What’s in your snack room?
Good coffee and nutritious snacks can boost office morale. Inc. magazine recently rounded up the best coffeemakers and healthy vending machines:
Don’t leave rambling voice messages
Skip the pleasantries. Saying something like, “I hope you’re having a good day” clutters your message and wastes the recipient’s time. Focus on the facts you must convey, such as your name and phone number.
4 secrets to a happy customer
It’s easy to have your good mood shattered by a nasty customer, an out-of-the-blue criticism or a computer system that refuses to cooperate. Think of angry customers as a creativity test. Satisfy them without letting their discontent bring you down. Four tips:
Before hitting ‘send’
Resist the urge to send out an incendiary e-mail by imagining it on the front page of your company’s newsletter. Ask yourself: “Would I be embarrassed?”
Word Tables and Delimited Text
If you’ve ever spent anytime copying and pasting text data into Word tables or trying to get data out of tables and into a simple list in a document, these tips might make you grumble a little. The good news is you’ll never have to do that again!
My employees won’t stop squabbling!
Question: “I manage a group of four women who bicker constantly. They are quick to “cop an attitude” and get defensive about stupid little things. To make it worse, I recently hired a young, inexperienced secretary who is very rude. When anyone tries to instruct her, she comes back with a smart-mouth response. I feel like I’m supervising a bunch of tattling two-year-olds. I wish they would all just shut up, get along and focus on work. Sometimes, I plan what I’m going to say about these issues, then I chicken out. I know I need a stronger backbone, but I’m not the type of manager who likes dealing with conflict. What should I do?” — Tired Supervisor
Surviving a bad performance review
Question: “On her performance review, my sister ‘Jenna’ was rated ‘below expectations’ because her boss said she took too long to complete a major project. However, this really wasn’t her fault … I don’t think this is fair, because many things are beyond her control and she gets little cooperation from others. What do you think?”
Think like an executive
Avoid anything that could diminish your professional image. If an executive wouldn’t do it, you shouldn’t either. For example: An executive would never produce a company newsletter that contains recipes.
Does being nice score points?
It’s become a reality-show catchphrase: “I’m not here to make friends.” The implication is that to win, you can’t afford to treat people generously. Will you go further by being cutthroat or collaborative? Let’s look at the data:
Stop gabbers without a word
When a long-winded colleague parks in your workstation and launches into a monologue, resist the urge to respond in any way, even with a simple “uh-huh.” Every utterance gives the talker reason to continue.