It’s been some time since I have added to this blog. My apologies! I have been working on my next supervisor training program. Like all of you trainers know, creating a training program from scratch is one heck of a lot of work.

I designed this program for a friend of mine, the leader of a mining company in Nevada. He has a large number of lead people, first line supervisors and superintendents among his four hundred employees, many of whom needed more information on how to manage those diverse people on their crews.  Read the full article...

Organizational policies don’t have to make sense or be fair.

“Suthers, who said this was a democracy?” Bill Cooper, President of Asamera Minerals, made this comment when I thought a particular decision was not fair.

His words made sense to me and I had to admit that he was right and I told him so. The typical organization is not a democracy and the people in that organization have a job to do, even if they disagree with the decisions being made. At times that job is going to be hard on personal feelings and beliefs. But that’s the way it is.  Read the full article...

Records

Records are a necessity in every organization. We all need them to do our job. Remember when something you said or did came back to haunt you later? Well, the records you generate in your organization can come back to haunt you too.

One department manager in a Washington state organization proposed a plan for a number of other department managers to leave the company and start their own business. He was secretive about it because the business venture he was proposing would be in direct competition with their present company. The planning went well for awhile. It came apart when he saved his plan on a disk and then accidentally used the same disk to send another file to corporate headquarters.  Read the full article...

Conflicts among team members are going to happen. They’re also going to be tough to solve. As an HR professional, you will be called upon to either give advice on how to resolve a dispute between two employees or you will be asked to take a direct hand in resolving a dispute among several employees.

The tough part is coming out of the situation as an impartial leader and not one who appears to side with one or the other of the parties.  Read the full article...

You will hear various types of talk in the workplace. The following styles were detailed by Sherod Miller, Daniel Wackman, Elam Nunnally and Phyllis Miller in their book, Connecting With Self and Others. I have added some additional comments in places.

Learning to recognize the various types of talk will help you determine the motivation behind the talk. Some types are necessary and when properly used can be positive. Others are harmful. As a supervisor, you absolutely do not want to use some of the types of talk discussed here, nor do you want them to be commonly used by your team. Let’s discuss them and learn why some styles can be dangerous.  Read the full article...