Make yourself heard
Not surprisingly, there are better ways to persuade others to listen to your message. Communications expert Jennifer Benz, of Benz Communications, advises sticking to the “four corners” of effective employee communication.
Category: Internal Communication
Watch your back with workplace saboteurs
She steals credit for your work, blames you for something that you didn’t do or attempts to damage your reputation: the workplace saboteur. Saboteurs are most apt to strike in a weak economy like the current one, business psychologist Wendy Alfus Rothman tells The Wall Street Journal.
If it’s important, say it again
When you need co-workers to remember something, you need to deliver it multiple times, says William H. Rastetter, who taught at MIT and Harvard before becoming CEO of Idec Pharmaceuticals Corp.
How to generate the best ideas
Do you want a brainstorming session to generate one great idea or several above-average ones? A new study looked at two models: 1. Assembling a group of people and having them come up with product ideas. 2. Asking individuals to work on ideas by themselves before sharing their thinking. Who came up with better ideas?
Give yourself a Facebook facelift
With the economy slowing down, now is the best time to fine-tune your LinkedIn or Facebook profile, fleshing out the blank spaces and figuring out how to take advantage of those social networking sites. Here are a few tips.
Grammar Repair Shop: Writer’s checklist: Use a Focus Sheet
Whether penning an e-mail update for your manager, an all-staff memo or a letter of complaint to a vendor, you are striking up a relationship. Deborah Dumaine, author of Write to the Top, recommends that before you write, plan your document by running through the questions on this Focus Sheet.
Go from novice to pro: 4 surefire moves
In Working Girl, Melanie Griffith overhauls her appearance so others will take her seriously. In the real world, it takes more than a wardrobe change to lift your on-the-job reputation from “wet behind the ears” to “wise beyond your years.” Indeed, changing the perception others have of you at work can take up to 18 months …
1-Minute Strategies: Jan. ’09
Save time by storing “canned responses” on Gmail for commonly asked questions … Halt interruptions by giving your physical space a makeover … Turn voice-mail messages from your mobile, home or work phone into e-mail messages … Earn the mantle of “too valuable to lose”…
Rewarding a snitch can be a good thing
Here’s a new office morale booster: Organize a company snitch program. It runs on the same grapevine that conducts office gossip, only all the news is good. Snitchers tell one another about accomplishments, small victories or acts of heroism that go beyond the call of duty.
Generation gap: It’s a two-way street
Susan has 30 years’ experience as an admin, while her new admin manager, Jade, is young enough to be her daughter. The age gap alone isn’t a problem for Susan, but she sometimes feels that Jade lacks “respect” for the way she does things.