Four Necessary Conversations for People Managers Right Now
If you are wondering how on earth we are going to 'get back to normal', you're not alone. There’s no roadmap on how to best lead and work together through a pandemic. Leaders and managers need to pave the way and respond to what is needed.
To contribute to this, senior consultant Claudia Butler has designed a framework that summarises and encourages the critical conversation that managers need to initiate right now. These conversations are outlined below.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions, or would like to partner with Frameworks for Change to support these necessary conversations. We can provide assistance by offering each of the following topics as individual workshops, or as a program for your organisation.
Overview
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Managing teams remotely
Managing teams remotely is new for some, others have done it for years.
Now it’s time to share the experiences that have been collected and expand your own remote team management strategies.
Ask:
· What (remote) teams need to function well.
· The challenges and some useful strategies.
· What you will do to master and/or contribute to the art of working remotely.
Navigating the tough conversations
Change is inevitably leading to tough conversations with staff. As managers we wish that people would understand and come along, but we often encounter resistance, disengagement and negative emotional responses.
Explore and commit to strategies on how to best navigate the tough change conversations:
· Managing resistance
· Responding to strong emotional responses
· Creating engagement
…when talking about necessary changes with staff
Maintaining great working relationships
Building and maintaining great working relationships is challenging in the best of times. Doing it in the remote and online environment is even tougher. The risk of misunderstandings, being led astray by assumptions and not ‘getting’ each other is on the rise.
More than ever, managers and teams must discuss and agree on strategies on how to maintain great working relationships:
· How to prevent conflicts.
· How to manage yourself when things don’t go well.
· How to go about resolving issues involving others.
Managing performance expectations
Managing performance expectations is a key topic in the COVID-19 environment. It ranges from behavioural expectation in the online world to agreeing on deliverables that take the new and varied circumstances into account.
Examine how you have and might continue to evolve your approach to managing performance in this new world of working together.
· Balancing and coordinating priorities, needs and interests.
· Agreeing on reasonable expectations and standards.
· Monitoring performance expectations
