101 Tips To Improve Your Business – Tips 76 to 80 (goals and vision, keep staff in the loop, strengths and weaknesses, publicly praise, create boundaries)

101 Tips continued:

76. Always communicate your goals, vision and priorities to your staff. This will enable them to know what to work towards – your staff like yourself want to know where everything is. So let them know what you are shooting for and they will help you.

77. The best performing staff are those who are “kept in the picture” – what can I say, “Just keep them in the picture!”

78. Identify strengths and weaknesses in your staff and match your employees to the areas that they are most strong – this is tricky because you don’t want to crush your staff’s enthusiasm with negativity. A trick someone once told me is the “Kiss, Smack, Kiss technique”. When you want to correct someone’s behaviour, always start with a positive comment about the person (the Kiss), then show them the behaviour you want to change (the Smack), and finally show them some affection with a positive comment (The Kiss) again.

79. Never scold in public as this will only create disgruntled employees. Do, however, praise in public – this is the same with children, no different. Praise publicly, correct privately!

80. Create acceptable boundaries and encourage your staff to do the same. This way everyone knows where they stand – this re-iterates tip numbers 76 and 77.