The reason jobs are often not done right and employees are fired is because of lack of skill. Right? Wrong! Poor communication and ineffective human relations are the major causes. Remember: Communication is a "meeting of meanings." It's getting through to the other person what you mean in a way that they understand. In fact, you want them to do more than understand, you want them to act on the information in the correct way. Effective communication is talking and listening to create that unders More..

The Changing Boss-Secretary Relationship

THE CHANGING BOSS-SECRETARY RELATIONSHIP: Imagine a partnership at work. One member is outlining the agenda for the annual stockholders' meeting, the other is managing the logistics. The last decade has brought many changes to the traditional boss/secretary relationship. We now see powers and responsibilities delegated to "executive assistants" that only ten years ago would have been the sole province of the boss. And there has been a corresponding rise in the prestige and influence of those sec More..

How Your Feelings and Those of Your Employees Can Make The Difference

How we feel is really more important than what we know. This is because how we feel plays a bigger role in our behavior than knowing what we should or should not do. For instance, we "know" smoking is bad for us. We see research that tell us auto accident injuries and deaths can be greatly reduced by using seat belts. We "know" that brushing our teeth after each meal fights tooth decay. Despite these facts that we "know", many of us smoke, don't use seat belts, and fail to brush after eating. We More..

Important Communication Tips For Managers

The following tips will help you communicate more effectively with your employees: 1. Let employees know that having feelings is okay. Feelings are facts and need to be dealt with. 2. Praise in public, criticize in private. Nothing improves a person's behavior better than well-timed, sincere, and justified praise. Nothing builds resentment faster than being yelled at in front of others. 3. Listen to employees and accept suggestions. It's easier to give advice than to receive it, but you don't More..

Supervisor-Employee Relations: Tips For Managers

Supervisor-employee relations are a critical part of a work place atmosphere and promoting productivity and cohesiveness. The following tips address these issues: 1. Don't ask or expect your employees to do things you wouldn't do. Giving consideration to job assignments shows you have respect for the employee. Think about whether the assignment is fair before you give it. 2. Be available and easy to talk with. The open door is helpful but it's not enough. You need an open mind. Set a specific More..

Pricing Strategy for Retail Flower Shops

When you create your profit and loss statement to assess the health of your business, you will see: Sales minus Cost of Goods Sold equals Gross Profit. You pay for all of your expenses with the gross profit. If you are finding that your gross profit is not enough to cover your expenses, you have two options, you can either raise gross profit by increasing sales or lowering cost of goods sold, or you can lower your expenses. Certainly, that's an over simplification, the art of business manageme More..

Assertiveness Helps Accomplish Everything

When trying to get something accomplished, assertive behavior is the most effective. Although other methods may accomplish the intended ends, the alternatives imperil our own rights or those of others, creating conflict and building mistrust into relationships. One of the keys to effectiveness is learning how to communicate thoughts and feelings without jeopardizing yourself or others, and this ability elevates both morale and productivity in the workplace. Distinguish for yourself what is subm More..

Budgets!

Budgets! There I've said it. For some the most hated and feared word in business. But it doesn't have to be that way. As a matter of fact, a well thought out and constructed budget can be the small business owners best friend. After all, a budget is just a laid out plan to produce profits and profits is what we are all after. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by looking at a 13 column budget spreadsheet with rows and rows of expenses, just break it down into it's simplest terms: Revenue - Expense More..

Read more About Focus and Shoot

Rapid Culture Change is Possible

Purpose: Show how immersion leadership training makes strategic initiative success possible. Adults learn through experience. We learn behaviors through experience. This is the flagpole fact of the educational world. This flag is visible for everyone to see, and it's where educators know they need to be whether they are training hard or soft skills. Deborah Solomon Reid of Tuck School of Business strikes a bell to be heard by anyone considering this most fundamental element of adult learning. " More..

Five Principles of Effective Communication

The problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred. George Bernard Shaw I'm sure this has happened to you: a colleague has just done the exact opposite of what you wanted him to do. How can that be, you ask yourself. I told him exactly what I wanted. Yes, maybe you told him but did you check that he was listening, that he understood, that he agreed and that he would carry out the required action? Obviously not. The first principle of effective communication is to get appropriat More..

Motor Vehicle Policy and Your Employee Risks

It is becoming more common for employers to require employees to use their personnel motor vehicles for business use. Reimbursement for business use is commonly by way of a kilometre/mileage allowance or a general motor vehicle allowance for the year. Did you know that you can be found vicariously liable for the acts and omissions of your employees driving while driving a motor vehicle for work related business? Even an innocuous journey to pick up the daily mail can be fraught with risk! I t More..

How to Use an HR Consultant

Bringing an HR consultant into your organisation can often be the only way to get a particular objective achieved. It may be a project that needs to be delivered such as a recruitment campaign, a compensation & benefits review or the implementation of an HR information system. Another possibility may be the need to cover a maternity leave post. Whatever the company requirement, whether it be linked to strategic or operational HR there is a consultant to fit the bill, whether they be a genera More..

Take This Into Consideration Before You Write Your Mission Statement

What principles should a company keep in mind when developing a mission statement? Appropriate criteria must be chosen for defining the business. There are several alternatives for defining one's services: by the products one produces, by unique resources that the company possesses, by a particular strength that the company has, by unique financial measures, or by needs that are met. Anyone who has to draft a mission statement should pretend that he or she is an advertising copywriter. "Tell the More..

Retaining An Expert -- What Every Business Owner Needs To Know

As an entrepreneur, hiring an expert can be one of the most efficient ways to turbo-charge your business. However, thousands of consultants flood the Information Highway, and each one promises to positively impact your bottom line. How do you know which expert has the right combination of smarts, skills, experience and personality to move your company in the right direction? It's no small feat to allow a consultant to make decisions on your behalf. Empowering a consultant to advise changes can More..

Medical Malpractice: Three Myths That Cost Your Hospital Millions

What's the use? Nothing you do will hold down the cost of medical malpractice. It feels that way sometimes, doesn't it? Unfortunately, for many risk managers, that's not too far off the mark. What they're doing isn't working. We can point to other industries, greedy lawyers, insurance companies trying to make up for losses in the stock market. But there's trouble within medical practices too. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that many of the actions risk manager More..

Keeping Team Meetings Vibrant

Meetings can be the life-blood of an organisation or the death. It all depends how you approach them. People need to communicate - that's a fact, and it's not enough to do it over computers. At some point a face-to-face is needed to ensure full understanding on key items, and there's a bonding and rapport between colleagues that is often taken for granted. But for something so important to the operational health of an organisation why do so many meetings produce negative feelings and little i More..

Training Managers and New Trainers

Training managers use many of the same interpersonal and analytical skills that other types of departments use. In particular, they need to be good communicators, and highly skillful in interpersonal relations. They need to delegate effectively, support their staff emotionally, give accurate and timely feedback, and set departmental goals that are consistent with organizational goals. Barbara L. Thornton, an independent training consultant in the St. Paul area, says that training managers need t More..

The Ins and Outs of Internal and External Relations

INTERNAL PUBLIC RELATIONS: Never overlook an opportunity to do internal public relations about your department and its offerings. A training department must, first and foremost, be visible in the organization it serves. Larry Lottier, Manager, Education of Dana Corporation publishes a training department course catalog with faculty, course listings and course descriptions to publicize his department's offerings. Gary Slobodian, Assistant Manager, Corporate Staff Development, of Great-West Life A More..

How to Manage Your People Well: Tips for Managers of Training

My Success, a cinematic fairy tale about life in corporate America, Michael J. Fox gets scolded his first day on the job for speaking to a senior executive: "Never consort with a suit unless the suit consorts with you first." As a training manager, however, you had better be prepared to consort with "the suits" from Day One. Managing for your people is a pro-active strategy that constantly demands selling your department's services and widening the base of organizational support for the training More..

Coaching Employees in the Workplace

After a full week of training, you are still a little nervous about your new job. All of the information you need to digest, the new environment you are adjusting to, and the new faces you will be getting acquainted with is just a bit overwhelming. Meeting the expectations of a new job and being the new face among an established network of co-workers is an uncomfortable position for everyone. But you can find comfort that new hires everywhere face the same challenges. All of us at one time or More..

Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: A New Managers Tale

This article relates to the Manager/Supervisor competency, commonly evaluated in employee satisfaction surveys. This competency evaluates an employee's feelings regarding their direct manager or supervisor. The manager/supervisor competency covers topics like clarity of goals, manager support, coaching and feedback, and regular reviews of performance. The old adage that "people leave their managers, not organizations" is often true. Of all the workplace stressors, a bad immediate manager is one More..

Towards Intercultural Understanding

An individual's ability to forge effective relationships across cultures is influenced by a very personal and highly complex mixture of emotional and cognitive processes. Anyone contemplating an overseas posting feels apprehensive about stepping into the unknown. The mere knowledge that we are leaving our own cultural comfort zone can trigger all sorts of subconscious defensive tactics that can make it difficult to operate effectively the new environment. The widely known work of Milton Bennett More..

Tales from the Corporate Frontlines:Choosing an Effective Employee Recognition Program

This article relates to the Recognition competency, commonly evaluated in employee satisfaction surveys. It tells the story of how one company found the right recognition program by paying attention to employee feedback. This competency also explores what type of behavior is appreciated and rewarded within your organization. Studies show that employees who receive regular recognition and praise are more likely to increase their individual productivity levels, increase engagement with their colle More..

The Art of Motivation and Need Fulfillment

Industrial/clinical psychology and applied psychiatry have made tremendous strides in understanding human behavior. New discoveries and applications toward understanding human behavior are being announced with increasing frequency in these inexact sciences. Still, it is possible to become reasonably proficient in the art of motivating others. While this skill is indeed complex, the average supervisor, through a comprehensive understanding of motivational elements (the dynamics of motivation, mot More..

Why Your Company Needs An E-Mail Policy

Everyone at the office thought that using the company e-mail system to share jokes and funny stories was great fun. That is, until one offended employee decided to sue his employer for having helped to create a hostile work environment. Employee access to E-mail and the Internet can help to streamline communication among employees, and between employees and customers. But, just like conversations or information communicated on paper, E-mail messages have the power to create significant liabilit More..

The Survey Feedback Process for Organizational Development and Change

CTHE PURPOSE OF SURVEY FEEDBACK: In globally competitive environments, organizations are seeking information about obstacles to productivity and satisfaction in the workplace. Survey feedback is a tool that can provide this type of honest feedback to help leaders guide and direct their teams. Obstacles and gaps between the current status quo and the desired situations may or may not be directly apparent. In either case, it is vital to have a clear understanding of strategies for diagnosis and p More..

Align The Enterprise & Make Beautiful Music Together

Q: Why is a great business like a great marching band? A: The players in both organizations are in alignment. Alignment? Yes, Alignment. When a marching band passes by in a parade, the columns and rows are in straight alignment, the band members are all in-step, they play in-tune, and they are all playing the same music. Alignment separates the great from the good from the mediocre from the awful. It's the same in business. A great business is also in alignment; all the players are aligne More..

Do You Hear That?

I read a report in the Toronto Star stated that 70% of workplace errors happen because of communication breakdown and that many of them directly relate to a lack of listening skills. The challenge is most people filter out sounds, noises and people talking as much as they filter out most of the things their eyes see. On one level, this is important. You would go crazy if you processed everything that you heard and you would never be able to have a conversation with a person in a crowded room. More..

Management Articles

Have Query? Contact Us Now