Workplace laughs

Working smarter

 The amount of projects that we all have at work has increased.  Let’s face it. We’re working with fewer people in our department, but the demand or expectations of our assignments has not changed.  We have to think about how we work and balance our time because this is our reality.

I’m often asked what could I have done differently to resolve this problem?  Sometimes I have an answer right away. Other times I think my plan was solid and I can’t think of another way to handle the situation.  It’s critical that teams have time to reflect or debrief  after projects.  During this time, teams are able to review the lessons learned, recognize what didn’t work, and decide how to improve their situation. 

There’s an art to debriefing that’s just as important as taking the time to debrief.  You have to remove the supervisors, managers, or anyone that influences pay, raises, or employment.  If you want honest feedback, your team has to be comfortable talking about the issues.  All of the feedback gathered must be anonymous.  Again it’s about honest feedback and improving the process. Gather all of the feedback and allow the team to talk through the feedback. During the debriefing, you will be surprised on some of the creative ideas or improvements the team can come up with to resolve projects.  The information you obtain can be used an applied to the next project.  It’s very important to apply debriefing suggestions to the next project.  When your team sees you implementing ideas, they will be more vested in creating a work environment that no only just gets their work done, but works smarter. 

Do you allow time for your team to debrief?  How do you handle debriefing meeting?  Are willing to start debriefing?

Get connected and doing it right

Growing up I was taught you just don’t tell everything and if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything.  Well, social media has blown a hole right in the middle of  those sayings. 

When I first heard about Facebook in 2005, the website was viewed as a college website.  At that time, I had been working for a few years and knew immediately that I was not the target market for Facebook. Fast forward a few years and Facebook is one of the world’s most popular social media websites. Facebook recently revealed they have 901 million active users.

Twitter is such a part of our lives now that most current news events are being shared on Twitter.  I personally learned about the death of Michael Jackson and Osama Bin Laden on Twitter.  With over 225 million estimated users, no wonder information is reaching the masses before traditional news outlets can broadcast the news.

In my professional life, I work with customers and need their feedback to successfully do my job.  My team is using Twitter and Facebook to gather feedback and get customers involved and invested in the services we offer. We share information about conferences, new products, updates, and special pricing offers on our Twitter and Facebook page. Our product social media membership pages are growing as word gets out that we have a presence on these sites. 

My company encourages its employees to create social media product profiles to promote our products.  We have learned a lot these last few months. We have made a few mistakes and learned what to do to ensure we are being effective and following social media guidelines for our business. 

1.      Post effective and meaningful messages. With a limited amount of characters, you need to word your message just right. This is the time when your writing needs to be clear and concise. 

2.      Be active.  Determine how often you plan on posting to your site.  A weekly or daily posting schedule encourages members to visit your site often.

3.      Listen to the conversation. Respond and interact with your members. Provide the expertise on your page to resolve problems that may come up. 

4.      Remove or block spam.  Invest in software that removes offensive language and unwanted advertisement.  You may have to manual scan your account hourly or daily to ensure your page remains free of spam and offensive language. Sharing this responsibility with others helps when software is not available to do it for you.

5.      Track you stats. Make your efforts count for something. Monitor membership growth, product sales, the most active users, and positive and negative feedback.

These are just a few of the social media guidelines that we follow. I’m sure there are others.  Metric trends in social media will determine if this new trend is going to be around for awhile .  The goal of having a social media presence for your business is to generate sells. I would love to hear some of your team's social media guidelines. How do you determine if your social media presence is making a difference?

Reading anything good

I love to read! I’m still an old school hard copy page turner with the cute book marker kind of girl.  I have an iPad, but I don’t read books on it.  I’m not able to read as much as I would like because of work, graduate school, and Mom duties. Reading is the one thing I’m looking forward to adding back into my life when my graduate program is over. 

As I have matured, so has my reading list.  I find myself reading more work/business and political books.  I have found the information in these books to be helpful and informing.  Many of the issues that I’m dealing with as a professional woman are not new.  It’s refreshing and reassuring to read how others handle similar situations.  I make it a point to incorporate the tips I read into my life.  I have noticed a difference and seen the results pay off for me. 

I would like to share with you books that I have enjoyed and books I plan to read when I have a minute.

My recommendations

 It’s not a glass ceiling, it’s a sticky floor: free yourself from the hidden behaviors sabotaging your career success by Rebecca Shambaugh

 

Who moved my cheese by Spencer Johnson 

The 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey 

What got you here won’t get you there:  how successful people become even more successful by Marshall Goldsmith

My wish list

 

It’s always personal: Emotions in the new workplace by Anne Kramer

Climbing the ladder in stilettos by Lynette Lewis

The strategist: Be the leader your business need by Cynthia Montgomery

 What are reading?

 

Can everyone go on mute

Running a successful meeting is key to communicating with your team.  Meetings are a good way for everyone on your team to hear status, updates, and to connect with each other.  When you get team members in a room together, you can resolve an issue or a least start talking through the issues.  The non-verbal cues (smiling, crossing arms, smirks) help you to interpret how your peers are responding to the information. 

Meetings can also be time consuming and a big waste of time if the meeting moderator is not prepared.  If you have people calling into the meeting to participate, you are now dealing with another major distraction during your call.  Multi-tasking!  Without the face-to-face contact, meeting participants can easily start focusing on other things.  As the meeting moderator you need to know how to run an effective virtual meeting. 

I participate and moderate a lot of virtual meetings.  Here are a few of the things I do during my meetings.

1.  Use a web conference tool.  Web conference tools help to keep everyone connected.  Many web conference tools have polling options, chat rooms, and sharing features that help teams communicate.

2.  Be prepared and be aware of time.    Determine your meeting agenda and send the agenda out to your team before the meeting.  Determine how much time should be devoted to each agenda item.  Allow time to summarize the meeting and  action items.  End the meeting on time.

3. Record the call or take minutes.  Record the call for coworkers who may not be able to attend the meeting.  Send out meeting minutes after the meeting.

4. Create a place to store meeting collateral.  Put meeting agendas, minutes, and presentations in a shared space for future reference.  Team members should be able to refer to meeting information at a later date. 

5. Allow time for small talk.  Give the team time to talk to each other.  If members are a little shy, have questions to break the ice.  Allow your team to post pictures or videos of things they want to share about themselves or their family.

6. Get everyone involved.  Let’s face it. It’s easy to zone out in a virtual meeting. Make sure you give everyone time to talk and participate in the call.  If everyone is quiet and unwilling to talk, call people by name to answer questions and to get their feedback.

7. Encourage the use of the mute button.  Ask team members to go on mute to cut down on distracting noises (barking dogs, construction banging, toilet flushing).  This could be a separate post! LOL

8. Cancel the meeting if needed.  Be aware of deadlines and cancel the meeting if team members need to focus on their project.  If you don’t have agenda items, cancel the meeting. Your team would appreciate having the time back in their day.

 

Do you have tips to share?

Global leadership

Whatever happened to the 9am – 5pm job? Do you still work those hours? I bet the answer is no if you have to work with a global team.  In the spirit of being accommodating, employees are working earlier hours or later hours to meet with their global peers.  I’ve installed and bookmarked an international clock on my laptop to help me with international time management. You would hate to call someone at 11pm (their time) to ask about a PC password. 

Globalization is here to stay.  Companies are developing teams in countries that are in emerging markets.  Wikipedia describes emerging markets as nations with social or business activity in the process of rapid growth and industrialization. The economies of China and India are considered to be the largest. The eight largest emerging and developing economies are China, Brazil, Russia, India, Mexico, South Korea, Indonesia, and Turkey.

In this fast-paced global society, it’s important that leaders create an effective team to help their team succeed.  Leading a global team is all about partnership, trust, and communication. Typically, global employees will have a supervisor in their county that they report to. As the US leader of the team, it’s important that  communicate with their global employees.  It’s important that global leaders understand how their global team communicates. Depending on the culture, you could be working with global employees that are very direct or reluctant to share bad news.  Regardless of the cultural communication traits, it’s important that you communicate your specific goals, objectives, and expectations.

The best action you could take as a global leader is to visit or live in the country with your team.  You would benefit from the experience an learn more about the culture and the people you work with on your team.    Your international experience will help you improve on your soft skills too. I'm willing to bet that your relationship with your global team would improve after your visit.  You would no longer be the voice on the phone asking about deadlines or problems.  Your global team would see you as someone who was willing to try the unique cultural dish at dinner and the leader that attempted to speak the language during a meeting.  Try it and see what happens. 

How do you lead your global team?  Are you considering an international assignment?

A born leader

Are leaders born or can leadership be taught?  We’ve all heard the  saying “He/she is a born leader.” Can parents really sense that their sweet toddler is a leader?  What traits do these parents see in their toddler?  Toddler Timmy has all the toddlers in his playgroup following him around.  Toddler Timmy has all of the toddlers building him a block castle.  It’s silly right? 

I believe leaders are made. They grow into their position of power and authority based on circumstances preparation and training.  Leaders can be an unassuming individual in your group.  It’s the person in the room that’s willing to accept responsibility. It’s the person who listens to everyone and makes a decision based on the facts.  The leader in the room is well read on issues and can help make strategic decisions based on the future direction of the marketplace.  

What would your coworkers say about you?  Are you a born leader or a well read leader?

The measure of a man...

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’ve always liked this Dr. King quote.  It makes me think how I handle challenge and controversy.  Can my family and friends count on me?  Can I look at myself in the mirror after making a tough decision? 

Leaders have to make tough decisions all of the time.  As a leader of a group, organization, or company, you have to understand all of the options and how your decision impacts your company.  You have to know that everyone will not be able happy with your decision. However, if you are making a decision on facts and not feelings you can stand in times of challenge and controversy.

Your decision may cause you to speak honestly to your team. You may even have to explain a few of the scenarios or issues you had to consider. It’s also important that you communicate to your team as soon as possible. You want to handle the gossip or false information that may be circulating in your company.  Leading a group or company can be a rewarding experience.  Don’t let the tough times change the way handle a situation.

Back to the basics

Let’s face it. We are living in a Right Now world.  A Right Now world where finding information is a keystroke away on a Wikipedia site. A Right Now world where finding information is a one search click away on a Google site.  Do you really have time to stop, analyze, and reflect? I bet its hard to with an unrealistic deadline hovering over you as soon as you walk in the office.  When was the last time you talked to your officemate or walked over to a coworker's cubical space and said “You got a minute? I need your advise on something.”  I bet many of you reading this post can’t think of a time that you had time to freely exchange ideas. 

We are missing out if we don’t share and brainstorm with our co-workers.  Communication is key to completing a project.  We have to be able to exchange ideas with our colleagues in a matter that is respectful, effective, and truthful.  Dana Larson, a OnePlace Marketing Manager blogger, posted 7 tips for improving workplace communication.  I found them to be helpful and wanted to share.

1. Think before you speak

 Sometimes the best form of communication is thinking about what you are going to say - or not say.

2. Listen carefully

Communication is a two-way street. It’s always best to actively listen to the people with whom you are communicating.

3. Increase communication channels

Today, there are many ways of staying in touch with those around you. In a workplace, we have meetings, emails, phone calls and memos.

4. Don’t get defensive

In an instance where a conflict is present in a conversation, try not to become defensive. It’s easy to do, but very unproductive.

5. Ask for help

It’s not always the words you speak - sometimes nonverbal communication can come through and impact a situation.

6. Speak slowly

You don’t want to lose audience members by talking too fast, and if someone misunderstands you, they may not complete an assignment on time or they may take the wrong action for themselves.

7. Take action

When engaging in a conversation, make sure it’s as productive as it can be.

 Each one of us can improve our communication skills. Pick one of Dana’s 7 tips and work on improving that skill for two weeks.  Walk over to your co-worker's desk and ask if they have a minute to brainstorm with you.  I bet it will make a difference.  How do you communicate at work?  Are you being an effective communicator? 

I've lost a glove, misplaced tickets to a concert, and temporarily lost my ATM card. As frustrating as this may seem, there's nothing worse than losing all of your information on your computer. I'm a pack rat when it comes to saving files on my computer.  If I think I might need it again, I save it.  I am a digital hoarder! The first step is to admit you have a problem. Right?

When you are a digital hoarder, you create well descriptive directory folders on your computer to help you manage your files.  I pride myself on the way I have organized my personal pictures, presentations, and charts. If I have saved it on my computer, it will not take me long to find it. 

As a digital hoarder, you depend on technology mainly your hard drive to work. Recently, I had a hard  drive failure that really stop me in dead in my tracks.  I didn't have a good backup and recovery plan.  I didn't have a scheduled backup plan and when I remembered to backup my system I often put it off telling myself I would get to it later.  Well, I've learned my lesson. I have found a few backup options for my files that I would like to share.

Backup Maker

DropBox


Do you have a backup plan?