On the bookshelf
The Secrets of Facilitation, 101 Ways to Make Meetings Active, Instant Icebreakers …
Category: Communication
Stop the ‘not another meeting’ groan
Meetings can be brutally boring. They can be too frequent, too long and too unproductive. You may think you can’t do anything to make a meeting more efficient and results-oriented—you aren’t the person leading it, right? But Amy Henderson, Henderson Training Inc., believes you can do a lot to influence a meeting.
1-Minute Strategies: July ’09
Give those URLs a trim … Show your e-mail skills by avoiding supersize attachments … Use the subject line to identify different categories of e-mail … Feel more rejuvenated after a summer vacation by coming home on a Saturday …
Left behind while others work at home?
Workers can feel left behind when some employees are “allowed” to work from home, while they are firmly planted at the office. “The co-worker who has to stay behind has to get over that, as much as a manager has to get over the idea that the only way to manage is by ‘face time,’” says Rose Stanley, an employee benefits specialist with WorldatWork.
Small companies: the new big
Why is “small” big? Small companies can better win the trust and confidence of recession-weary customers. No matter what the size of your company, here’s how you can imitate what small companies do well:
3 tips to keep the audience engaged
“It’s one thing to keep a crowd engaged for two minutes, but two hours—or more—requires a different set of techniques,” says communications coach Carmine Gallo in BusinessWeek. So if you’re preparing a PowerPoint presentation, remember Gallo’s rules for keeping an audience captivated:
Exiting a conversation with grace
We’ve all been put in situations where opinionated people force us to talk about something that we don’t care to discuss. What do you say in these awkward, challenging moments that allows you to speak your truth, yet leave another’s respect intact? Try out the following techniques:
Grammar Repair Shop: Two spaces or one?
Q. A question has come up in our office about the use of two spaces after a period between sentences. I was taught in my business and typing courses to use two spaces. Has the protocol changed? Is it now one space?
The right way to say ‘yes’
Sometimes saying “yes” to a co-worker’s request for help is unavoidable. But don’t let such requests spin your schedule out of control. Here’s how to help a co-worker without making your own productivity suffer:
Grammar Repair Shop Quiz: Test your grammar skills
Take this quiz to double-check your business writing skills. Can you spot the grammar and writing errors in the following five sentences?