I love working with businesses as they are made up of people as the main part of the mechanism to make the organisation work, but all too often companies run into negative people issues and that can mean things may not go quite as planned some times. I developed this list in response to a cry for help from David, a client of mine. He was feeling under pressure having 25 staff that were “all over the shop” to use his term. Some of the issues were to do with his style of leadership and some to do with the people.

In the end the result was great, absenteeism fell, and before long profitability and productivity was on the rise. Occasionally it does not take much, but when you need to take stock check the list and see how you might pick up the game.

Points to creating a great workplace
1. Don’t change people – You picked them, you wanted, you got, now work with what you have to get a great result, if you want something to alter you, not them.
2. Play by their rules (sometimes) – Work with them, if they have rules, they have them for a reason, is it that your rules are not filling the gap/s? Or perhaps they think their rules are better. Be flexible in your approach and check out what they have before running it down, try it you just might like it.
3. Check list you – Check out what you do, what you can change to better fit the situations you may find ourself in with the workplace. Check your attitude, your communication style, your presentation, your expectations and probably a whole raft of other things.
4. Look after you – Change can happen at any time, the control of that is up to you, no one else. If you are in control of you and your needs chances are your esteem will allow you to be more, do more, and have more.
5. Discuss the good and the not so good! – Have open and frank discussions and ensure they stay free form personal attack. Create an environment where people can say how they feel, see how things are going, hear from others and keep in touch with the team and each other.
6. Listen and do – Talk less about things and go for more actions, doing can make a world of difference to the organisation you are a part of. Remember two ears for listening, and one mouth for talking. So use them in that order. But to add to that cliché, you have two hands, two feet as well, so your capacity to do is greater than the capacity to talk and listen! I won’t even touch how many brain cells you have and how they could come into the equation.
7. People are different – Neither right nor wrong, just different. Males and females, religious beliefs and ideals, vales and general beliefs. So go with the flow a occasionally, know there are the ‘bad bits’ but learn to be flexible enough in your approach to work with these differences, remember great leaders love people.
8. Go into battle carefully – Jumping in without too much information from two sides of an argument can be costly, VERY COSTLY! So be careful and choose your battles wisely. Every business has bad bits, they may alter over time, they might get better but love them for what they are at the time. It might also be bothering your staff and they are just waiting for the right time to do something about them.
9. Develop choices – It’s easy to blame others for things going wrong, but how many choices were there at the time? By developing choices you may just make a powerful difference to the way thing turn out.
10. Don’t play psych – Psych is for psychs, use your understanding to advantage, but you don’t have to tell them the research and methodology behind what you say and or do. E.g. a plumber does not tell the customer how a pipe is made, the customer just wants it to do its job.
11. Accuse and lose – Point the finger of blame and you had better watch out, it might just get bitten. People will dodge, lie and leave in no time flat over the smallest issues, why? Because we all want to do good things, and to have the finger of blame levelled at us is not a good feeling.
12. Let them know you love what they do – Sometimes this might happen very discretely, and others as an over the top display of a job done brilliantly. It might be a few words, a gift, a badge of recognition, but be fair about it and make sure they know they are special people working on a very special task.

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