Liar At Work?

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body language

Have you felt others have lied to you at work? Did you come away feeling you had been taken for a big ride? Here’s an article which could help you. Carol Kinsey Goman writes on “12 Ways To Spot A Liar At Work” in Forbes.

A word of caution though. The liar at work could have read this article too ! Be vigilant that the liar, like all good liars, isn’t going out-of-the-way to con you by making you believe he has your best interests at heart.

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Redundant Phrases

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effective writing, writing tips

Corporate executive, graduate student or budding writer. Do you use two or more words when one would do? As you write, do you use redundant phrases which roll off your tongue more by habit than by anything else. If you think about them, on reflection, you perhaps won’t use them but you do get habituated to use some, don’t you?.

The Balancing Act

Would you agree that life is an endless balancing act? We are forever balancing something or the other as we struggle to meet our goals. For some it is balancing between the demands at work and the responsibilities at home, for others it could be balancing between the need to travel and the need to spend time with family. There could be many other conflicting priorities which we face in our day-to-day lives.

How Do You Change Habits?

Smoking, goofing off at work or over eating  are common habits that people frequently admit they wish to give up. They go on to say that they realize these habits are harmful. Smoking can give you cancer and kill you just as over eating can ruin your health. Goofing off for too long at the job could get you fired. They know these affect them adversely over time. Yet if you ask them why they don’t do something about it, you are likely to get a wide range of excuses varying from “Not now. I am a bit tied up.  I want to start in right earnest next week Monday” to “Let me see how far I can last out without having to change”.

A Touch Means Much

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IPL

We have known it for years. Non-verbal communication is a powerful tool to share our emotions. World wide a frown signifies anger and a smile happiness. The master psychologist Eric Berne years ago called a stroke as the smallest unit of recognition and told us about the power of positive strokes. Also how negative strokes, on the contrary, can go so far as to mar the growth of a growing infant. Young children thrive on positive strokes and it is up to us to give them in plenty for good work done.

Body Language

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body language, Communication, Julius Fast

Many subjects have created waves in our quest to learn who we are and why we behave the way we do. One such subject which continues to fascinate people is that of Body Language– the science of studying non-verbal communication. It is one of the most important aspects of communication and fashions interpersonal relationships.

Top 10 Nonverbal Communication Tips

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Nonverbal communication

Good communication skills can help you in both your personal and professional life. While verbal and written communication skills are important, research has shown that nonverbal behaviors make up a large percentage of our daily interpersonal communication.

How can you improve your nonverbal communication skills? Look at the following top 10 tips for nonverbal communication from Kendra Van Wagner in the Psychology site of About.com.

The tips are simple, yet effective and can be put into use almost immediately by anyone who wishes to improve their interpersonal relations by having better non-verbal communication.

More Stress through Emails

Emails are very much a part of our work life. We can no longer imagine a world without email.

Researchers at Glasgow University and Paisley University in the UK, found that 34% of the workers questioned as part of their study admitted to checking their inbox every 15 minutes.

Though 64% of the workers said they looked at their emails more than once an hour, monitoring software showed that it was more like 40 times an hour. At least 34% of the workers also said that they were stressed by the sheer number of emails that come in, and the need for a speedy reply. Another 28% admitted that they were “driven” after checking their mails because of the pressure to respond.

“Our survey indicates the astonishing extent to which email is embedded in our day-to-day lives,” the researchers, are quoted as saying. “Females, in particular, tended to feel more pressure to respond than males,” they added.

Some figures about stress inducing emails:

• 6 trillion business email messages sent worldwide in 2006
• 49 minutes spent managing emails each day by the average office worker
• 4 hours spent managing emails per day by senior management worker
• 80 % of emails sent are actually ‘spam’ – unsolicited adverts, many of which are fraudulent or otherwise illegal
• 62 % of workers check business emails while at home or on holiday

Use email as a productivity and convenience tool. Don’t become a slave to it!

7 Ideas for Success- Conducting Meetings

“Meetings, Bloody Meetings” was the title of an old John Cleese video which showed how terrible meetings could be and how we could make them more effective.

Meetings are an inescapable part of business today. We attend many types of meetings:Formal, informal, sit down, stand up, internal, external, planned, impromptu- the list goes on. It is estimated that approximately 11 million meetings occur in the U.S. each and every day. Another estimate indicates that most professionals attend a total of 61.8 meetings per month. Many feel that over 50 percent of this meeting time is wasted.

No wonder then that many consider meetings a terrible waste of time. However, a well-conducted meeting can be invigorating, motivating and have a lasting impact on attendees.

Here are my 7 Ideas for Success for Conducting Effective Meetings:-

1. Have a meeting only if this method is the best to achieve objectives
2. Call only those who will add value
3. Have an agenda with start and end times ( time budgets)
4. Don’t have too big an agenda
5. Be sensitive to all meeting participants and their needs
6. Help meeting participants summarise take aways
7. Release action oriented minutes as soon as possible

Downsides of Email

You must have heard of Daniel Goleman? He is the renowned author of “Emotional Intelligence” which was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half; with more than 5,000,000 copies in print worldwide in 30 languages.

Read what he has to say about email in the New York Times.

Email undoubtedly has many advantages -” it’s quick and convenient, democratizes access and lets us stay in touch with loads of people we could never see or call. It enables us to accomplish huge amounts of work together”

However, it can never capture the emotions of the sender as well as a personal interaction can.

“One reason for this is that we tend to misinterpret positive e-mail messages as more neutral, and neutral ones as more negative, than the sender intended. Even jokes are rated as less funny by recipients than by senders”

As Professor Clay Shirky an adjunct professor in New York University’s interactive telecommunications program puts it “Social software” like e-mail “is not better than face-to-face contact; it’s only better than nothing.”

Think about this before you dash off an email to the guy in the next cubicle or to the girl down the corridor.