I want you to consider how maintaining a positive management style and leadership relationship can affect your team and or workforce in sales and customer services. So what if a sales team isn’t performing, should the results lie with the sales staff or should the problem be fixed in the management above?
Lets look at that more closely, when a team have no clear team goals and no leadership by example, this creates bad learning patterns and habits, that occur at work especially when employees see managers breaking promises or going against core team values. As managers when faced with such problems as sales figures dropping in a team or centre, it may seem easy for managers to feel that they are not in complete control and that things just happen to them. Their sub-conscious mind may trigger certain phrases such as:
‘’It’s not my fault’’
Or
‘’They should do something about this’’
The company and organisation is responsible for bad learning behaviours and experiences that will go on where positive motivation and encouragement is overtly not on the agenda in everyday work operations.
So lets look at what happens if positive encouragement and motivation is reinforced into team members from management and what happens when negative energy surrounds a work force.
Team members get inspired by who they look up to and respect, when management performance and productivity is on a high through a positive state and energy, what you will see is a increase in all performance, through customer services and sales. This stimulates and increases the reputation of management, the company will be enhanced and the relationship between staff and management, which is key to overall achievement of the team, which will improve and deepen.
Now if positive re-enforcement, motivation and encouragement aren’t triggered from management downwards. Then what you will notice in a team’s dynamic is an impact on the motivation and it will build negativity leading to strain and laziness in team members. The reputation of management with staff across the company will be damaged and this will in turn result in the relationships breaking down and staff feeling upset.
As you can see the consequences of bad management and leadership wont be felt immediately, but what will tend to happen later on, is staff responses to feedback from management wont be taken on board in a positive manner, and what will be seen is more rebellious-aggressive behaviour as a way of getting their point across.
However what managers can start to realize and act on is to look at the their staff members in a more positive view, and of recognition that we all contribute to some extent to the overall goal. As managers our contribution may be from something that we do quite often on a daily basis or from what we do not do, but at the end managers need their team members performing, but the team members wont perform for the manager without a feeling of recognition or respect both ways. Fears of changing a management style to fit with staff under them may have held managers back from taken real positive action, perhaps they have been worried about new ideas being wrong. If you take a more positive view however you can often find ways in which you can change an unsatisfied group of members in your team and make the situation better. You as a manger needs to be able to substitute negativity with positivity even with simple things such as phrases as ‘’ Yes you can ’’ and ‘’ If you can’t you must’’
Now as a manager you look back on situations and events you have faced in the past and you recall them, you may have learnt already from experiences and although with some you may have been totally out of your depth and control, some you may have found yourself contributing to by simple things such as your own behaviours and attitudes and your unwillingness to change. Simple things such as saying ‘”YES’’ to new ideas, questions and feedback that were thrown at you, but as a manager instead of dealing with them and managing them, you may have exercised your managers right of veto and discarded them plus discarding your staff’s respect at the same time
Remember managers need to be fair but firm, but if done correctly, you will create a well respected well balanced manager with staff below working harder than any to make sure the manager above is proud of their achievements. So by learning the correct communication style preferences for individual staff members you will notice and see a drastic change in your team member’s performance, respect and overall happiness within the business.
