Teamwork requires respect. There are times, however, when a co-worker’s attitude makes teamwork difficult at best and often impossible. A problem staffer can disrupt an entire office setting. Coping with a difficult co-worker is a real skill and one that is essential for the well-being of an organization in general and yourself in particular. The fact of the matter is that few offices have 100% retention – every organization goes through several employees to find a good team player. It is the exceptional team players that travel agencies want to retain, and there is strong motivation to rotate the difficult staffers out of the office as efficiently as possible with minimum disruption to the whole. But while the difficult personality is on staff, how to cope? Read the rest of this entry »

Small service businesses are almost always initially founded on a personality. At the core of the business plan is the personality of the owner – driven by whatever demons motivate them,  they start a company, move it forward and upward by the sheer force of their determination. And it works, for a while. Before long, however, most business owners realize the real meaning of the word “company.” Seldom is a person truly in business by themselves. As the company grows, employees (or family) begin to take on as much of the labor overhead as the owner will delegate. In fact, successful growth is often directly dependent on exactly how willing the head of the organization is to turn over important decisions and operations to capable employees.

Companies that market themselves well almost always have discovered the secret to employee empowerment and teamwork. If your brand is really the total sum of people’s perceptions about your company,  isn’t it logical that one of the chief conduits of your brand message is your employees? Read the rest of this entry »

The chances are very good if you work with more than two office staffers your co-workers have hidden talents about which you know nothing. Mining your staff to discover unrecognized assets is one of the most interesting and potentially rewarding exercises any manager can undertake. Many staff members have secret strengths that, properly applied, can be extremely valuable to a company. Your best corporate agent might also be a terrific public speaker. Your cruise specialist might be a real social magnet, with dozens of community contacts. Your receptionist might be an exceptional writer. That new agent you just hired right out of college might know more about social media than most writers of marketing columns. Read the rest of this entry »

The foundation of teamwork is trust. In any office setting, pulling a group of individuals into a working, well functioning unit is far from simple. Although humans are social animals and naturally gravitate to working together, we are also wary of our territory and cautious of our position. To obtain the objective of getting employees to confidently relax into the work setting the environment must encompass trust in the organization and in the other team members, including those in upper management. In an atmosphere of trust, employee retention and motivation are easier to achieve.  A happy and properly motivated staff will naturally contribute discretionary effort to their work out of a sense of pride at contributing to the greater good. Read the rest of this entry »