understand you

I kind of like this short video.

He reckoned that there three kinds of peoples in this world:

1. The dreamers

2. The do-ers

3.The Be-ers

* The Be-er : This is the type persons who high on the relationship, intimacy, love and connection.

* The dreamers are talking about vision, spirit and innovation

* The Do-es are more concerned about rules, order and discipline.

I think understanding this can help us at work place as well as at home. Sometime we have arguments with our spouse, but if we understand this video, may be because our way of thinking is different

I hope it will help to understand the person within you.

Read Better and Faster

The jobs skills have slowly changed through the years. Today, we are being bombarded with hundreds of email and letters and in turn we have to write a large number of simple notes and messages. This is the characteristic of todays world and I do not think the number will get any lesser.

Such situation require us to process the message faster, and it it will help if we can read faster. The techniques used in speed reading with help us to scan the email and capture the message.

There had been questions on the value of speed reading.

a. Is it possible to read faster?. The average reading speed is about 250 words per minutes. and the speed can be improved to double your present rate. In an international competition, a participants can attain about 4000 words per minutes.

b. Do you still enjoy your reading? Yes and in fact more, as you can speed it up.
c. Some people think that speed reading will lower the comprehension. This is not true, as the faster reading is not attained by skipping the contents but by capturing the information faster. You get rid of the bad habits.

Some of the Bad Habits in Reading.
You can show improvement and read better and faster by getting rid of your bad habits such as:

* Reading word by word. This will come naturally as we had been trained to read word by word when we were small. That habit reminds with use throughout our life and nobody teach us otherwise. Speed reading requires us to capture more words at a glance by increasing the the eye span.

* Re- reading what we had read. The word used to describe this is called regression. It does not have any value as we are repeating our reading.

* Vocalizing the words. This is like reading it loudly, every words has to be properly pronounced and that will make it slower. There is no need to vocalize it, as what you need is the understanding of the message.

Technique to read better and faster.

The followings are the ways to improve the speed:

a. Measure your speed: The saying goes, what you cannot measure, cannot be improved. Most will will not have any idea of the reading speed. So before you start the improvement work, have the baseline and measure your reading speed, then embark on the project and keep a monthly track of the progress.

Measurement can be roughly done by reading a page of book. Count the estimate words, i.e words per line times the number of line. Measure the time you take read the page. Get the figure into words per minute.

b. Get rid of the bad habits.

Start you work on the three bad habits, reading word by word,rereading and vocalizing your words. Break your self training in weekly assignment and handle a topic at a time. After 3 topics, do all three for a week. That complete you one month cycle.

** week 1 - practice not to read word by word

** week 2 - practice to avoid rereading

** week 3 - practice not to vocalize your words.

Time you speed, and you will be surprise of the improvements.

week 1. Increase your eye span.

Draw 4 vertical lines with pencil on your page. Train your eyes to focus on the words within the columns. By doing this you are training your eyes to read the words chunk by chunk. Once you are very comfortable with the 4 lines, reduce the columns to 3 pencil lines.

c. Read with objectives

The reading will be faster if you are looking for specified informations. Then you can just scan the page looking for the specified data. The specified informations will depend whether you are reading it for pleasure, for examinations or looking for specific informations.

d. Avoid distraction.

When your concentration left the page, you will need to reread to recapture the mood. This is a waste of time. The more distraction you have the slower your reading is.

Improving your reading, will definitely increase your job efficiency. There are organisation that require the staff to speed reading classes and typing classes and provide the assessment tools. It will be good to have some sort of annual event and award for the top 3 typist or speed readers to promote the skills in your organisation.

Competency Development

Competency model development is a long term project for an organisation. It is a time consuming efforts, starting with the development of the organisation's competency model and identifying the different clusters of competencies and work to populated each of the clusters with the different meaningful competencies.

The scale of measure had to formulated, completed with its definitions. Then there is the task to group the jobs in the organisation, based on certain concept.

Once these are complete, the job to build the model can begin. Each of the job group will require the interviews of the jobs holders to identify the competencies required, and at what level.

Our experience in doing this, had us realize the complexity of the project.

...Never expect perfection on your first attempt..

I had reviewed some of the articles in the ezinearticle.com, majority do not make sense, as I believe, it was written by affiliate who do not have any experience in the project.

Joha Rahman

I had selected an article for introduction

The exercise to develop the model will begin

By Robin Brain

Many organizations these days are using competency development to relate their HR processes but most of the HR managers not even realize what a competency is? How to build up a development plan for employee selection? So here's a short note all a layman even need to know about Competencies along with its development

What Is A Competency Development?

A Competency development describes the capabilities mandatory to carry out any particular role appreciably. This lay down of capabilities is after that used as principles in opposition to which: - opt for a new staff, develop any staff, assess the present performance of a staff in there assigned roles.
Competency development facilitates one lay down of principles to be made into being crossways the full assortment of HR processes. This will provide you a universal language along with understanding in addition to a steadiness while assessing performance of any individual is it for the reason of selection, growth or performance administration.

Competency:

It is a lay down of a behavior that reveals which person has the capability, knowledge, talent as well as personal qualities to do the job capably.

The superlative way to portray competencies is to use behavioral language which depicts the proceedings considered necessary to pull off the organization's aspirations. For instance the proficiency of "Teamwork" is illustrated as "Works by means of others to considerately carry out any kind of objectives".
Leading People Pulling off Outcomes Working in Team Managing Others As Well As managing them self:-
The subsequent imitate examples of a few competencies associated to every gather.

o Aptitude Cluster: - chasing two sample competencies

o Leaders: - Planned Thinking, Revolutionize Management

o Achievers: - Scheduling as well as Organizing, critical Problems and sorting them out

o Team Workers: - Being in touch with each others, Structuring Relationships

o Managers: - Argument Resolution, Good Trainer

o Self Managers: - Inventiveness, Pursuing from beginning to end

All the way through our joint undertaking with Organizational Psychologist as well as being in touch with few Associates we encompass the administrator rights to the complex proficiency creating software's, Strategic Success Modeling (SSM). It has facilitated us to be active as facilitators by means of your in-house team furthermore build as well as validate competency development for any job role being it big or small.

Get further information on competency development. Check out for job skills competencies and job competency models. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Robin_Brain

Learning from the Blooms Taxonomy

Building a set of valuable skills to ensure better chance of success in your career will require careful thought and long term planning. When you are fresh from university, you mind were still in the stage attuned to the students life. Then you step in to the new world of career, and most likely you will notice that less than half of what you had learned can not be used at your work place.

But do not get despaired, seek deeper into it. Why not look at the methodology, and the discipline that you had experienced in the university. Many of the education institution build up the curriculum using the tested Bloom taxonomy of educational objectives. The idea can be used for you to build you your skills and knowledge.

The bloom taxonomy categorized the learnings into three broad domains or areas, the cognitive, psychometry and affective domain. Use this to map your learning requirements. Ask some of the basic questions, what are th skills and knowledges required for m to excel in the job. This can be obtained from the job specification.

The article below taken from ezinearticle.com on the topic of bloom taxonomy of learning.

................................

Education: Increase Academic Performance Through Engaged Learning By Partnering Bloom and Krathwohl

By Leanne Hoagland-Smith

By Leanne Hoagland-Smith
What is engaged learning? From my experience and training it is when everyone within the classroom is actively engaged in the learning process to improve academic performance with a minimal amount of time being wasted. Unfortunately, the results from the Nation's Report Card tell us that young people are not performing at the levels required to compete as knowledge workers in the 21st Century.

To create an engaged learning environment requires that teachers have knowledge about how people learn. Many pre-service and experience teachers can recite the 6 categories within Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives:

Knowledge
Comprehension
Application
Analysis
Synthesis
Evaluation
However very few can with equal ease list the 5 categories within the Affective Learning Domain as identified by Krathwohl and colleagues:

Receiving
Responding
Valuing
Organization and Prioritizing
Internalize Values
Of course, listing them doesn't mean that they are being implemented into the daily lessons and achieving measurable learning results. And that is probably one of the reasons why improved performance in the classroom is not where it should be given the resources being expended and invested each and every day.

Let's be honest. Most young people especially those in middle school and high school know the following:

Be to school on time
Complete and submit assigned homework or projects
Speak when asked and do not interrupt
Submit neat work with your name, class, etc.
Keep your desk or locker clean and organized
Earn good grades
So, the real issue is not one of knowing, but rather one of wanting to do what is require. By partnering Krathwohl's taxonomy with Bloom's, teachers can increase the learning of a subject while changing beliefs and attitudes.

This partnership does take additional time. However when infusing these domains together, the increased academic performance outcomes far outweigh any perceived challenges. And, the extra benefit is that you spend far less time in classroom management and far more time in engaged learning.

Leanne Hoagland-Smith, President of ADVANCED SYSTEMS, works with large urban to private schools, certified staff, support staff, students and parents to improve performance in 30 to 180 days. Using proven tools, we can quickly and affordably identify the gaps in YOUR organization, provide you with an Action Plan that you can easily implement along with developmental programs from executive leadership to student leadership.

What would the value to you be if everyone within your school all rowed in the same direction with energy and enthusiasm?

ADVANCED SYSTEMS

Connecting Passion to Purpose to DOUBLE Performance in Real Time

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leanne_Hoagland-Smith

Tips for jobs seekers

It is a frustration moment in life for the jobs seekers who had been hunting for the chosen jobs only to end up with the jobs they really hate. My suggestion is, grab whatever you can get first, but do not stop from looking for the opportunity for your chosen career.

The reason is simple, most employers will look for persons with experiences. How would you get the experience if you are given a chance to start, so to resolve this ... get started with what is being offered. Second reason, the first job can be taken as a lead or steeping stone to get you to what you want. Probably, the opening is not available currently, so if you are in the company, you can always keep an eye on the position.

The article below is taken from the ezines articles under the title: Top 5 Career Networking Tips For Job Seekers
By James Tomerson:

There's no denying the fact that professional networking is one of the most effective parts of a job search strategy. Those who know the true value of networking are already benefiting from their contacts. Well, there is no doubt either that you would agree to the fact the around 70%-80% of job positions are filled through networking or referrals. What's important, however, is that you are well aware of the 5 best career networking strategies to make the most of this job search tool.

Given below are 5 best networking tips that job seekers can use to maximize the benefits of professional networking.

Join professional organizations
Ask job seekers and professionals about effective networking strategies and most of them would respond by saying - join professional organizations. Job seekers need to join organizations that relate to their professional fields or careers they want to kick-start. By joining a professional organization, you will come across a lot many people with the same professional aspirations you have. It is a great opportunity to market your talents and skills at conferences and meetings held by these organizations. And this will definitely expand your professional network.

Start to volunteer
Another important career networking tip is to participate in volunteering activities. By volunteering in a field related to your career or field of study, you can meet many influential people. This can further bring your multiple career opportunities and benefits. While you volunteer, you can also display or market your talents and skills. Volunteering is also an effective platform to acquire some valuable real world experience, which employers always prefer.

Join a job club
One of the most important tips for career networking is to start or join a job club. A job club brings many benefits to job seekers. At this gathering of job seekers, you can plan job search strategy, share job landing ideas and be informed about who is hiring. A job club, therefore, proves to be much supportive for candidates seeking jobs.

Maintain a positive online presence
Participating in social media has become utmost important for professionals. Through these online social media platforms, professionals can make their positive online presence. More and more employers and recruiters are searching for talents through these social media websites. Professionals can create their professional profiles on popular networking platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook. So, be prepared to make the most of your social media presence.

Conduct informational interviews
Informational interviews prove to much beneficial for college students and graduates. Job seekers too can make the most of informational interviews for career success. By conducting these interviews, you can talk to professionals who are working in the field you are also interested in. Informational interviews do not only provide you first hand knowledge about a specific working field, but it also expands you professional network at the same time.

use competitive advantage

A company is suppose to use its competitive advantage to the maximum. However, in our daily dealings with many companies, we had to jump to the conclusion that most of them do not even understand the concept of competitive advantage, let alone leverage on it for the benefit of the company.

What actually is the statement of competitive advantage?. It has to be a short statement, as the customers will not have the patient to wait for your to pass over the message. It is a statement to differential your business in the marketplace and set you apart from your competitors.

A statement of competitive advantage will have four elements, .. your name, your company, the problems faced by the customers at the specified market place and your solution to the problem.

For example...for car salesman for latest models,. " Hi, may name Jo Blue from Blue Car Garage, ... many people want to know the specified features of the latest model. We have developed an interactive video highlighting the special features of each of the latest model in the market."

competitive uniqueness

It is the things that you can do for your customers and other persons are not able to do. However the uniqueness may not last very long as it can be easily copied, then we have to rely in competitive advantage.

Competitive advantage

This set on things that you can do better than your customers. For example, if you are in the airlines business, you can set a very low ticket price that the other airlines are not able to complete.

Prepare for Change

Given the stiff competition an organisation is facing new, readiness to change must one of the necessary for the company to succeed. As such the company must be ready and prepare itself for change with a given short notice.

Why Change Is Necessary.
An organisation will either grow or shrink and in both situation the change is necessary. We had seen a successful company such as GE under the leadership of Jack Welsh had grown to be the admired company. He would not be able to do it without implementing changes within the organisation.

Leaders Must Make The Change Happen.
No change will be possible without the drive from the leaders. The leaders must be the one that plan and coordinate the changes. They have to believe in it and show the living example how changes will be planned and implemented.

Keys Driver of Change

The main obstacles to changes is the people. They need to buy the idea and see it of value. Part of the marketing techniques and strategies may be use in getting the support from the staff.

a. Effective communication

Having a good communication strategy and network is vital to the success of the change exercise.

Without a good system, the staff will rely on the gossip and informal networks that may be carrying different messages and having a separate agenda.

The communication would explain in the lay man language, the reasons for the change and the implication if the change does not take place. It had to be continuous and consistently sent through the office channels and the selected agents of change.

b. Collecting the feedbacks

The voices from the floor has to collected and collated. That will require the silent agents, who work behind the scene at different levels of the organisation. Why is this necessary, because we want to know what are the issues that the staff have. You cannot get it in the open meeting, as most will speaking with caution, as they fear the consequences of sending a wrong message.

.. to be written..

building coaches

Building coaches and making coaching as part of the ingrained culture in an organisation will certainly help to build up productivity and make the organisation a better work place.

Giving the present situation, companies have to compete globally. The countries boundaries can no longer offer safe protections against the foreign goods and products. Thus they have to improve productivity which normally translated to producing more with smaller number of staff. This will build up pressure on the management and the staff. The staff will normally put the blame on the management for leading the company into the limbo. To overcome this issue, everyone in the organisation has to work as a team, mutually supporting and trusting each other.

Many of the good staff will leave the organisation for a greener paster, and many a time, their reasons for leaving is very personal. In fact the work relationship and dissatisfaction of the bosses becomes the main reason for leaving, they leave the boss not the work.

Building Coaching Culture.

What can an organisation does to overcome the feeling of dissatisfaction and keep the staff felt motivated even in the critical time?. The answer is to build up a coaching culture in the organisation. Building culture requires a conducive environment. The organisation context and structure have to be in support of the culture. The success of the program will depend a great deal on the ability of the coaches to build up the relationship and develop the trust.

Equipping the staff with the required skills.

Like any other , to be a coach require specific skills. It is more or the leadership skill that require the coach to be a role model, counselor and supporter giving the support and challenge to the staff. Knowing when to coach and when not is a skill. You may opt to get the assistance from IAC, the International Association of Coaches, to provide courses and program for the potential coaches.

Giving Staff the marketable skills

Giving the skills will motivate staff and develop the trust. These are the important elements to ensure the success of the coaching program.

Results of the study by Manchester Inc. Florida on the benefits of coaching. The study include 100 executives from Fortune 1000.

Improvement to the company.

- productivity 53%

- quality 48%

- customer services 39%

- reduction in customers complaints 34%

- Cost reduction 23%

- profitability 22%

Improvements to the staff performance

- working relationship with immediate superior 77%

- teamwork 67%

- relationship with peers 63%

- job satisfaction 61%

- conflict resolution 52%

So based on the survey above, the result is very positive. It does prove he point that coaching create value to the organisation and helps to develop staffs' performance. This can start with the building the coaches within the organisation.

barrier to change

Have you ever wonder why it is so difficult to make changes in yourself. I am sure that there are instances, you encounter problems in work working life or in your family life due to your attitudes or the way you think.

Why is it so difficult to change, even you have tried it. Understanding the mechanism behind it can make changes more easier and permanent. This is because, all of us has a mechanism of self defense. This mechanism is unconsciously within us, like have a virtual internal lawyer and advisor within us, hidden from our conscious self, working unknown to us. His job is to protect is against any external attack. The psychologists call it 'ego defense mechanisms'.

Some people may relate the mechanism to our inborn instinct to defense ourself against any physical attack, such as the attack by a wild animals. The mechanism work automatically without the need to think through and give instantaneous respond either to fight or flight.

If we are aware of the barrier, it will make ourself more in control will help us to overcome it. There are the main basic defend mechanisms people use, the denial, rationalisation and intellectualization. The details are given below:

1. Denial - this is a way of saying that the problem does not exist, or even it exists, it not caused by you or your are not involved. Most of the time the person will not realize this as he himself is convinced that he is right. The only way for a person to come to the reality is by a wake up call, and in most cases it is rather to late.

I can see this happenings are rampant among the politicians, as they seem to point the problems to the other side. They are not lying but, I think they truly believe the others are the cause of the problems. This is the mammoth form of self denial.

2. Rationalisation - This is another form where a person manage to create a very logical and believable argument why a certain negative outcome happened. It help to cover certain weakness or poor performance on his part.

For example: A person may has missed the promotion opportunity. He may rationalize that the system is bias or a form of favoritism had taken place. This method can be used even by politician to justify why he was not selected.

However, it may be very hard to separate the grains, as favoritism and unfair practices are actually happening both in organizations and in politics.

3. Intellectualization - This is the case when you remove yourself from the argument but defend an ineffective or faulty action to satisfy the needs for certainty and control. The result of this will be, the system remain status quo, there is no need to change your way of doing things and actually maintaining the same results.

There various tools that can be used to incur changes. The way it works are the following 3 steps:

step 1: Impose the change of results - for example if last year the sale was 10 millions, then this year make it 12 millions.

step 2. Implement process changes -

step 3. monitor the change to the personnels involved.

Most of the current change managements are focusing the results and processes without directly monitoring the individual performance.

The ability to overcome barriers to changes will help to improve the individual as a person and as an employee. By developing individuals, we will be helping to provide better performance and results.

How to Conduct Meeting

In an effort to build up the jobs skills, I had selected an article on the topic of how to conducts effective meeting. From my experience at work, it was too often to attend meetings that was not totally effective. Some of the problems were:

- meetings were scheduled as part of the routine. We always have meeting on Mondays.
- agenda was not made known in advance.
- the chairman or organizers arrived late.. they were busy indicating their importance.
- time was not followed, meeting of 1 hour extended to 3 hours.

So below is an article selected from ezinearticle.com
-------------------------

In in effort to I

By Wolfgang Damm

Meetings are an important element of our corporate landscape. They are generally conducted to achieve two key goals: exchanging information and making decisions. Much time is spent conducting meetings, but, unfortunately still the rule, significant resources are lost by ineffective meetings.

Effective Meetings

Meetings are an important element of our corporate landscape. They are generally conducted to achieve two key goals: exchanging information and making decisions. Much time is spent conducting meetings, but, unfortunately still the rule, significant resources are lost by ineffective meetings.

The presenter, although very important, is only a part contributing to successful meetings; the audience is as important. Since higher ranks play a specific exemplary role in the corporate world, their professional conduct deserves particular attention.

The following list provides easy-to-apply guidelines that increase efficiency of most meetings and with that, help organizations to improve their competitive potency. It is ordered by: Issue - Who - Explanation.

Meeting Preparations

Invitations

• Presenter
• Invite early. Everyone has a busy schedule and other urgent tasks to execute. Providing sufficient time to plan allows the attendees to arrange and make themselves available. If important people are unavailable at the planned day and time, early invitations allow re-scheduling. Many professionals plan their schedule on a weekly base, therefore: invite - at least - one week before the meeting.

Invite electronically

• Presenter
• Electronic invitations have many advantages. They document the event and they list all invitees, which makes it less likely to forget individuals. If it turns out that someone has been forgotten - it is quite easy to send the invitation to this individual.
  Most electronic systems put an entry automatically in the calendar, which helps planning schedules and even reminds when the meeting is due.

Respond to electronic invitations.

• Audience
• When getting an electronic invitation, responding is more than appropriate etiquette. The inviter needs to know if the person has received the invitation and if he is available. If the timing of one or more invitees does conflict with their schedule, the inviter has to look for a new opening. But this is only possible if he is aware of the actual situation. Pressing the respond-button is not more difficult that pressing the minimize- or exit button of the screen.

Don't overload slides

• Presenter
• Despite the fact that overloaded slides are barely readable, this practice may suggest that the presenter is trying to deny the audience proper documentation, papers that probably should have been attached to the invitation. Respect the audiences time by providing adequate documentation.

Attach required documents

• Presenter
• Electronic invitations offer an easy way to attach documentation that is needed for the meeting. Use this feature, but use it wisely. Attach only documents that are really needed for the meeting, don't attach encyclopedias, no one will read them. If you want to provide extended information, simply offer links.

Attach up-to-date documents

• Presenter
• It is a great difference whether information changed last minute or if information is distributed when not yet finished. It is frustrating for the audience to spent time reading your documents, only to see very different actual information. You always can invite early and announce that supporting information will be provided later, just remember to send the information at the promised day

Read information that is attached to the invitation

• Audience
• Educated decisions can be made when sufficient information is available. The inviter spent a significant amount of his time to prepare the meeting. Whether the purpose of meeting is solving a problem, defining a strategy or moving the company to the next level, your presence is important. Attend the meeting informed.

Check & prepare the equipment before the meeting takes place

• Presenter
• Most meetings rely on additional tools like projectors or video conference systems. Keeping attendees waiting while trying to control equipment is the worst way to utilize meeting-time. Even if it "worked yesterday", valuable time is lost. Make sure the equipment is working properly.
  The same applies to booting computers. Even if It takes "only a couple of minutes", these are ineffective, wasted minutes. Practiced presenters start presenting at the time they invited to.

The Meeting

Be there in time

• Presenter
• Being late at the own meeting signals that even the presenter has "more important things to do". Right from the beginning the standards and expectations of the meeting are significantly lowered. Be there in time - better too early than a minute too late.

Be there in time

• Audience
• Even if your schedule is very busy, be there in time. Having a round of important people waiting or even worst, having people looking for you is plain unprofessional. A simple example: If 6 people have to wait only 10 minutes, a full hour of corporate productivity has just been irrevocably consumed.
  Always remember the golden rule (categorical imperative): treat your pears the way you want to be treated.

Be there in time

• Ranks
• Everyone in the organization deals with a busy schedule; on top of this, the higher the rank the more responsibility is carried. One particular behavior can be observed frequently: as higher the rank as later the individual arrives. Obviously a result of a busy schedule, but the rule of wasted productivity applies as well. True professionalism of ranks is demonstrated, providing new standards for commitment and in-time delivery, by being there in time - despite their busy schedules.

Skip small talk

• All
• Excitement after big games or other important public events is only natural - but it does not belong in meetings; even not to loosen up the atmosphere. Professionals are able to skip the warm-up and concentrate straight on the facts.

Style of presenting

• Presenter
• There are many as many ways of presenting as there are presenters. The worst kind is however: reading the presentation. Even if the facts are important, the audience's perception will be different. If speech support is needed, keyword cards help, or better: one page with keywords (not sentences) provides confidence and structure. Be yourself and talk the way you always talk about subjects - the audience will appreciate this.

Pay attention

• Audience
• If documentation has been distributed, people usually look at it right away. Unfortunately important facts just provided by the presenter are missed. To catch up, neighbors are asked about the subject, which makes him not getting information during his explanation as well. If documents are distributed at the beginning of the presentation keep track at the same pace as the presenter, don't try to pass him.
  Seasoned presenters provide documentation after the Q&A phase of the presentation.

Switch your mobile off.

• All
• Ringing mobiles not only disrupt the presentation, they show disrespect to both, presenter and the rest of the audience. If there is really no peer in the organization who can take your call during the meeting, the least one can do is to set the mobile to buzzer and keep it in the pocket or in the holster. A mobile crawling over the table while buzzing, is even more distracting that ringing. If you expect a call that is indeed more important than the meeting, choose a place close to the door. This way you can sneak out without disturbing the audience.

"Corporate prayer"

• Audience
• Smart phones are an important tool that can significantly increase individuals' efficiency - when used the right way. Reading and responding to emails during a meeting is not the right way.
  Valuable information presented is missed while emailing. If the meeting is in fact not as important as the emails, why attending at all?
  REM: The term "corporate prayer" origins from the posture while working the emails during a meeting: holding the smart phone under the table, hands closed, head tilted down, just like the devote posture during prayers.

No napping

• Audience
• While people perform often at their limits, and the darker environment during a presentation and somewhat relaxed atmosphere invites to "re-charge the batteries", napping during meetings is highly unprofessional.
  If an individual feels slipping energy and that the body demands his rest, standing-up and positioning against a wall helps. It is nearly impossible to sleep and stand and paying attention while standing is much less intrusive than napping.

Involve all participants

• Presenter
• Responding to questions and discussing points are often the meeting's highlight. It is important to involve all participants; this is why they are here in the first place. Communication time is often imbalanced towards people who really like to talk. In a smaller meeting, actively address everyone. To finish within the planned time, it might require cutting "communicators" short.

Don't delay decisions

• All
• It could actually be an ideal situation: making decisions while the required decision makers are gathered. Unfortunately decisions are often postponed to an unspecified other meeting. The rationale behind this is not clear. If all required people are assembled, the facts for decisions are available and time permits make decisions now. This frees time in the future which will contribute to the well being of the organization.

Finish in time

• Presenter
• Finishing meetings in time is not only a sign of professionalism; it is a necessity to keep the corporate clockwork running smoothly. Everyone of your audience is quite busy and may even have scheduled other meetings adjacent to yours. Set a realistic time for your meeting, don't try to "lure" the audience in your meeting by offering a short meeting, while your know quite well it will take longer. Put in a realistic time, and if you are not sure use a longer meeting time at your invitation. This way the audience can arrange their busy day accordingly. If the meeting is finished earlier - even better.

After the meeting

Write down minutes and distribute them

• Presenter
• If decisions have been made during a meeting, distributed minutes are paramount. If the results are not provided in a written form, they will soon be replaced in the participants' minds by other important issues and tasks. Writing and distributing minutes will make the meeting result official and is invaluable when information needs to be looked up later.

Enjoy your next meeting.
Deiton.

Wolfgang "Deiton" Damm can build on over 25 years of management experience in different industries. With engineering and business degrees, Deiton embraces managerial, organizational, marketing and technical disciplines. He is author of a book and patent holder. Deiton writes articles and blogs onbetter business practices. Author Links Blog URL: http://deiton.com/Wordpress Business/Social Network facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wolf.damm Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Wolfgang_Damm

Getting Back To Work

Reentering job market after a long period away can be a little overwhelming. As you have not been working for sometime, you tend to lose touch on certain aspect of working.

Looking for employment is one of the issues, and I think the bigger issue will be to readjust the life as an employee, I mean the manage the discipline and to accept the instruction from other people.

Enclosed are some tips to reenter the job market:

a. Recognize your option

b. Be Realistic

c. Update your skills

d. Be Enthusiastic.

e.Update your resume.

f. Prepare for the interviews

g. Use connections

Reentering job market is a challenging task, but it can be overcome by careful planning and preparation.

jobs skills , how to build them

Have you ever wonder, how other peoples can land their dream jobs and you did not. It is not a coincident, and most likely the others had developed their jobs skills and you are still trying to find out how to build them up.

This short posting gives some tips on how to build your jobs skills. With the correct skills set, you would be more marketable:

a. Go back to school
Think through of your intended career path, and do not stop at your retirement age, but go beyond it. I had seen some of my colleagues, who had charted their work path will beyond the retirement age. I think that is a good idea.

Then, plan your part time study. It is fun to get into the class and start to learn new subjects. Since we have the working experience then we can relate to our daily work.

There are many opportunities now, with the internet learning and also the traditional face to face teaching. You may like the blended learning. There are even courses without examination but only assignment. No, please do no think that it is easy.

b. Be up to date with technology

The technology is changing very fast. There was time that communication had to be done officially through memo and you have to post it through the internal postal services. It take days to reach the person next door to your office. Now, all internal communication within the company has to be done using email. Only the mandatory mail has to be done by official typed memo.

The office automation software like words, powerpoint and excel have to be mastered. There still people who do not optimize the power of the software, for example, like formating similar letters each time rather than setting the format.

c. Learn a new language

Many times, you see a classified ad that requires you to be proficient in a particular language. So why not take the initiative to learn one and increase your job prospects?

With increased globalisation, having a language barrier can deter a company from communicating with business partners and potential customers, says Marcia Tan, a Kuala Lumpur-based language tutor.

“Learning a new language is inexpensive and can be a lot of fun. If you don’t want to take up classes at a professional language school, there are thousands of language books and aids out there for people to take advantage of in their own time.

“One can also learn a new language for free via various online services. At the end of the day, it widens your horizons and increases your marketability not just locally but internationally as well,” says Tan.


d. Build a network of contacts
Having a good contacts is necessary for your business and your career progression. Through the contacts you may be able to look for opportunities in other companies. People would like to deal with whom they can trust, if you have some track record of delivering the required goods or services, it will help you a long way.

e. Keep Yourselves updated with the current affairs.
Keeping updated on the happenings in the industry will help to bring credibility when you deal with others.

Do not limit your self to your industry alone, Consider the PEST (MBA students learn this), the political, economic,social and technology elements that will affect the business or industry.

These factors would be help full for you to seek further expansion to your career. If you are aiming for the next higher position, consider the skills requirement for the next position.