Proactive Management: What Management Wants from You

Are you a proactive manager? If not, I can tell you that management wants you to be exactly that. They may not know how to describe what you should be doing, but trust me this it - proactive management. Proactive means “anticipatory.” Management wants your energies and resources used to think ahead, anticipate problems and issues, and do less “reacting” to problems your work unit experiences. Here’s the key: When managing proactively, you strategize and target problems that have not happened yet in an effort to prevent them. You cannot just “think” proactively. Instead, you target the risk with interventions to reduce or eliminate them. The EAP is not an expert on your specific functions, but is experienced at coaching, analyzing, and examining the mandate you’ve been given. That assistance can help you keep on track and help ensure that you follow through on management’s directive. For more insight, consider the only book dedicated to this topic, Proactive Personality and Behavior for Individual and Organizational Productivity (New Horizons in Management series) by Andrew J. DuBrin. - for a supervisor training package -- the last one you'll ever buy -- go here.

Ending Personality Conflicts on the Job

If you have reached the end of your rope, intervene with personality conflicts by considering the following: See personality conflicts as inappropriate behavior that employees are not being paid to exhibit. Recognize that employees who experience ongoing conflict do not feel an urgent need to stop it. Most have been given implicit permission to continue by not being confronted about it.Management controls the employment relationship, and therefore can intervene with personality conflicts that disrupt the workplace by using disciplinary tools. "Personality conflict" is a term used to excuse bad behavior. The term helps those exposed to it believe nothing can be done about it. Some personality conflicts are severe enough to establish a “hostile, intimidating, or offensive work environment.” This makes management legally responsible for stopping it. Make no more than one attempt to mediate. Commit to using disciplinary action if the behavior does not stop. Most supervisor attempts at mediation fail because such meetings omit this message and legitimatize the behavior by implying it is management's problem. This conflict resolution powerpoint/DVD is a great place to start

No Performance Evaluation Program?

Don't believe the absolute tripe these days about how we should scrap performance evaluations programs and procedures. I laughed looking at LinkedIn the other day where someone decided to post a comment that performance evaluations don't work because they replicated the Master/Slave model. Is this guy serious? If you do not have a performance evaluation program, you have only one thing going for you to manage quality of work, attendance, quantity of work, attitude, conduct, behavioral issues, and availability. Guess what than one thing is? .... your personality and whatever relationship you hold on to with your employee. I've seen this before in many companies where where there were good performance evaluation systems, but management didn't enforce accountability for supervisors doing them. Hence, by default, the relationship with supervisor took over. The result--problems. Anger, conflicts, manipulation, low productivity, theft, "getting back", time theft, and violence in the workplace. Do you realize that a lack of performance evaluation process can lead to death. Don't think so? Absolutely it can in the right circumstances, a dysfunctional relationship with the supervisor can lead to conflicts, unfair treatment, personality clashes, and homicide. I will be talking with you about a marvelous performance evaluation system soon, the one I designed for Arlington County Public School System Trades Department. It's easy, collaborative (key concept), fun, workable, scalable, and no surprises ever pop up on the employees review day. Training supervisors in performance evaluation is easy, and I will show you how to do it.