Irial OFarrell

The Manager’s Dilemma by Irial O'Farrell

What would you do with an extra hour in your workday? Read The Manager’s Dilemma and find out.

Managers tend to excel at problem-solving. Team members tend to bring problems to their managers, for a variety of reasons. What happens when you bring a problem to an excellent problem-solver?

The Manager’s Dilemma – How to Empower Your Team’s Problem-Solving examines the dynamics that arise from team members bringing their issues and problems to their manager and how this undermines the team’s performance.

The book also explores the valid reasons for escalation, the problem-solving steps, identifying at what step an individual team member might be getting stuck and how to develop and coach team members from different starting points.

You’ll also examine your own problem-solving mindset, as a manager, and how to introduce the new approach. Based on the SMART framework and Manager-as-Coach, you’ll have a lot of A-HA moments while being supported to apply the framework to your own team.

The Manager’s Dilemma by Irial O'Farrell

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The Manager’s Dilemma by Irial O'Farrell

As a manager, do you find issues regularly landing on your desk? Issues that you know, in your heart of hearts, the team member does, or should, know how to sort out themselves? Is your own work regularly hijacked by team members interrupting you, to deal with their issue? Irritated? Frustrated? At the end of your tether?

If so, The Manager’s Dilemma – How to Empower Your Team’s Problem-Solving is the book for you. Understand the dilemma every manager faces. Discover the valid and invalid reasons for escalation. Explore the steps of problem-solving. Join Lisa, as she identifies the potential step each member of her team is getting stuck on. Follow Lisa, as she designs coaching options, to empower each team member. Consider your own problem-solving mindset. Plan how you’ll introduce the new approach.

Read this book and you’ll unlock your team’s potential and free yourself up and all of you will benefit.

SMART Objective Setting for Managers by Irial O'Farrell

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SMART Objective Setting for Managers by Irial O'Farrell

Every year, millions of managers sit down with their staff, to set objectives for the coming year. Every year, the vast majority of those millions of managers dread the prospective of having to sit down with their staff, to set objectives. If this sounds like you, then meet your new best friend – SMART Objective Setting for Managers.

This book unpacks the 4 main challenges that most managers grapple with, when setting objectives:
– Defining the desired outcomes of performance
– Diagnosing team members’ individual starting points
– Defining tangible objectives for “soft” behavioural performance issues (e.g., poor communication or influencing others)
– Understanding what goes wrong during the communication of agreeing objectives

As you read through the book, your understanding of SMART, developing performance and communication builds up, culminating in Chapter 8. This chapter explores how to identify soft performance issues and how to diagnose what the real underlying issue is and provides a framework to design an objective that will deliver real performance improvement.

Reviews on Amazon rave about how easy-to-read and concise the book is while providing a whole new way to look at objective setting.

SMART Objective Setting for Managers by Irial O'Farrell

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SMART Objective Setting for Managers by Irial O'Farrell

If you manage teams, what frustrates you the most? If you’re like most managers I’ve met, chances are it’s the way “Johnny communicates his ideas” or the way “Chrissy keeps asking you to talk to the other team, rather than just doing it herself” or how “Jamie keeps asking the same questions over and over!”. Developing these “soft” performance issues are very challenging. It can feel uncomfortable to raise the topic and many managers fear the conversation will go wrong. The 4 main struggles managers have with objective setting are:

1. Defining the desired outcomes of performance
2. Diagnosing team members’ individual starting points
3. Defining tangible objectives for “soft” behavioural performance issues
4. Understanding what can go wrong in the communication process, when agreeing objectives

SMART Objective Setting for Managers unpacks each of these challenges, culminating in a chapter dedicated to understanding how to diagnose and design objectives that address the “softer” performance issues. Being endlessly practical when it comes to the “how”, the book also provides a roadmap for preparing for and conducting objective setting meetings.

Told through stories and examples, feedback from readers include “I thought I already knew how to do this but I’ve learnt so much from this book”, “very easy to read and understand the learning points”, and “managers and employees should read this book”.

So if reducing your frustration while increasing your team’s motivation and engagement sounds like a good outcome for you, buy this book today and start finding out how to design and agree SMART objectives that will make a difference.

The Manager’s Dilemma by Irial O'Farrell

The Manager’s Dilemma by Irial O'Farrell

SMART Objective Setting for Managers by Irial O'Farrell

SMART Objective Setting for Managers by Irial O'Farrell

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