Managers don’t just manage processes; they manage people.
This means there will inevitably be times when managers are faced with challenging situations and it’s how we deal with these challenges that is crucial and what will make you a great Line Manager going forward.
What can managers do?
- Be a role model
- Display empathy
- Listen to their employees and staff.
- Encourage Resilience
- Practice Fairness
We often see several relationship breakdowns in Businesses, you work with your colleagues every day, 5 times a week, so its common that this happens. Below is the steps to take in order to recover a relationship breakdown in the workplace.
Steps to recover a relationship breakdown:
- Acknowledge that there has been a breakdown
- Who was involved?
- Review what has happened
- Review actions, clarify common ground, highlight areas of differences
- Clarify commitment for each party
- If you need to work towards a solution e.g. agreed way of emailing/ communication.
- Agree the way forward and new ways of working
- What are the next steps? How can we avoid future breakdowns?
Relationship breakdowns can usually be solved internally and in a informal manner however in more complex cases Mediation is used.
Mediation
Often where Companies cannot informally resolve a challenging situation, Mediation could be required. Mediation is a structured process where a third (impartial) party enables two parties in conflict to resolve their differences and agree a way forward.
Mediation structure
- Meet with first party
- Meet with second party
- Research and understand the situation
- Face to face meeting (or virtual, depending on location)
- Explore and work on the issues
- Build agreements
- Close the mediation
- Follow up and support if and when required.
For further information please contact one of our HR Consultants on 0345 646 0406 or fill in our online enquiry form and we will be in touch. We offer Line Manager training and Helen Burrowes can come to your workplace for mediation.