Yesterday’s Advisor showed why “no good deed goes unpunished” applies to new supervisors and managers. Today, more tips, and five rules.
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New supervisors and managers try to do the best job they can, but their good intentions often backfire. Instead, they laid the groundwork for expensive lawsuits. The solution is training, training, and more training, but where do you start?
New supervisors are overwhelmed by their new responsibilities. They have to forge new relationships with people who were formerly colleagues. They have to submit weekly reports. And they try to be “Real Bosses.”
Here are five quick rules to get your new supervisors and managers through their first 90 days:
Rule 1. No Rush
As we mentioned in yesterday’s Advisor, the first thing to get across to new supervisors and managers is that they don’t have to make instant decisions. They can step back and seek advice before taking action.
Rule 2. Appearances Count
Supervisors and managers also need to know that appearances count. If you fire someone the day after he or she does something that is protected, that will give the appearance of retaliation, even if there was no retaliatory intent.
Rule 3. The Stakes Are High
The lawsuits that may be filed over supervisory mistakes can be very expensive. Even when the company “wins” a suit, it has probably spent over $100,000 in legal fees and that’s to say nothing about the lost time and productivity and perhaps bad publicity damaging to the brand.
Need help with engagement and retention? Join us June 19 2014 with a free interactive webcast Grateful Leadership: Using the Power of Acknowledgment to Engage All Your People and Achieve Superior Results. Learn More
Rule 4. It’s Easy to Check with HR
We’re not trying to say that managers and supervisors can’t ever act. The point is that until they are trained, it’s very easy for them to unintentionally create a very expensive problem. HR is there and ready to counsel them if they encounter a sticky problem before their training is complete.
Rule 5. Lots of Rules
There are a lot of rules that govern supervisors’ conduct. The most important are rules concerning:
- Discrimination. They can’t ever take any action based on a prohibited characteristic like sex, race, age, or religion.
- Retaliation. They can’t take action against someone for doing something he or she have a right to do, for example:
- Making a complaint about safety, or wages, or discrimination;
- Requesting leave to care for a sick child;
- Asking for time off to attend religious ceremonies;
- Requesting a piece of equipment to help ease his or her job; or
- Taking time for jury duty.
- Harassment. Managers and supervisors have to be careful that their actions are not interpreted as harassment. Because of their new power, they should be wary of appearing to be wielding that power over subordinates.
Of course, these are all things not to do. But supervisors also have a positive role to encourage retention and engagement.
Effective leaders must find ways to enhance people’s level of engagement, commitment, and support, especially in the difficult periods all organizations experience at one time or another. Engaged employees work with passion and feel connected and loyal to their organization. This yields higher productivity, sales, and results. Non-engagement in the workplace results in poor performance, limited productivity, and an erosion of the bottom line.
Bottom line, people need consistent affirmation of their value and contribution to the organization in order to know that their efforts are appreciated. This can be accomplished through the practice of Grateful Leadership TM.
How to get started? Fortunately there’s timely help in the form of a new webcast—Grateful Leadership: Using the Power of Acknowledgment to Engage All Your People and Achieve Superior Results In just 60 minutes on June 19, you’ll learn everything you need to know about grateful leadership.
Register today for this free (thanks to sponsor SilkRoad) interactive webinar.
Engagement is key to productivity, but how do you create it? Join us June 19 for a free interactive webcast Grateful Leadership: Using the Power of Acknowledgment to Engage All Your People and Achieve Superior Results . Earn 1 hour in HRCI Recertification Credit. Register Now
By participating in this interactive webcast, you’ll:
- Understand the need for Grateful Leadership to create a culture of appreciation in the workplace and overcome the barriers to using acknowledgment.
- Demonstrate the language and subtleties of authentic and heartfelt acknowledgement behavior so that people can and will practice and use them immediately following the webinar.
- Describe how to coach teams, managers, and other corporate stakeholders in how to use Grateful Leadership to produce breakthrough results.
Register now for this webcast.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
2:00 p.m. (Eastern)
1:00 p.m. (Central)
12:00 p.m. (Mountain)
11:00 a.m. (Pacific)
Approved for Recertification Credit
This program has been approved for 1 recertification credit hour toward recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI).
Join us on June 19 for the free (thanks to sponsor SilkRoad), in-depth Grateful Leadership: Using the Power of Acknowledgment to Engage All Your People and Achieve Superior Results webcast.
Find out more
ABOUT YOUR SPEAKER:
Judith W. Umlas is Sr. Vice President, author and trainer at International Institute for Learning, Inc. (IIL), a global corporate training company. She is the publisher of IIL Publishing, New York, as well as the Publisher of allPM.com, the web portal for over 100,000 project managers. She is the author of the ground-breaking book, The Power of Acknowledgment ©2006, IIL Publishing, New York, which has been credited with changing workplaces and lives by making use of the 7 Principles of Acknowledgment she developed. Her latest book on Grateful Leadership, Using the Power of Acknowledgment to Engage All Your People and Achieve Superior Results was published by McGraw-Hill Professional in Fall, 2012, and You’re Totally Awesome: The Power of Acknowledgment for Kids will be published in Spring, 2013 by IIL Publishing.
Judith delivers inspiring, motivational and transformational keynote addresses on Grateful Leadership and The Power of Acknowledgment all over the world. She also leads webinars and teaches full day virtual and traditional courses to organizations like Volvo, the U.S. Army, Prudential, JMP Engineering, the World Bank, Fannie Mae, IBM, AT&T and many others. She has trained tens of thousands of people through her leading edge, highly interactive and engaging courses and keynotes – with outstanding and long-lasting results. Grateful Leadership and The Power of Acknowledgment are Judith’s passion and her mission!
I can not register from the UK
Will you host another webcast like the one on 6/19 regarding leadership?