HOW TO KNOW IF YOU'RE A GREAT BOSS

Do you ask your employees questions?  By that, I mean the “why, who, what, where, and when” ones. If not, you may not be the best boss you can be. That can impact more than your employees’ morale. It can hurt your bottom line.

Rene Boer — a certified EOS Implementer in the Chicago area — recently published an insightful post for the EOS blog about that topic. An excerpt:

“If you’re like most bosses, you do most of the talking. Frankly, this one-way-street behavior needs to change. Your job is to ensure that the dialogue is 80/20, where your direct report is doing 80% of the talking and you’re talking only 20% of the time. The only way to make that happen is to ask questions instead of making statements.”

You can read his complete article here: Why Great Bosses Don't Tell You What To Do.

HOW TO HAVE DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS WITH TEAM MEMBERS

One of the more challenging aspects of running a small business is speaking with an employee who needs to improve his or her performance.

As Ron Kaminski writes on the EOS Worldwide blog: “Few executives enjoy sitting an employee down to have the “we need to talk” talk. But sooner or later, it becomes unavoidable. How can you have that difficult conversation in a way that promotes positive results?”

This is an excerpt from his article:

“The purpose of “we need to talk” conversations should be to call out poor behavior or poor performance, not to belittle the person in question – or to position you as judge, jury and executioner. That is, unless you want people to get defensive.

Before you sit down to talk, make an effort to set aside your personal feelings for a team member so that you can offer constructive, objective feedback. Focus on behaviors or attitudes that need to be changed and explain how you will help the person excel and succeed.”

You can read his full blog post here.