Managing yourself and your team

3 Tips For Managing Your Team Better And Strengthen Relationships With Colleagues At Work.

STRENGTHEN PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIPS BY PRAISING EFFORT OVER ABILITY. You can strengthen professional relationships and raising a colleague’s performance by praising their effort rather than their ability by saying “Well done. You must have worked very hard on this project”. Recognising their effort without evaluating the result will encourage them to try harder, regardless of the consequences, therefore sidestepping fear of failure, which will lead to more productivity and better results by the person in question. This, in turn, also makes them more likely to attempt other challenging problems, find these problems enjoyable, and try to solve them on their own time—and you will have a more loyal co-worker in the office.

GET PEOPLES COOPERATION BY A LIGHT TOUCH ON THE UPPER ARM. A lightly touch on someone’s upper arm whilst making a request for assistance makes them far more likely to agree because the touch is unconsciously perceived as a sign of a higher status of the person touching. In one study conducted in the USA such a touch produced a 20 percent increase in the number of people who agreed to perform a small favor for a stranger when approached in the street. In the work place use this technique judiciously, however, or you may have a lawsuit on your hands for inappropriate behavior, which is not the outcome you are looking for.

HOW TO SPOT A LIAR AND NOT BE TAKEN FOR A RIDE. People touching their nose, avoiding eye contact or making odd facial expressions are not actually reliable signs of a person lying. The most reliable cues are in the words that people use whilst lying. Liars tend to lack detail in what they are saying and they use more “ums” and “ahs” when giving an untruthful account of a situation; and in order to disassociate them selves from what they are saying they tend to avoid self-references such as; me, mine or I. Furthermore, people are about 20 percent less likely to lie in writing than in a telephone call, because their words are on record and therefore more likely to come back and haunt them. So to get to the truth of a situation of office conflict don’t just have a conversation; ask for a written account.