Portrait of an admin
Here are nine eye-opening characteristics of the typical administrative professional.
Year: 2013
Boost your ‘carrying capacity’
In the same way that advances in food, energy and housing increase the number of people an area can support, your personal success often depends upon increasing your own “carrying capacity.” Here are some ways to do it.
Get your characters in line with Excel’s LEFT function
Q. How can I return characters to the left of a dash in an Excel cell using the LEFT function?
Resolving text-to-columns with line breaks in Excel
Q. I have a spreadsheet where three address lines are separated by a line break. How do I use text-to-columns to separate the lines into columns?
When a clique shifts the workload, it’s time to see HR
Q: “My supervisor has created a ‘good old girls’ network in our office. Her favored employees are allowed to take long coffee breaks, make personal calls, spend time on the Internet, and run errands during office hours. The four outsiders are denied these privileges. Instead, we are given extra assignments and receive little help with our problems. Some outsiders want to take this issue to the human resources manager. Do you think he could help?”
6 strategies to communicate better
Effective communication takes deliberate intention, so if you find yours lacking, it’s time to refocus and get down to work, says Jessica Edmonson of Bisk Education. She has six strategies to help you do just that.
The effects of stress on workplace performance
Stressors like workload, personal issues, lack of work/life balance and job insecurity can cause a dip in productivity at work, according to ComPsych’s 2012 Stress Pulse survey.
Take baby steps toward becoming a daredevil
We all have “risk-taking muscles” that can be strengthened. Each little one you take stretches them, makes bigger risks easier to face, and makes feelings of fear, insecurity, anxiety and tensions seem more harmless.
Going from admin to app builder
In four years working as a virtual assistant from Sydney, Australia, Bronwen O’Brien grew frustrated with software that wasn’t meeting her busy business’s needs, so she went out and gathered information about developing something better. She eventually decided to partner with Blue Chili to create her app DigitialSorbet.
Nurture your ideas to succeed
Post-it Notes became a hit about 35 years ago, but it took more than a decade from the discovery of a new adhesive until it paid off for 3M. That journey offers several lessons in how to succeed.