People and Organisations

It's a fact that the main reason why most people are unhappy with their job is poor management. At one point or another, chances are you will have to deal with a difficult, grumpy or (hopefully) unwittingly disparaging boss.

You know the type: they get angry for no apparent reason, they completely ignore your questions and the only times they do talk to you is when they find fault with something you've done.

I've been there myself and over the years I've found four successful ways to handle difficult managers. Here they are:

1. First thing, don't take it personally. Chances are, you're not the only person they treat in the same impolite and often condescending way. If so, their behavior most probably is a reflection of some deeper psychological issues that extend further than a typical workday.

Here are some helpful hints to assist you with your next employee training session. As a trainer, you know that the hard part is getting your learners to use what they learned when they get back to work. Here is my suggestion. At the end of the session, get your learners to form pairs. Start the exercise by reminding them that it may take some time before they start to implement their newly acquired skills when they get back on the job.

They may get distracted with other things, they could lose sight of details, deadlines may be piling up, they may not have the right tools, and so on. Ask them to remember an instance when they did successfully use their newly gained skills in the face of these kinds of obstacles.

The next step is to ask one employee in each pair to put to their partner these three questions:

1. After that training program you just recalled, what were the things that helped you utilize your new skills?
2. How do you think you could use those same strategies in this course you are on now?
3. How would your work and your work performance look if you implemented those strategies?

It's easy to measure the effectiveness of a sports coach. Just look at each season's wins and losses - and how those numbers and other statistics have changed since the coach joined the team.

It's not so easy to evaluate the effectiveness of coaches in the workplace. I've recently written about the Institute of Leadership and Management's coaching survey that shows an explosion in the popularity of coaching as a management technique. The survey also found that a large number of organizations are failing to measure the specific impact of their coaching initiatives.

The ILM study, which was conducted by telephone in February and involved 250 UK companies, found that 93% measure coaching outcomes. But 60% do not evaluate coaching specifically. Because of that, it's often not clear what is driving the results.

Not long ago, workplace coaching was available only to high-ranking executives. Organizations hired outsiders who worked one-on-one with the leaders to develop their professional and personal skills. The benefits were real, and so were the bills. Coaching is a powerful tool, but how can it be extended to more employees without breaking the budget?

Many businesses have figured out a way: tap into employees to serve as internal coaches. Here's how it works. A manager, human resources staffer or another senior employee holds regular coaching sessions with a worker, just as an external coach would with the CEO. The same techniques of guided questioning, goal-setting, reflection and so on are used to unlock potential.

Nearly every respondent to a recent survey of 250 UK companies said coaching in the workplace has helped individuals and their organizations. As I wrote in my previous blog post on coaching culture, they cited improved personal skills, better communication, higher confidence levels and greater motivation.

With so many benefits, one might expect all companies to adopt coaching - and make it available to as many employees as possible. The Institute of Leadership and Management survey found that isn't the case.

Only 68% of companies with 230 to 500 employees said that coaching is part of their development toolkit. For companies with more than 2,000 workers, the percentage rises to 90%. (Organizations with 501 to 2,000 employees reported using coaching 81% of the time.)