Teach Employees to Tame Their Monkeys!

Whenever people come in contact with each other, conflicts are inevitable. When you manage people and projects, that means your business day may include resolving conflicts. It may also involve solving problems for other people. When you step in as the leader and resolve your employee's problems, you've now unwittingly added that responsibility to your own workload. You've taken the monkey off his or her back and placed it squarely on your own shoulders.

Worse yet, you've now trained that employee to resolve problems by bringing them to you! The monkeys will just keep piling up. Luckily, you can retrain your employees to handle their workloads and related conflicts so you can address your own. Actually, you have a responsibility to train them so they can fulfill their potential and grow professionally.

Helpful Ideas

Doug Staneart, CEO of the Leaders Institute, Leadership and Management Training, focuses on building confident, autonomous leaders and improving employee morale. His advice for training your employees focuses on steps to build their self-confidence and self-esteem so they can and will manage problems on their own.

He suggests you spend the time you might have spent solving their issues by asking them questions and for their opinions on what the best solution may be, thereby building their confidence in their own problem-solving abilities. As they are often closer to the situation, they may often come up with an answer as good as or even better than yours. But don't be afraid to let them make small mistakes as people learn from their mistakes.

Staneart offers these principles for effective conflict resolution.

• Establish trust before offering advice.
• Keep promises… even small ones. If you can't be trusted with the small things, how can you be trusted with the big issues?
• Be enthusiastic about the success of others. As management guru Tom Peters said, "Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders."
• Recognize the potential in others and help them achieve it. It's why you hired your employees in the first place, to help your department or company thrive.
• Catch people doing things right. It's easy to correct an error. Remember to praise a job done well.
• Praise the baby steps. They'll lengthen into huge strides quickly enough.
• Under promise but over deliver.

By working with your employees to help them improve their problem-solving abilities, you'll fulfill your leadership role. And your office will house only your monkeys, not all the chimps in the department!

Source: Doug Staneart www.leadersinstitute.com.

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