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Year: 2012

Let Outlook help prep meeting attendees

Let’s say you have a meeting scheduled to discuss resolving customer complaints. To prepare for the meeting, attendees search their inboxes and network drives to find related files they’ll need to begin visualizing a process. By inserting some of these objects into the meeting notice, you can help attendees better prepare for the meeting.

Be a human highlighter

Highlighting your achievements to those who can advance your career can be painfully awkward. But research shows that to get ahead, we have to make those with influence aware of our achievements. You want to be a human highlighter.

Deflect prying questions with honesty and brevity

Question: “How do you respond to colleagues who ask a lot of personal questions? Recently, I had to take vacation on short notice to care for my sick daughter-in-law. Before I left, my co-workers kept asking where I was going and whether my husband was going with me. I managed to dodge the questions, but their nosiness caught me off guard. How should I handle this in the future?”  Not a Busybody

Don’t let family step between you and the boss

Question: “I work the late shift in a hospital laboratory and usually sleep for a while before going in. The other night, my supervisor called and asked if I was available. When my husband said I was sleeping, my boss explained that he needed me to come in early because of a ‘medical crisis.’ My husband refused to wake me and suggested calling someone else. He is protective of my sleeping time and insists that management can’t make me come in early because there is no ‘on call’ policy. Does my supervisor have the right to make me go in early? And how should we handle any future calls?”  Losing Sleep