So, Jake’s mad again. Sam was a few minutes late for work and Jake’s response is instant and angry.
It’s a familiar story and Jake has a warning on his file about it. He knows his stress causes issues and tried to talk to his line manager about it. He’s been on a stress management course but that just made him more stressed – when he got back to work there was a massive backlog after just two days away!
Jenny has worked in stores since she was 17. She is quiet and organised and there is never a thing out of place; but Jenny feels increasingly frustrated and invisible. She really wants to be able to make more of a contribution and feel that her role has some significance.
She has tried to share sideas for improvement with the Stores Supervisor but his immovable philosophy is: ‘if it ain’t broke…’.
Recently, he is really disappointed that he has had to speak to her twice about arriving late for work. Perhaps she has reached the limit of her working potential…
Emma is a great manager and reads a lot to develop her own skills and bring new ways of working into her department. She has been looking at the benefits of a coaching approach to development and has started to work with individuals really effectively.
She wants to introduce peer coaching to the team but has met with real resistance. This isn’t the first time she has experienced difficulty with this. The idea is simple. Why don’t the team get on board with it?
This team is a mess. Everyone works in different ways and no-one can agree how things should look or how to meet client needs. The team lacks structure and there is creative tension and stress every working day. They are a brilliant group of individuals but all are assertive and expressive.
There is a lot of stress around the team, and in an open plan office, everyone is affected.
There’s a business plan, a marketing strategy, a sales strategy, a financial strategy, an appraisal system, targets and key performance indicators for every staff member.
So why do the staff seem to have varying degrees of commitment? Why can’t we consistently recruit decent staff that get on with their work to a high standard? Why do people seem so negative with each other and have such a poor response to requests for ideas to make things better? How do we increase the performance of the company?
