Swapping corporate know-how
Pick up know-how swiftly by swapping spots with someone. Here are two ways to do it, stolen from two company playbooks.
Category: People Skills
Boss a beast? Don’t get mad, get calm
Imagine two employees, both working for a difficult boss. One gets yelled at by the boss and leaves his office looking calm and unruffled. The other flees to the bathroom in tears or kicks the wall. The difference?
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.
Does success hinge on the ‘X Factor’?
Do you aspire to work in the C-suite? You can safely assume that top executives will require a prized package of office skills. But most high-level execs say they also want assistants who have the “X Factor.” Love it or hate it, high-ranking executives want employees who can read minds, anticipate needs and supply that indescribable “something” that propels an executive toward success.
Dial down the stress meter
If you manage other assistants, you may be craving higher productivity from your team. If you’re a savvy people manager, though, you don’t want to saddle your strong performers with an extra layer of stress. Consider these three approaches.
Are you like Rahm Emanuel?
When President-elect Barack Obama chose Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, he did what a senior executive does when choosing an assistant: He selected a person who would help him get things done. Are you like Rahm Emanuel?
Liven up a boring meeting
You are in charge of a committee at work that no one seems to care about. Meeting attendance is lackluster, and those who do come rarely speak up. Here are 11 ways to make people feel more engaged.
Tactics for tough times: 5 techniques for managing part-time employees
As U.S. companies struggle to weather the recession, many are cutting back employee hours. In fact, part-timers now make up 5% of the workforce. Using part-timers may make economic sense, but it can give supervisors fits. Here are five ways to get the most out of part-time workers.
Staying one step ahead of your boss
Much more than a gatekeeper, a good executive assistant can double or triple a boss’s efficiency by staying one step ahead of him or her. The more an assistant can predict an executive’s needs, the less he or she will need to interrupt.
Office bonds
While relationships between employees and their bosses have always seen their ups and downs, the turbulent economy may be forging stronger ties as employees look to shore up their job security.