Some organisations tend to employ top-down directives, which filter through the different levels of the company. Increasingly, organisations are recognising that getting people to have a greater say in their own destiny can give them a competitive advantage. Objective setting is ideally suited to a bottom-up approach.

A traditional viewpoint is that it should only be the manager who sets the objectives for his or her team or organisation. Those who have undertaken management training courses will recognise that objective setting can be a successful tool for empowering the individual.

Progressively, objective setting is becoming more of a shared solution. This is particularly the case where employees are encouraged to set their own goals for their personal development.

If the defining, creating and controlling of objectives is done in conjunction with those who have to perform the core tasks, you will see better results. It’s a question of ownership; if individuals are encouraged to set a path and have a voice in what the organisation is trying to achieve, their job satisfaction and qualitative performance levels are likely to increase.

Bottom-up strategies are not necessarily for everyone, it takes a lot of initial focus, energy and support from managers to make them work. A culture shift may need to take place before this can happen.

The personal development and motivation of an individual is an underrated aspect of the modern manager’s job function.

Employees may have the skills and abilities to do their job, they may have great resources available to them, but if their motivation is lacking, results will not be forthcoming.

It easy to be dismissive about motivation; what happened to the good old days when people were grateful for their job, and happy with the salary that came with it? Aren’t motivational techniques about pampering to people’s sensitivities and worrying about their psychological state?

Well, the fast paced competitive environment of today’s business world means that if the modern manager wants to get the most from their team, they need to invest more in effort in their personnel than just deciding their pay grade.

The advantages of good motivational systems are rich; a reduction in absenteeism, increase in punctuality, attention and responsibility, to name just a few beneficial examples that ultimately improve the bottom line.

Engendering a culture of positivity and personal investment in your staff has another knock on benefit. If the individuals in a team are all motivated, you will see the synergy effect; the combined performance of the team exceeds the sum of each individual’s contribution.

Here are some basic email etiquette tips that should be covered in most basic training courses.

Always use the subject line. There is nothing worse than an email that is important but has no subject line - it makes it hard to find if at a later date.

Only send an email to those who need the email. It is all too easy to CC in various different people with email. You wouldn’t call all the people you CC in, so there is no need to CC them all in, it will only make them ignore emails from you, and that could cause problems at a later date.

Always check to make sure you have included any attachments that you said you were going to. There is nothing worse than sending an email, then having to sheepishly send another email with the correct documents attached.

Make sure the email has a point. Sending out generic emails that do not have a clear message are not worth the time they were spent writing them. Do not send emails out for the sake of sending emails, but make sure that all emails that are sent are relevant and help to achieve your job.

Email has brought about a great change in many business. No longer do people have to rely on the phone or fax machine to get in contact with someone, and more than that it also means that you don’t have to worry about getting in touch with people - they will receive the email next time they check their inbox. However, there are also downsides to email, the most notable being that it is very quick and easy to use, and this can lead to problems.

It is important that all staff know and understand what it is that they are doing when they send an email - they are representing the company. Everything that is sent via email should be treated the same as if it was a letter. There is no reason to break with standard communication protocols just because it is easier to do so.

If people are unsure if an email should be sent, they should wait ten minutes, then reread the email and see if they still feel that it is appropriate.

Finally, under no circumstances should any company email ever contain a smiley - these not only look unprofessional, but usually mean that you are not begin as clear as you could be in the email, and are having to resort to adding emoticons to the text to make it more understandable.

There are two types of skills, soft skills and hard skills. Hard skills are things such as ability to use Microsoft Word, or a qualification in accountancy. Soft skills are things such as being able to influence people, how good you are at managing teams and indeed working within a team, how good your presentation skills are, and even how good you are at motivating both yourself and other people. there are a wide range of soft skills, yet too often they can be over looked in training sessions, as hard skill training takes priority, as it can be seen as more worthwhile to a company. This is a mistake that happens all too often, and should be avoided.

If your company deals with clients, then peoples soft skills must be improved. even if individuals do not deal with clients, it is still important that their soft skills are improved, so that they work better in their day to day jobs, and get on better with their colleagues. Any training schedule should cover both hard and soft skills, though soft skills are the ones that will usually provide the most long term benefit and turn an average employee into an amazing one.

An area that many people may require help in is the area of self management. Providing people with training so that they become better at self management is a great way to increase staff productivity and help take some of the pressure off of the compnaies managers.

Areas that can be looked at include:

• Setting & Achieving goals
• Knowing if you are too busy or underachieving
• How to focus
• How flexible should you be
• Eliminating time wasters

Letting people know that they can manage themselves, and that they do not have to rely solely on their managers for everything can only increase the worth of the employees to the company, as well as helping the company to run smoother.

It is usually a good idea in any training session to get the attendees to act out what they would do and what they should do in various different scenarios. Here are a few tips that you can use to try and get the most out of the training session.

1. Don’t make the attendees do anything potentially embarrassing or difficult - training sessions must not make people feel they have lost face with their colleagues - it can only cause more issues.
2. Look at using actors to help increase interactivity and interest in any role plays that you use during the course of the training session.
3. Rotate the roles - don’t have the same people doing the same thing all the time, people need to experience things they wouldn’t normally experience in order to learn more.

While these may seem like simple things to do, they can mean the difference between a successful training session and one that could be deemed a failure, in that people do not learn as much as they could.

We have talked before about how important it is to train people to be able to provide and give a wide range of presentation training to help with meetings, sales pitches, even helping to improve training presentations.

The de-facto standard for presentations is Microsoft Powerpoint, so it is worth while making sure that staff know the ins and outs of powerpoint. they need to understand that just because they can use countless themes, effects and images in their presentation does not mean they should. Presentations should be simple, but Powerpoint tempts people into being over elaborate and in some cases these features can create confusion instead of helping the presentation.

If there is a standard company Powerpoint theme, teach people how to use it, and emphasize that they shouldn’t move away from this template unless they have a very good reason. Employees can have a tendency to go crazy when they are creating presentations, so it is important to make sure that they understand that presentations reflect themselves and the company, and so need to be created in certain ways so as to keep with the company look.

Powerpoint is something that everyone claims they know how to use, but very few people use it well. It is important that people are trained in Powerpoint presentation best practices so that any potential issues are missed.

Companies can spend a lot of time and money on flashy exhibition stands and attending conferences and trade shows, yet they all too often neglect spending time and effort in the one area that can really help to sell a company at these sort of events - the staff. All too often, the staff that are sent on this type of work are not as well trained or prepared as they should be. Unless they are taught how to deal with and understand the mentality of people at trade shows, companies will never get the best value for money out of them.

Do the staff that you have attending the next exhibition follow these rules:

• Be accessible to all.
• Present the right image.
• Make the customer feel welcome.

If these three basic rules are found it can make things a lot easier for everyone involved. Usually there are two types of people running exhibition stands - people who would rather talk to each other than visitors, and those that push the sale at clients far too strongly. Both of these can be very off putting for all involved, and it is important to realise that the best people at these events try and project the best image possible for the company, and are able to answer all customers questions and queries competently. The need to be able to communicate at at a high level and spot time wasters before they have wasted their time, rather than after.

Training people on how best to work at a trade show or exhibition is a better investment than an even flashier exhibition stand to attract attention.