Q.  I am a new supervisor who is replacing another leadership staff member who retired.  Employees had a great deal of respect for my predecessor.  How do I efficiently and quickly gain their trust?  I know that this also is the first step toward gaining a great deal of respect in the future.

A.  Understanding the meaning of trust can help you practice behaviors and set standards for yourself that will win the hearts and minds of your employees.  Trust means reliance on and confidence in the truth, worth, and reliability of a person.  Consider how these values translate into supervisory practice, and you’ll gain trust.  Every new supervisor has the battle half won when it comes to gaining trust.  This is because employees want to be led by someone they trust.  To get on the fast track, establish relationships with your employees that demonstrate you can be counted on for support when the going gets tough.  When times are tough, your employees will have faith in your ability to support them.  This will deepen their trust in you.  Be a consistent communicator, along with making yourself accessible.  This will remove the mystery between you and your employees, a frequently overlooked obstacle to building trust.  Be truthful with employees.  Doing so will build their confidence in you.  Keep commitments and appointments and only promise what you are certain you can deliver.  This will show employees that you are reliable.

Q.  Is there a method or approach to inspiring employees?  When I think of employees being inspired, I think of them as motivated.  Are feeling inspired and feeling motivated the same thing?

A.  All inspired employees are motivated, but not all motivated employees necessarily feel inspired.  Often, the two terms are used interchangeably, but a closer look reveals important differences.  An employee can be motivated to accomplish work as a result of being provoked, aggravated, goaded, or annoyed into productivity.  On the other hand, employees who feel inspired are moved internally, feel enthused about work accomplishments and are infectious in their excitement.  Here’s the formula:  To inspire employees, summarize a tantalizing goal, discuss its implications for everyone, remind workers of their past triumphs, and ask them to reflect on what drove them to achieve successful outcomes in the past.  Help set their sights on a faraway goal that’s so exciting and potentially rewarding that they can’t help but covet it.  Finally, help them visualize what it will feel like to reach the mountaintop.

Q.  What’s the difference between stress and pressure?  Sometimes I think employees feel pressure at work, but not unmanageable stress.  Employees should seek support from the EAP, but not for the “normal” sense of urgency that everyone feels to get things done, correct?

A.  Stress, pressure, force, strain, and distress are terms frequently used in mental health and workforce-management literature to define different work-generated tensions and the degrees of severity faced by employees.  These definitions are rather fluid among authors.  Every employee experiences these work tensions differently and managing them is a learned skill.  Encourage your employees to use the EAP for any perceived personal need, even if you judge the degree of work stress they face to be much less than what they perceive it to be.  As employees adapt to stress, they tend to naturally elevate their tolerance level for more of the same.  Your EAP can do the sorting out after they arrive for a confidential assessment and the help that they may or may not require.

Q.  Do economic downturns affect employee safety and wellness?     Can the EAP play a role in helping employees reduce injuries?

 A.  During periods of economic downturn, employers naturally place constraints on resources.  Employees may be reassigned, layoffs occur, new hires are delayed, longer hours are worked, and taking over a coworker’s assignments may happen more often.  This added stress increases the risk of employee injuries from worry and anxiety about the future of their positions, job security, or roles in the company.  Increasing communication between your and your employees can help.  Keep the information flowing.  According toGallup, 30% of workers worry about their job security and even more about benefits.  This is double the number of employees who worried about such issues in 2008.  Encourage employees to use EAP resources and consider opportunities for the EAP to help your employees manage stress and anxiety.

Source:  http://tiny.cc/job-worry

 Q.  Certainly all supervisors eventually face the task of managing difficult employees.  Beyond a magazine article or short seminar, though, I haven’t seen much in-depth training.  Is the EAP a good resource for this kind of help?  What about experienced peers?

 A.  Both sources of experience – the EAP and your peers – can lend guidance to managing difficult employees.  Obviously, the EAP has advantages your professional friends do not possess.  One is confidentiality.  Your peers may not keep conversations confidential.  The EAP can also help you discover how your personality style supports or interferes with the process of managing difficult employees.  It can challenge and help you to use new or different approaches.  Role plays are very effective tools, and the EAP  may suggest them.  Admittedly, learning to respond properly to distressed, upset, or difficult employees is a “learning by doing” experience, but there are also principles worth knowing.  Remaining calm, thinking deliberately before you speak, avoiding emotional involvement, practicing detachment, reducing provocative responses, and knowing how to problem-solve are only a few principles you can learn from the EAP.

Q.  My employee does not appear to be a good fit for the position.  I don’t want to drag things out if we decide to dismiss this person, but should I make a referral to the EAP?  I am 100% certain this is a skill and abilities issue.

A.  Make a referral for performance issues.  If problems are strictly skills related, your employee will have the benefit of meeting with the employee assistance professional and establishing a working relationship.  This could be a source of support later if an adverse action is pursued.  The EAP can assess the employee’s career fitness, interests, personal finances, and motivation for the current position.  A discussion could lead to a job or career change, a stronger feeling of control in the face of job loss, or a reduced likelihood of a legal challenge to dismissal – or even a disturbing personal reaction to dismissal.  Many supervisors are surprised to learn in similar situations that personal problems played a role in performance struggles.  Think of the EAP as a “productivity improvement program.”  You will refer and help more employees and also achieve higher levels of productivity and a better return on your organization’s investment in the EAP.

Q.  Is there an “attitude” about supervision that you recommend supervisors adopt?  By attitude, I mean a framework or model that reduces distress in supervision relationships and makes them more collaborative.

A.  Many supervisors visualize the role of supervisor as “unidirectional,” or one way.  The supervisor is “directing” and the employee is acting on that direction.  This is too simplistic.  Employees need you as much as you need them.  You have a need for job satisfaction as much as your employee does, and you have a need to achieve career goals too.  This orientation to supervision will make your relationships with employees more cooperative and productive.  Most supervisors want to guide employees, maximize their productivity, and help them develop and feel rewarded for the good work they do.  But it is important to see yourself as teaming up with your employee.  “How can we cooperate with each other?” or “What do we need to work on to achieve results together?” is a proactive orientation to supervision.  Supervisors with this orientation experience more cooperation from employee, less stress, and more joy in their work.

 Q.  A lack of communication is a bit of a problem within my work division.  I harp on people to share information more efficiently and frequently, but invariably everyone reverts back to their old habits.  These are “people issues,” so can the EAP help?

 A.  When communication is problematic and the flow of information is poor, search for barriers and intervene around them.  Frequently, barriers are physical or rooted in inefficient communication channels.  But that is only scratching the surface.  Barriers to communication in organizations can arise from attitude problems, poor supervision, personality conflicts, language differences, culture clashes, personal problems, and more.  This is where the EAP can provide an added dimension of help.  Consult with your EAP to see if you can discover potential behavioral or human-factor-related dimensions to this problem.  Man EA professionals are educated in communication dynamics and have plenty of experience in understanding the role of sender and receiver, tangible and intangible barriers, and interventions to improve communication.  This may sound unconventional, but EAPs often can address problems of this type due to the perspective they offer and the unique set of operational parameters that set them apart as effective problem solvers when looking at human behavior in the workplace.

 Q.  How can I help employees experience less stress regarding change in our organization?  “Managing change” seems to be a buzzword phrase these days.  Can you discuss a practical strategy to help us feel more in control over what feels uncontrollable?

 A.  Whether it’s an organization or an individual employee facing change, stress can be reduced by remaining proactive in the face of certain or unknown change rather than reacting after the fact.  Experiment with the following proactive model:  Meet with employees if significant change is pending.  Have a frank discussion about resistance to change – how resistance is normal (but undesirable) and how it could undermine the work group.  Discuss both what is feared about the change and what new opportunities or rewards are presented.  Next, discuss strategy.  How does your group “get ahead” of the impact and prepare to exploit the positive aspects of the change?  Finally, in the face of stress, how will your group support individual members who may experience more stress from the change than others do?  Consider how the EAP can serve as a facilitator for such a discussion.

 Q.  In addition to reading about what it takes to be a good leader (or learning from my mistakes), what other strategy is particularly effective in acquiring leadership skills?

 A.  One commonly overlooked strategy of leadership development is modeling.  Consider observing effective leaders within or outside of your organization.  Attempt to model what they do.  Nearly every manager can spot an effective leader, but being able to identify and describe what you are looking at can be a little trickier.  When modeling others, seek to identify what attitudes they bring to workers and how they support the organization’s goals.  What beliefs and values appear to support their effective leadership style?  What do they place priorities?  What do they do that attracts others, and what causes those around them to respond positively?  Perhaps most important, how do they reciprocate with others in the organization so they appear to both lead and value everyone around them?