Speak Like a Leader - Have a Clear Purpose

There are many lessons business executives can follow as they grow as leaders. But developing the art of speaking is probably the single most important skill anyone in business can cultivate. This is the first lesson of a five-part series to help leaders speak with clarity and conviction. Lesson one is to speak with a clear purpose.

Minute Takers - Tips For Taking Meeting Minutes #4 - Total Neutrality

Good meeting minutes are essential for every organisation, but the challenges of the minute taker's role are not always appreciated. In a series of tips from a professional minute taker, here are some ideas on how to take great meeting minutes. This article examines the importance the impact of objectivity on the value of your minute taking.

Run Your Office With No Complaints, No Excuses and No Regrets

Drama is "any obstacle to your peace and prosperity." A more "corporate" way to define drama is anything that hampers the mission or the productivity of the company. If you want to stop the drama and increase productivity you must learn how to identify the resistance. Three ways resistance manifests in the workplace is complaints, excuses and regrets.

Coworkers Who Are Troublemakers

Coworkers who are troublemakers can be a problem for anyone, but shy people people may have particular trouble with difficult fellow employees. Shy people often find themselves to be judged more harshly than extroverts on the job. Dr. Jonathan Cheek has found that underemployment, uneasy work relationships and slower advancement tended to mark the careers of shy people.

Coworkers Who Are Troublemakers in Packs

Problems at work are a typical topic of advice columns. Many working people have their own unhappy stories to tell, and entire books have been written on the subject of problems at work. Discussions of sexual harassment have been commonplace in recent years, but dysfunctional on-the-job behavior from coworkers is not necessarily sexual and can affect both genders.

Successfully Communicating With Distributed Agile Teams

Much has been written about the difficulty of using Agile software development methods in distributed teams. Some thoughts are that the obstacles are so great that Agile can never work; others believe that, whilst communicating is challenging, the other benefits of Agile outweigh these difficulties. Using Agile methods with a distributed team isn't easy, but it is possible.

The Alternative to Feedback Setbacks

While feedback certainly can be useful, and is not to be dispensed with, he points out how it focuses on the past and is often stressful for recipients to hear and apply. By comparison, feedforward focuses on the future. Recipients tend to welcome feedforward, and find it energizing rather than burdensome to consider ways to apply the information.

Business Love

Today I want to write about what may at first seem to be contradictory ideas - business and love. For a long time business has been viewed as purely commerce; the exchange of goods and services for money, and love has been viewed as an emotional condition only relevant to sweethearts and family members in our personal lives.

Minute Takers - Tips For Taking Meeting Minutes #6 - Use a Consistent Template

Good meeting minutes are essential for every organization, but the challenges of the minute taker's role are not always appreciated. In a series of tips from a professional minute taker, here are some ideas on how to take great meeting minutes. This article examines why using a consistent template will improve the overall quality of your minute taking.

Unlocking Horns With Co-Workers

Why not admit it --- conflict is tough to deal with. If you look at conflict in another way -- as a basic human condition, and a productive one at that -- you just might learn to like the problems you have at work. Here are two suggestions to help you look at on-the-job conflict as a healthy development.

Mentioning God Or Putting Biblical Quotes in Your Business Correspondence, A No-no!

Most people in the US are Christian Based or do indeed, have some religious belief system, as only 1-2% are actual atheists and under 15% of the folks could be considered agnostic. Sometimes, Christians get a little over zealous in their business communications and use biblical quotes that include God, or Jesus. This can become a problem in business communications.

Bullies in the Workplace Finally Revealed

Prison. Is that what your job feels like every day? If so, you are not alone. Many people go to work every day feeling like they are turning themselves into the authorities. They have to ask themselves if the pain and anguish of facing another week, day or even hour is worth the money. Do they have a choice?

Two New Communication Skills

Too many people focus their minds on their troubles and the causes. They talk for too long about what will not work and why. They are stuck in the mental habit of negation. Continually thinking about what you do not want is not enough. To help others, learn to have them focus their minds on what they do want.

The Art of Conversation in Building Business Relationships

The ability to communicate and converse with confidence and clarity is a key trait that will help you get to the top of your profession and field. By taking the time to tweak your positive communication and conversation skills you will improve your personal brand and begin to notice a dramatic difference in the way other people perceive you.

Photo Sharing For Construction Projects

If you are a construction site manager and have a few projects going at once, photo sharing can really help your business. You probably find yourself running back and forth from the different sites and you aren't getting enough done. Not to mention the workers may have stopped working until you can go there and check on the progress.

Importance and Value of Emotional Intensity in the Workplace

We often notice people of some cultures have special emotional intensity greater than others. It is considered acceptable and they are permitted to be more excitable, passionate, exude happiness, laugh loudly and even cry at times in front of others. These displays of emotions, however, are often considered unacceptable within the North American business world. Maybe they should be?

Minute Takers - Tips For Taking Meeting Minutes #3 - Set Up For Success

Good meeting minutes are essential for every organisation, but the challenges of the minute taker's role are not always appreciated. In a series of tips from a professional minute taker, here are some ideas on how to take great meeting minutes. This article examines how your set-up on the day of the meeting can improve the process of minute-taking.

Minute Takers - Tips For Taking Meeting Minutes No 5 - Know When to Prune

Good meeting minutes are essential for every organisation, but the challenges of the minute taker's role are not always appreciated. In a series of tips from a professional minute taker, here are some ideas on how to take great meeting minutes. This article gives some tips on the importance of the right balance between summary and transcription in good minute taking.

Use Effective Communication For Your Small Business

Are you someone who is employed for a small business or owns one? Have you already considered starting or becoming employed for a corporation that is not too large? People who work for an organization, especially a small one that involves regular customer contact, must possess strong communication skills to create customer satisfaction and increase their odds for job retention and advancement.

Minute Takers - Tips For Taking Meeting Minutes - Call in the Professionals

Good meeting minutes are essential for every organisation, but the challenges of the minute taker's role are not always appreciated. In a series of tips from a professional minute taker, here are some ideas on how to take great meeting minutes. This article discusses why an organisation's minute taker might decide to call on professional minute taker to increase their own capacity.

Toxic Co-Workers - Six Great Ways to Be Immune to Toxic Co-Workers

We've all had them. There's no escaping it. Toxic co-workers are everywhere, no matter what industry, how big or small the organization, or the company's culture. Everyone defines "toxic co-worker" in their own way. I define it as them withholding needed information, being uncooperative, overly sarcastic, derogatory, backstabbing, hypocritical, passive-aggressive. I'm sure I'm forgetting some important ones, but you get the idea.

Employee Motivation Through Letters - Write Employee Letters That Spark Top Performance - Fast!

Have you ever wondered whether a quick, effective and inexpensive medium exists for increasing your influence in your office, while boosting Employee Productivity upwards to Crazy levels? Well, it does: Letters! Now that you know one of the "secrets" used by the business success Gurus, it is time to get some practical advice on how to get started. So enjoy the article.

The Death of E-mail

E-mail, as we know it, is dying. Years from now, college professors will be asking their students, "Who here is old enough to remember e-mail?" This is due to the emergence of a number of other, more effective, communication tools. Are you making use of this tools in your life and your business, or are you still doing things the old way?

The Power of Storytelling

Even though our society has written language and sophisticated technology to communicate with more people, more quickly and in different geographical places simultaneously, the purposes behind the stories remain the same. The stories are there to help us make sense of the world and our place in it, and to share it with those who, by necessity or invitation, are in our circle.

The First, Worst Conflict of Bill Gates

The most memorable glass of water Bill Gates ever had, he didn't drink. When he was twelve years old, Bill Gates got into a conflict with his parents. He got mad, shouted at his mother, and his father admonished him. The remarkable thing about that unpleasant but not uncommon exchange, of a sort that occurs in most families, was how remarkable it was for Gates.

Conflict on the Apprentice (Part 4) - Gracious Beats Gloating in Victory Or Defeat

After a conflict is won or lost, there's still something to win or lose. Thus although Annie Duke won and Clint Black lost, fairly and squarely, what was particularly interesting about last week's competition was the gain and loss after the task. In what Duke and Black did, there's an important guideline for all of us to use when in conflict and dealing with difficult people.

Organizational Communication Skills to Boost Performance

To ensure effective communication in a successful business, every employee must participate in basic organizational communication skills starting with developing listening skills, speaking skills and designing an effective questioning and feedback sharing mechanism. Whether its internal or external communications, you need a communications plan to ensure that your employees work as a single team to achieve goals. Increasing your organizational communication skills include effective downward communications.

The Development of Business Instant Messaging

Even as recent as a few years ago, the use of IM by employees in the workplace were strictly prohibited by supervisors and managers. However, once business owners began to realize the power behind instant messaging as a communication tool, they learned that it may be more that just a waste of company time. IM can actually increase productivity, employee team cohesion, and the efficiency of communication.

Exceptional Leaders - 5 Incredibly Simple Ways to Become an Exceptional Leader

Michael Scott from The Office, Mr. Spacely from The Jetsons, Larry Tate from Bewitched. These are just a few of the "make-believe" bad bosses from television. In reality, though, we've all known our share of bad bosses as well, including me. From most of my previous supervisors, however, I've been able to find some positive managerial traits in each of them in order to "build" the quintessential manager!

Thinking on Your Feet

Have you ever been put 'on the spot' and had to come up with an answer in a hurry? We all have had that happen at one time or another, and sometimes the answers just aren't there. The remedy for that is the Quick Think Training, guaranteed to shoot brilliant answers out of your mouth at lightning speed. Sound too good to be true? That's because it is.

Writing Effective Emails - How to Write Powerful Emails That Get Results

Are you getting the results you need from your email communications? Are your recipients even reading them? In this sensational information-packed article, we'll look at some of the most powerful techniques you can use to get results with your emails. As an added bonus, we'll also explore 7 easy writing techniques that will make your communications clearer, more powerful, and effective in getting what you want. Sound good? Let's go!