Marion Parrish, The Accidental Manager Coach

Marion Parrish, The Accidental Manager Coach Helping Accidental Managers get back in control of their teams, their time and their sanity

HR and change consultancy, offering a broad range of HR services and leadership training, to help small and medium sized business owners get the best from their people.

Wishing you a Happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.And if you didn’t get what you wanted from your tea...
22/12/2023

Wishing you a Happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

And if you didn’t get what you wanted from your team this year, or too many of them are on the naughty list and you’d like to see more of them on the nice list, perhaps we should have a chat in 2024?

10/06/2022

When you, as a manager, compensate for a team member’s poor performance by doing the work they should be doing, three things happen.

1) You end up working much longer hours, and/or missing your own deadlines.

2) Your team member never has the opportunity to learn how you actually want them to perform.

3) It gets harder and harder to change the way your team member works.

So have that conversation you’ve been putting off all week.

Do it today.

Tell them what you expect, and give them the chance to start next week on the right foot.

Because the alternative is stewing on it all weekend. And that’s no good for anyone.
So what's stopping you? How can I help?

"

08/06/2022

There are 3 ways you can work with me.

1) If you just need a helping hand with ad hoc HR tasks like creating your first contract of employment, reviewing contracts and handbooks, or dealing with a tricky employee situation that might have legal implications, I can quote a fixed fee, or work on an hourly rate, for these “one-off” tasks.

2) If you’d like access to an HR specialist for day-to-day HR queries and issues, longer-term strategic projects or you’d just like someone to talk to and bounce some ideas around with, then an HR retainer could be right for you.

Retainers give you the HR support you need for a fixed monthly fee, based on the number of employees you have and the work we’ve agreed to do within the retainer.

3) My Accidental Manager coaching clients come to me because they want to feel more confident when managing people.

We tend to work together for 3-6 months, unpicking issues, putting new HR frameworks and ways of working in place, and resetting your “manager’s mindset” so that we can be confident old problems won’t return in the future.

Coaching can be paid for as you go, or as a package of sessions that you can use whenever you need to.

Whatever your people-management needs are, there’s a way of working with me that will suit you. Fancy a chat?

07/06/2022

We always have a choice.

When faced with a difficult decision, we choose what we prioritise. Money or people. Rules or flexibility. Treating everyone the same or treating everyone according to their needs.

When you choose one, you are telling the world that the one you chose is more important to you than the others you rejected.

Next time you have to make a decision about people, instead of saying “I have to because” try saying “I want to because”. And if that makes you feel uncomfortable, it’s probably not a decision in line with your personal values.

If you don’t “want to” do it, then you don’t actually “have to” do it. You always have a choice.

06/06/2022

DO YOU PUT OFF DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS WITH YOUR TEAM?

If you manage people, you’ll know there are times when confronting an employee who’s done something you don’t like, or addressing contentious issues within the team, just feels too much like hard work.

And risky work at that. Will people hold a grudge for ever more? Are you even allowed to say what you want to say? What if they take it the wrong way and you end up in an employment tribunal?

Doing nothing often feels a whole lot easier, and safer. So perhaps you confine yourself to a few heavy sighs and the odd passive aggressive “look” that you feel sure will let them know how unhappy you are.

Except your employees aren’t mind-readers. They generally work on the perfectly reasonable assumption that you’re happy with what they are doing unless you say otherwise.

Which is why, if something is important to you, or your business, you need to tell you employees. So that they know to do more of it, or less of it, or to do it completely differently.

And that means you need to do some work on identifying what IS important to your business. What are the desirable and undesirable behaviours that employees need to understand? And just how important are the undesirables?

This is something I work on a lot with new managers. It’s one of the foundations that enables managers to address issues with complete confidence.

So what conversation have you been putting off?

01/06/2022

When managers struggle with their teams it’s usually because, deep down, they don’t feel confident about managing people.

So when an employee challenges a decision, or doesn’t do what they were asked, the manager has no idea where they stand or what they can say or do.

Frustration shows itself in many forms - avoiding issues, shouting and snapping at people, micro-managing, pretending everything is fine or blaming the team.

If you want to feel more confident, there is something very simple - but admittedly time consuming - that you can do that is guaranteed to work.

I know it’s dull and I know you have a million other things that are more urgent and more interesting… but you need to know your HR documents.

You need to know what your contracts of employment, and your policies, say about the everyday things like timekeeping, absence reporting, holiday booking, overtime, flexibility, and pay. And maybe you’ll also need to know about rights for expecting and new parents, bullying, harassment, discipline and grievances. Start there.

When you know what the rules are, you'll know what you can insist on, and what you can’t. And you'll know, when someone says ""I have rights"" what your rights as a manager are too.

And if you read your documents and think they don't really reflect what your business needs, let's have a chat, because I can help you with that.



31/05/2022

My youngest daughter passed her driving test last week.

And now I’ve had to hand over the car keys, to spend the rest of my time on earth wondering whether that piece of paper is enough to equip her to cope on the roads. (I’m a mother – the job is to worry!)

If I do what I instinctively want to do (sit in the passenger seat every time she drives to make sure she’s doing it right and staying safe) she’ll never learn how to drive independently.

She’ll lose her confidence if I don’t show that I have confidence in her.
I have to do what she needs. Let her go. Let her learn the best ways of coping with the situations she will encounter. Give advice when I’m asked for it, rather than when I think she needs it.

It’s hard. But it has to be done.

If you have new and inexperienced managers in your business, you’ll know just what I mean. They might have a qualification, but they will learn most of their management skills on the job, by making decisions, owning their mistakes, and learning from them.

They need to know you have confidence in them. That you’re there to help when they need it. When they ask for it.

But the rest of the time they need you to back off and let them get on with it.

If you need some help letting go, let’s talk about how I can help you feel more confident about letting your managers fly.



30/05/2022

Are you too busy to sort out that HR issue in your business?

You know the one. It’s been there, nagging at you, for weeks now. Occupying your thoughts at the weekends. Waking you up at night.

But you’ve been so busy juggling all the other far more important balls in the air.

While that HR issue quietly festers in the corner of your business. Its tentacles reaching out and slowly, quietly, infecting other people and other teams.

When will you have enough time to deal with it?
Because we both know, you’ll never have any more time than you have right now.

And that HR issue is costing you NOW. It’s costing you time, and headspace, and energy, and productivity, and it’s affecting your employees’ feelings about where they work.

Solving that HR issue now will also cost you time and headspace and energy and productivity.

And it will affect your employees’ feelings about where they work.

But the difference is, when it’s sorted, you won’t have the problem any more. And nor will your employees.

And it will all undoubtedly take a lot less time than you think.
Fancy a chat?



13/05/2022

How's your week been?

Did you have that conversation with that employee? You know the one - they've been slowly driving you mad over recent weeks by doing that thing - or not doing that thing. It's got to stop. And you have to tell them.

But, once again, you were too busy with the day job. Not sure quite what to say or how to say it. Put it off for another week.

You know I can help you with that, right? I can work with you to help you decide where to draw the line with your team.

To be clear what's worth getting frustrated about, and what isn't.

I can help you understand how to have that difficult conversation when they are looking right back at you - with tears, or anger, or apathy in their eyes.

And leave you feeling confident that you are saying and doing the right things, in the right way, at the right time.

My clients say I help people managers grow a backbone.

I say I put you back in control of your team.

Either way, one thing is certain. People problems won't go away until you take action.

Fancy a chat?





MANDY, AND A TEAM TIRED OF CHANGEMandy worked in an organisation that had a policy of moving its managers on every two o...
12/05/2022

MANDY, AND A TEAM TIRED OF CHANGE

Mandy worked in an organisation that had a policy of moving its managers on every two or three years. Each manager came into the job, made some changes, and departed for their next role. Teams found it difficult to settle. Just as they got used to a manager, it would be time for them to change roles. And a new manager would appear, with new ideas and new priorities.

Employee morale was at rock bottom. Mandy suggested some changes of her own, in a genuine attempt to improve things for her team. But her team had had enough. They had watched managers come and go, and this one would be the same. They weren’t going to cooperate.

And then Mandy discovered that other managers in the business had strong opinions about the people in her team. And those opinions weren’t positive either.
With her working relationship with the longest serving team member deteriorating by the day, Mandy got in touch with me and asked if I could help.

Now it’s fair to say that by this point her options were limited. When trust has eroded away over a long period of time, it isn’t going to be rebuilt overnight.

But don’t underestimate the power of conversations. We worked on the conversations Mandy could have with her team that would make a difference and, slowly but surely, the working atmosphere is improving and some small changes are being implemented that are improving life for the team.

Already we can see some signs of improved cooperation and team performance, and I am coaching Mandy on how to pace the next changes she wants to implement to keep the momentum up.

Are your team fed up with change for change’s sake? Would you like some support to make essential changes in your team? DM me, let’s talk about how I can help.

11/05/2022

There are only two things people managers really need to focus on.

One is talking to people.

And the second is keeping records about those conversations, and about performance, attendance, and behaviour.

The more you talk to your team members (and that means all of them, not just the ones you like and get on well with) the fewer HR problems you’ll have.

And the more records you keep, the quicker you’ll spot problems starting, and the sooner you can nip them in the bud before they become big issues.

No HR case ever failed because there were too many records. But plenty never get started because managers just don’t have the evidence to prove they have trained, coached and corrected their employees.

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Nottingham
NG103BU

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Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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+447902903086

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