3 Tips for Driving Great Conversations at Work

Happy Friday and hello to our new newsletter subscribers - great to see so many names and faces from the OpenBlend community. ?

We're thrilled you enjoyed our first edition – and this week, we wanted to focus on the power of conversation. ?

Since OpenBlend was born, we have always believed, and felt incredibly passionate about the benefits of great conversations at work. ?

Helping to drive business and people performance, conversations are the vehicle behind ensuring individuals can perform at their best within an organisation. How? Because through regular, focused and effective one-to-ones, managers and employees?can build trusting relationships that ensure each understands what the other needs to be successful and perform at their best.?

So here are three tips to help you have great conversations at work. ?

Tip 1: Focus on the human?

Olympian Frances Houghton, perfectly demonstrated the importance of the ‘human element’ when thinking about performance during our event in London last month.?

Whilst preparing for Rio 2016, alongside the obvious physical training, Frances worked hard to identify the human factors amongst herself and her teammates, that may impact their performance.?

Once these were identified, Frances shared that through continuous, meaningful and quality conversations aimed at supporting one another and understanding things such as personality differences and skills, they were able to come together as a team to perform at their best – ultimately bringing home a silver medal.

So, whilst you and your team might not be training for the next Olympics, it's clear that conversations that aim to recognise and support the uniqueness of what it means to be?human, are the key to driving incredible high-performance outcomes. ?

Tip 2: Support and enable your managers to have great conversations (it’s essential...)?

During a piece of?research we conducted last year; we uncovered the true scale of a managers impact?on an employee's experience at work.?

The same piece of research also showed us that, despite having such an influential role, most managers lacked confidence when speaking to employees about informal issues such as wellbeing or work-life balance – a topic high on the agenda for employees. ?

It has never been more critical for HR and organisations to recognise the impact managers have on employee performance – and therefore, provide the tools and training managers need to feel supported and in turn,?support their own teams.?

At OpenBlend, we provide bespoke conversation framework guides to support managers on?how to have great conversations that promote trust, encourage resilience and support high performance.?Speak to your managers to understand skills gaps and blockers they have around informal conversations and build a simple framework with helpful content and questions they can ask, so they feel supported and empowered. ?

Tip 3: Encourage an employee-led approach in one-to-ones?

Life is busy – we have priorities at home, at work, and these are often evolving all the time. A great conversation at work has the power to bring calm to the chaos. ?

The one-to-one conversation if the single most important tool a manager has to impact employee performance – and it’s also a chance for an employee to share what they need to be successful. ?

By encouraging an employee-led approach when setting the agenda for your one-to-one, you are starting off by putting the individuals needs at the heart of the performance conversation, therefore, ensuring you’re covering all necessary points that could, and will impact their performance. ?

Through collaborative, two-way dialogue you’re each building trust, with an employee being able to articulate where their priorities lie, helping managers to gain a better understanding – and view of potential blockers or opportunities. Read more about the benefits of an employee-owned approach to agenda setting in our handbook here.??