern.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: The third key reason that stops employees performing at work is a lack of skills.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Getting the skill range and the depth right in a team is really hard, particularly as business needs keep changing.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Who the manager recruits into their team is the first step.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Too many managers only think about the now, or they don't fight hard enough to get the right budget levels to get employees that have a track record of learning and improving.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Too many managers are not equipped to teach, mentor, and coach their team members effectively to increase the skills in the team or adapt team skills to what is needed.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is a core job of the manager, and companies should invest in helping the manager gain these skills.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Creating a learning environment needs good feedback skills and the right behavioural approach from the manager.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Practice giving praise to reinforce desired behaviours and results and give corrective feedback to help staff get better at what they do.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Openly share information and knowledge within the team.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is brilliant for building trust and it is also good for increasing the team members' understanding of the context of their work, which allows them to successfully work autonomously, make more decisions, and solve a greater range of problems.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: These all lead to higher performance at individual and team levels.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Work to develop the skills in your team.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: The last key reason that stops staff performing is a lack of will, which we'll talk about in a sec.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: A lack of will could have many causes, some of which you can definitely rectify as a manager.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Jess Coles, and if you're new here, Enhanced.training shares people management expertise, resources, and courses teaching you how to be a great manager and build high performing teams.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Learn more about developing the mindset, behaviours, and skills needed to build high performing teams by visiting Enhanced.training and take a look at the performance improvement our Management Skills Accelerator course offers you and managers in your team.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth key reason that stops staff performing at work is a lack of will.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many reasons that staff suffer drops in motivation.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Some are within a manager's control to rectify, others are not.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: If a good employee develops a lack of will, immediately find out what is driving the lack of motivation.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Just asking and showing you care as a manager in itself helps the other person.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: The more they trust you, the more likely they'll tell you what is happening.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: If they don't tell you, reflect carefully and consider if decisions or actions that you have taken are the problem.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Find out if a drop in motivation has happened because the staff member is angry, you know, fearful, uncertain, being put down by others or even bullied.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: As a manager, you are in a very good position to help them.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: There are employees that have personal problems or character flaws such as being lazy that stop them performing at work.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Helping the employee improve is the quickest, cheapest, and best solution, so it is well worth investing your time to see if you can get them to improve.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you've genuinely tried to help them or organised other experts to help, and the employee doesn't try or doesn't help themselves, then you should consider removing them from the team.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Keeping a poor behaving or poorly performing employee on the team is only going to damage morale, the working culture and team performance.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't help anyone.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, in summary, as a manager, there is a lot you can do to reduce the reasons that stop staff performing at work.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: There will always be some level of people problems in a team, especially if you have a big team.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Investing time and effort to remove as many problems as possible that stop staff performing is a key role of a manager.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is a great way to use your time and leverage your efforts through the team to create a lot of value for the business in which you work.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: To quickly recap, the four key reasons that stop staff performing at work are firstly, a lack of direction and expectations, secondly, too few resources to do a good enough job, third, a lack of skills, and fourth, the will is missing.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions, please email me at support at enhance.training and I'll get back to you.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget to take a look at the extra resources available through the links in the podcast description.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for listening, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.