HRM Coaching Blog

Are certain people making life difficult for others at work? London Career Coach Hannah McNamara explains what you can do about it.

Problem behaviour at work affects everyone. It affects the people on the receiving end and it also affects those who are bullying and argumentative in the first place.

But how do you deal with it?

The first step is to take a pro-active stance, take command and control it in a positive way. It used to be that punishment was the only way forward and indeed some form of disciplinary action may be required. But prevention and support should also be provided, along with a strong and positive management style that will go a long way towards preventing such occurrences happening in the future.

Both coaching and mentoring have led to positive changes in such individuals, as they are offered practical and supportive solutions to change the behaviour that has so affected them and their colleagues. While it will take time to get back to a workplace which is more positive in nature, if you can provide leadership that everyone looks to for advice and support you will be setting the stage for that to gradually evolve.

It can be a tricky balance to present a face of management that is both firm yet supportive in the right ways, but it is vital to do so. You should also keep a close eye on how things are progressing and be prepared to meet with members of staff who have concerns or issues about any kind of detrimental behaviour they are experiencing at work.

Many businesses are now turning to neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to produce better results over both the short and the long term. NLP is designed to help you understand the behaviours of others from both audio and visual signs, and can therefore help in two ways. Firstly the offending member of staff will learn how their behaviour affects others in a detrimental way, and secondly they will also learn how to make positive changes that will help to eradicate the problem behaviour altogether.

As far as your role as a manager is concerned it is vital to ensure that you learn to identify problem behaviour as soon as it arises, rather than finding out about it from staff members. By providing a hands on management style you can learn more about how your team works and thus get to know your team a lot better than perhaps you do now.

By looking at long term solutions to problem behaviour rather than quick fixes, you will find that your team works in a more harmonious way as a result.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara 2008

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If you or someone you work with is having trouble with a difficult member of staff, or a co-worker, HRM Coaching can help. Call 020 7939 9910 in confidence and ask for Hannah McNamara or visit www.hrmcoaching.com.

Could Career Coaching help your staff to deal with the prospect of redundancy? London Career Coach Hannah McNamara thinks so.

Working in HR can be a very rewarding career, but it doesn’t get any tougher than having to deal with making other members of staff redundant.

It often falls to HR managers to deal with the fallout of such an event, as the people affected seek help to cope with their sometimes unexpected (and nearly always stressful and upsetting) situation.

The key to being able to help workers faced with redundancy is to be ready and available to offer solutions and advice when they need it the most. Career coaching isn’t something that all members of staff will be aware of or will have thought about, but if you can suggest it to anyone who comes to you for help it can do wonders for their motivation. It is a useful tool for helping them to see that there are other options on the table.

When people are told they face redundancy, they often assume that they are leaving the company altogether. This is not always true however. Before you meet with any employee in this situation, you should investigate the possibility of outplacement; it’s quite possible that their skills can be utilised elsewhere in the business without them having to leave altogether. This can be a good solution for both the employee and the employer when a role disappears.

HR managers can do a lot for employees facing redundancy, both in terms of providing information and providing support as well. An employee’s productivity will understandably be affected by the news, but if you can provide the right resources to help them negotiate the situation successfully there is every chance they will begin to see it as an opportunity to stretch their wings.

This does bring up an important point, since the first thought of many HR managers will naturally be to provide resources such as career coaching in order to help the employee through this period of transition. It is important however to remember that they are likely to be feeling emotional at this time, and may not be very accepting of help in the first instance. It may simply be enough to let them know where you are and how you can help, and to tell them that they can arrange a further meeting to discuss future options when they feel ready to do so.

Redundancy is not a pleasant situation from either side of the fence, but if it is handled carefully by those in an HR capacity then the workers affected will at least know the support they need is there for them.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara 2008

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HRM Coaching in London helps professionals to excel at work and find the job they were born to do. They provide life coaching, career coaching and executive coaching at all levels. You can download their latest e-book ‘10 Ways to Sabotage Your Own Career - are you making these mistakes?’ free from www.hrmcoaching.com/download

London Career Coach Hannah McNamara offers some tips if you are facing redundancy.

The British economy isn’t exactly at its strongest level at the moment, which is why so many workers are starting to worry about the prospect of a recession and what that would mean for their job security. Redundancy is something that many people will sadly have to go through in their lives, but with the appropriate career planning you can come through the experience with a better regard for your career and your skills.

If you are facing redundancy this is the best time to make use of every piece of quality career advice you can. Career coaching can make all the difference at a time when your emotions are likely to be running high; you may have been in your job for many years and if this is the case you would be forgiven for feeling as if there is no future for you in the current job market.

But many people end up looking back and realising that their redundancy was a good thing in the long run. That’s not to say that it wasn’t stressful or upsetting at the time, but there is no doubt that if you get the right help and support when you need it you will be able to face your future with more knowledge and confidence.

It’s also a good time to think about whether you want to stay in the same career and progress to a different company, or if you would prefer to opt for a complete career change. Many people find career coaching can help them to assess the possibilities and make an informed decision on whether their current skills could be put to better use elsewhere.

If you do decide to opt for a career change you may find you need to obtain some fresh qualifications or training that will give you a better chance of getting the job you want. Proper career planning can also identify other possibilities such as self employment – perhaps even using the years of experience you have already gained in the job you are about to leave. Many people use some of their redundancy money to set up a business which enables them to be true to themselves as well as bring in an income which comes from creating something that is truly theirs.

Whatever you decide to do, it is vital that you get the help and advice you need as soon as you know that redundancy is on the cards. If you can do this you will be able to move forwards with much more confidence.

The website of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development publishes a quarterly review of the labour market, which gives details of the outlook for redundancy among other factors, and it can be accessed at their website at http://www.cipd.co.uk.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara 2008

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Are you sabotaging your own career? Find out by reading this free report - 10 Ways to Sabotage Your Own Career - are you making these mistakes?

Hannah McNamara is a Career Coach with a background in Marketing, based in London. She has been providing Career Coaching in London for almost 4 years and has a client base made up of private individuals, large organisations and SME businesses.

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Hannah McNamara from HRM Coaching in London explores whether ambition is really such a good thing and whether career coaching can help.

We all recognise that achieving a work life balance isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Most of us want to do well in our careers, moving up the ladder and taking on more responsibilities as we go. We soon discover that leadership and management skills can take us a long way, and so it is natural to want to develop them and our careers as well, whether they are in the public sector or the private sector.

There is certainly nothing wrong with a bit of ambition – if none of us had any then most of the luxuries we have and developments we have made in the world wouldn’t be here today. But when does ambition turn from being constructive and rear its ugly head as a destructive mechanism? Perhaps more importantly, how can we tell before we get to the tipping point?

Career coaching is still gaining ground in the public and private sectors, and a career coach can certainly help you to take a good look at your career to see whether any changes need to be made. It is quite often the fact that an outsider can tell whether your ambition is going too far, long before you reach that point of recognition yourself. As in so many other situations in life, we are often the last ones to see there is a problem – until it is almost too late to solve it.

Having a well constructed personal development plan is a good way to keep track of how your work performance is shaping up. Your ambitions can help you to identify well targeted work goals to achieve, without creating too many to be able to keep tabs on them all at the same time.

It’s also wise to keep a well rounded view of your lifestyle in place at all times. Destructive ambitions which take over your life are very often more likely to happen when you don’t have many interests in your personal life, and your work life is therefore allowed to spill over and fill the gaps.

While a career coach can certainly discuss your dreams and ambitions with you, they can also help you to maintain a more even keel, concentrating on your personal development plan as well as keeping an eye on how your personal interests are being attended to. If you have a good work life balance in place, then your ambitions will almost always be constructive, since you will have personal interests that you won’t be willing to compromise on.

If you are currently dangerously near to having destructive ambitions, bear in mind that it will take some time to redress the balance back in your favour. Once you have started taking productive steps to do just that, you will find it is very easy to regain it given time.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara 2008

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Hannah McNamara is the Managing Director of HRM Coaching in London. Find out more about Career Coaching packages and start working on your career path. Call 020 7939 9910 for a free initial consultation to discuss your current situation. HRM Coaching also provides Executive Coaching within organisations.

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The more time goes on the more we learn about each other – and this is especially noticeable in a working environment. But not only do we learn different things, we also learn in different ways.

In a recent article in the People Management magazine (available to read on their website at www.peoplemanagement.co.uk) it is mentioned that learning within a work environment should now be more individually led, rather than constantly attending mass training events. The article provides a fascinating read, not to mention a very convincing argument for why this individual stance should become the norm rather than the exception.

There is every reason to think that with the proper structure, this type of self-propelled learning could actually work rather well. Why? This is simply because not everyone learns in the same manner.

Let’s look at a typical example. Let’s suppose you set up a training session which takes place predominantly using a slide show and talk to get your message across. You may have chosen this method because it’s a method you like yourself.

Now some of the people who attend your training course may take in a lot of what you are saying. Others may study the slideshow carefully and take in a great deal of information in that way. Others may struggle to take in much at all – not because your presentation skills are boring in any way, but simply because they don’t study very well in that way. If you gave them a pamphlet that listed your presentation step by step it might be a different story – it all depends on which way they tend to learn.

That’s where individual learning can really be a winner. Provided there is a supportive framework in which the whole thing works, there is no reason to suppose that better results can’t be obtained, and motivating staff won’t become a lot easier.

It would be wrong to say that each individual employee will be totally alone though. A good move would be to start motivating staff to take on learning opportunities to grow and develop their skills during the coming weeks and months. The idea can also be brought up during discussions about their personal development plan; if you can identify the best ways of learning in their individual case, then you will be able to steer them in the right direction for making the most of every learning opportunity which comes their way.

© Hannah McNamara 2008

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Hannah McNamara is the Managing Director of HRM Coaching Ltd. HRM Coaching provides Career Coaching, Executive Coaching and Leadership Development Programmes. Call 020 7939 9910 for more information and a free initial consultation to discuss your requirements.

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