interview skills and technique

Interview give the chance for the potential employer to find out about the applicants. There are certain elements that your have be concerned during the interview.This is because the panel will be selecting based on perception.

a. Control your energy level. If you portray as weak,slow and low energy, most likely you will not get the job.

b. Watch out for the basic question.."tell me about yourself". The interviewer wanted to know about you in relation to the job you apply. Answer this question.."you applied for this job, tell me what make you a suitable candidate". Make your answer short.

c. Another common question is ..'tell me about your strength..

The video about tips.
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how to conduct meeting

A large number of corporate leaders think that meeting is a waste of time. This short write up on how to conduct meeting reviews that.

John Linwood, the chief technology officer at BBC complained that he spent too much time in meeting leaving less time to do his job. "how much time we spend on the key attributes that the organisation had hired us?" he questioned.

Enclosed are some tips to a successful meeting

1.Make sure that there is absolutely no alternative.
Check if it can be done by other methods. If it is about passing information, meeting may not be the best methods. You can do it easily by email. Some time meetings were conducted because it is the routine, ... we always have meeting on Monday,.. then forget it.

2.Have an agenda.
Always prepare the agenda and distribute it to the participants in advance so that they too can prepare for the meeting. The amount of time taken to prepare the agenda will always be less then the extra time required if you were having no agenda. After you have done the agenda, recheck if meeting is the only solution, otherwise do it without the meeting.

3. Keep the number down
Keep the number of participants to the minimum. The effective number is between 6 to 10. The The more people you have then that will be too many and will not be conducive to open discussion.

4. Spread the load
Just because you are calling for the meeting does not mean that you have to do everything. You may need someone to be a facilitator, and another to be the scriber.

5. Do your home work
Prepare for the meeting. If you need your subordinates to tell you the jobs progress, get them to send email to you. It will be a boring moment to hear the staffs telling their boss what they are doing.

6. Start and end on time
Always start on time and end it on time. They boss has to set this as an example, if the boss is late, then the next time the staff will have the respect of the timing.

7. Shut away the toys.
Make it a ruling, all communication must be silent. It will be upsetting to speak to a group when some are reading their email or texting the message. Have a short break to allow them to check their mail or hand phone.

8.Put it in writing
The minutes must be sent at latest on the next day. If you have a full time scriber, minutes can be sent within minutes after the meeting.
It defeat the very purpose of the meeting if you do not record it.

joha rahman

art of persuasion

One of the skill that will contribute to your job's effectiveness is the art of persuasion. This is because, persuasion can help to get the jobs done and assist in the development of relationships with your colleagues, superiors and the customers.

To remind you about the detail of the art of persuasion, you have just remember the three Greek words, ethos, pathos and logos.

1. Ethos

The word ethos originate from a Greek word. It is related to believes of ideals that characterize a community, a nation or an ideology. The is the element of persuasion that involves credibility. Everything about you, the things that you say or did not say, the acts that you do and what other peoples say about you affect your credibility.

People will tend to believe in the persons that he admire or respect. If a person display the traits as a trustworthy individual, listen with his heart and know his subject well, he is likely to be more persuasive.

2. Pathos

Pathos is the area of emotion and feeling. Majority of people make buying decision based on emotion. It has been proven time and again that the emotion is having a upper hand compared to logic in determining the person's buying decision.

In modern selling, pathos is about communicating with the deep subconscious needs of a customers. Therefore, for you to be able to influence another, you have to build up the ability to connect to whatever things that strongly affecting their feeling.

When you are diving deep into the source of emotion of another person, you are practicing empathy. Empathy is powerful as it help to understand how the other feel and truly understand what the other needs and desires. By matching to their needs, you are in a better position to influence and conclude a sale.

3. Logos

This is a domain of logic. It is to be used as an enhancement in your power of persuasion.

Since most people like to make sense of their decisions, it is important that you support the emotional persuasion with logical arguments.

For example, if you are selling a car, then the economic data, such as a saving in the fuel consumption, can be used to add to the point.

Conclusion

The three means of the art of persuasion need to be used together as an integrate method. They are mutually supportive and will help you to persuade your clients, colleagues or bosses at work.

how to build team

Working in any organisation requires us to work in teams. So if you are leading a company or sections within a company, the knowledge on how to build team is critical to ensure your success. Organizing a team-building event can be a healthy and productive exercise. To assist you to make a jump start, we include some ideas for you to consider.

a. orienteering

Basically it can be any events that requires the participants to race against time using the some sort of navigation equipments such as map and compass. It can be a jungle tracking from point A to B using a given map and compass.

It is interesting and challenging activities to develop individual as well as team's skill such as learning to trust team members and relying on them for decision makings. From here, leadership skills can be identified and developed.

b. Treasure Hunt

Closely linked to the orienteering is the treasure hunt. It is a good avenue to test your communication skills, leadership as well as decision making. The event is more suited to younger group of employees or students as they can be themed to spur interest. The prices can be an incentives for such event.

c. Sailing

Sailing is gaining popularity. It is something a little more strenuous and calls for an excellent team building. It is not limited to improving skills but it can also invigorate and enlighten the participants. Once the hard work of tracking, jibing and lashing are complete, the participants can lay back and enjoy the open sea. It will leave a memorable and lasting impression on the participants involved.

d. Mysteries.

For indoor fun event, a traditional favorite is the murder mystery. The beauty is that the event can be organised quickly and does not interfere with your daily fixed schedule. It is good as a starter for new teams and the financial outlay will be very small.

There many more examples of team-building exercises, the selected examples are easy to set up and the cost is quite reasonable.

empathetic listening

Most of us would think that we are good at empathetic listening. However researches had proven that majority of the population are not good listeners. The majority will spend the time thinking about what to say rather than listening to the speaker.

Listed below are some of the listening modes, please check which of the modes you are fond of doing:

a. Shallow or superficial listening

He seem to be interest in the speaker, but whatever enter into one ear will come out on the next. He just pretend to be interested.

Remedy: Try to learn something from the speaker, there must be some points where the speaker has a better knowledge than you.

b. The impatient

He is the person who would rather speak than listening. He cannot wait for the speaker to complete the sentences, he will interrupt and change the topic prematurely.

c. Self-absorbed

He is too preoccupied with his own thoughts, needs and problems. He is not concern about what others have to say. He is also thinking about what to say next.

d. other- absorbed

He is the opposite of the self-absorbed. He is subordinating, unassertive and is more interested to please the speakers. He is likely to have low self esteem and lack of confident.

e. Literal type

He is a good listener, but he only listen to the spoken words and miss the other messages through the body languages. He should realize that listening come from the heart.

g. Critical listener

He tends to analyse all the spoken words and other messages. It is true that critical analysis is important, but do not over do it, it does not mean that all words to be analysed.

h. Empathetic listening

He is listening with his heart without any judgement and criticism. He seek to understand the speakers point of view and focuses on making connection with the speakers.

It is our aim to be an empathetic listener. The journey may take some time and require consistent practices.

Learn About Job Classification

I think the best way to learn about the job classification is to go through the official web site of NOC or National Occupational Classification.

The National Occupational Classification is a systematic classification of all the jobs in Canadian Market. Even though it was intended for Canadian, it can be a resource of learning about jobs, its main duties, and employment requirements.

I had included a video of the NOC below.

The site is accessible at:
http://www5.hrsdc.gc.ca/noc/english/noc/2006/welcome.aspx

9 types of intelligent

I am familiar with bloom's taxonomy of learning objectives where the educations objective to be divided into cognitive, psycho-motor and affective domains. The 9 intelligence is something new for me. I like to share this with all of you.

writing an effective resume

The CV is the first impression that the potential employers have on you. Even before your first meeting, the resume will be doing the job to sell you, and depending on the quality of your resume, it can impose a positive or negative image about you. For that reason, writing an effective resume, is very important.

The CV is like a mini-biography about yourself. A well written and structured CV will have a compelling stories about you and the potential employers can easily pickup the key information on your skills and experiences. A good CV would generate a stronger interest to know you further and get you to the the next stage, i. e the interview.

However, unstructured and poorly written CV will create an impression on your ability and skills. Given the choices that the potential have on the picking from a list of applicants, very likely you will not even called to the interview.

Here are some important tips in writing a good resume:

a. Write Concisely:

A well written CV should be easily read and contains all the relevant information about you. The two common mistakes about the CV are either it is too brief or too lengthy. It is too brief when a lot of relevant information are missing and the reading will not be able to conclude their impression of you. It is too lengthy when the readers fing it difficult to locate the facts and thi will make them loss interest in you. A good CV will be about 4 or 5 pages.

b. Talk about yourself

The first section should contain the information about you, full name, address, phone number and e-mail. It also contain your education, professional qualification, technology and language skills.

A small section will be on your career related information on your key strength, jobs related skills, career achievements and aspiration. The employers will use this to judge your suitability for the career.

c. Share your work experiences:

The next section is about your experiences. Write about your experiences in the reverse chronological order, that mean the latest experience on top. Summarize the scope of your responsibilities neatly using bullet point. Be precise, for example, if you say you can turn around a company, give the data and figures to demonstrate the achievement.

Provide also the quantitative achievements, such as job promotions, awards and recognition.

d. Manage your CV

- employers will hire candidate with potential and proven track records in the similar roles and position. There are also looking at the soft aspect such as the cultural suitability and ability to work with the existing groups.

- They are wary about job hoppers, if your are able to leave the previous jobs, you can do the same in future's job.

- The employers will also be critical if you had been doing similar job for a long time. This can give the impression that you are stagnant and not a candidate for a dynamics organization.

- Take care of the gaps in your career. You do not have to hide it. If you stop working for a couple of years to raise a child, put it in.

Conclusion

Be truthful about yourself. The worst is to insert a false information. It can easily be verified with the reference check. It can cause you the job and the worst is, it can tarnish your name in the job market and that can affect your jobs with other organisations.

Managing Work Stress at workplace

Stress related diseases are on the rise. It had let both the physical symptoms as well as the psychological problems. Some organisations try to reduce the impact by having special counselors to tackle the problems from the roots.

Read more...

Managing work stress is more important today due the highly demanding work pressure. There are three main source of stress at the workplace:

-Demanding job
- Relationships at the workplace
- Personal problems at home

1. Demanding Job
It can be caused by high workload and the staff facing this problem will end up in fatigue and the tension caused by the fear of not able to complete the assignment. Some time the seemingly high job demand is caused by lack of skills or supporting facilities. If the actual causes can be identifies, it would be much easier to resolve.

Taking more than you chew can result to excessive demand. These problem is normally faced by people who cannot say no to a request.
The result of no able to cope with excessive demand will be low morale, constant apprehension of not able to complete the job, self-doubt or even panic. Some people may just throw the tower and walk out of the job.

2. Stress Caused by relationship at the work place:
The boss can be the source of stress. You feel being constant harassed and the boss has nothing better to do but to be finding fault. Despite how good your works and your contributions to the organisation, you will not be appreciated.

Uncooperative coworker or subordinate can also be the source of stress. It is not easy to sit at the office with your immediate neighbor who does not like you and making unbecoming remarks. A certain work system such as when everyone works in silo can encourage people to disregard the other. His total focus is on getting his job done.

3. Personal stress - There are people who has to bring their personal home problem to the work place. It can be his marital problem or financial problem, causing him to divert his focus from the tasks assigned. Although it is easy to say that problems at home not to be taken to work,it will difficult to do it.

Managing Stress

1. Many expert on stress management suggest to turn to the traditional practices such as yoga and meditation to restore the calmness in you. This can be excellent technique and you may choose the one that suited you.

However for workplace stress caused by jobs demands, there are a number of practical steps to be taken to manage the sources of stress:

__ prioritize your works, there are 2 basic groupings, important and unimportant and the other groupings are urgent and not urgent. The combination of these will divide the jobs into four groups, urgent and important, urgent and not important, not urgent but important and not urgent and not important. It is obvious that the not urgent an not important can be disregarded.

-- Manage your time - there are many program that teach time management. You can register into one of these. One of the methods that can be used is 'block booking' that allocate the time zone for specific group of work, foe example 0900- 0930 review and answer email.

-- Practice to say no, even to your boss - provide him the justification and your schedule and plan to complete the existing work. Then you may return back some of the assignment if he feel that you need to do the new job.

Managing the source of stress caused by relationship and personal stress:

a. Clarify the intent: It is better to clarify the situation with the person, sit down to and discuss on what seem to be the problem. You may be surprise that it may only be your perception. On the other hand there may be real issues that can be thrashed out to clear the air.

b. Seek support and helps. There may be some issues that you may overlook, get other that can be of help to share you problem. Be selective on who to ask, as if you get a wrong person, it can make the situation worst. Some organisation have a special counselling unit to help troubled staff.

Stress can be serious and affect work performance as well as your health. Taking steps to resolve the source and manage the stress will be beneficial on the long term.

joha rahman

helping the Layoffs

Getting layoff is a very stressful experience for the staff. It is not affecting his financial position, but it has negative implication to his social and personal confidence. They family will be affecting especially if he is the sole bread winner.

The stress will be affecting the company's management staff as well, though not exactly . It would be very difficult and call your staff for a meeting and deliver them the bad news. This is especially so if you had been working like family for years. The general company's mood will change as the remaining staff will have the fear that similar fate will fall upon them.

However, as the manager of the layoff staff, you can assist to lessen the burden. These are a few options that you may like to consider.

a. Plan it early..

Has a small team to manage the separation and include some representative from the staff groups. Identify the ways to assist the staff. By having the team and the representative, it will give the staff confident that the management cares, not only for the well being of the organisation, but the welfare of the staff.

b. Training

Provide training for certain transferable skills and guides for getting jobs. Subject such as CV writing, interview skills, IT skills can help them land into employment. Managing money will be another area of interest.

c. Network with other companies.

The company will be in better position to establish linkages with other organisations and build up data base on career opportunities available in other companies. The CV of the staff may be sent to other organisation to check for possible careers.

d. Consider the options

The staff may be given option to consider different post with the common skill thread. For example, an engineer is known to have the love for numbers and science and they are able to examine facts based on logical thinking. The same skill are also noted in accountancy, so if the retrenched are engineers, they may like to consider the option of switching career to accountancy.

There had been cases that the staff actually thanks the company for laying them off. The case was of the engineer who was in charge of the company's production machinery for 10 years. As the company changed the production method to outsourcing, the job was made redundant. So the redundant engineer decided to start a small fabrication workshop and became a supplier to a bigger oil and gas company. As the industry grew, so was the company. Ten years later, the small workshop grew to multi million dollar business. " I would have been the engineer looking after the old machines, if the company did not retrench me, ...... thank you for the retrenchment"

interview tips

Interview is your entry gate into an organisation. Despite the obvious setback of the interview, organisations do not have a better way of choosing their employees. So within that short space of time, the short meeting between the interviewers and the attending interviewees, decisions have to be made on whom to be hired .

One of the questions to be asked is "tell me about yourself". This is an open question and can be a killing question. It is so open that you can tell them the whole load of your history. The key to successful job interview is preparation, and you have to prepare for this question.

So the question can be reworded... "tell me about yourself and show me that you are the right person for this job".

I come across a good video on the technique to answer this question ..

Sharpen Your Team's Skill

Let say you were attending a job interview for a position of a manager and were asked the following question:

You are given one afternoon to chop down a tree, what would you do?
Are you going to say:

1. You are going to start straight away - the earlier you start, the better as you would have more time.

2. analyse the type of the tree and come up with a plan,

3. Other action?

When this question was put to a group of 100 managers, this is the result:
- start the work straight away -- 35%
- analyse and plan -- 60%
- other action ,get help and ask the expert -- 5%

Take the clue from Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest President of US, this is what he said, " Give me 6 hours to chop a tree, I will spend the first hour to sharpen the axe,". Given the situation of his time, and the fact that he was an expert trees chopper, having chopped many trees when he was young, he knew how to be effective.

It is very different from the situation of the interviewed managers, a manager can be defined based on the processes of planning, resourcing, implementation and control. It can also be noted that managers get the jobs though other people. So for that 35% who go straight to chop the tree in fact acted like a gardeners.

In business, it is important to get the best assets for the job. This simple strategy has deep implication to todays executives working in their complex environments.

Getting the works done are through peoples. There are two basic issues in getting works through people, the willingness and the ability. Jobs will be done properly if the peoples are willing and able.

Productive Approach
It is very important to equip the workers with the necessary skills and knowledge for them to do the jobs. As such proper development planning is required, the set of skills are to be identified and a directory of available competencies are kept.
The practice of negative motivation or punitive implication will normally result to unsatisfactory industrial relationship. A more productive approach would be to equip the staff with the necessary thinking skills, problem solving, decision making and customers services techniques as their readily available tools set.

Instilling The Desire to Perform

Having the necessary tools set, the required skills and knowledge are not sufficient to get the jobs done. The staff must be mounded to want to perform. Studies had shown that motivated and confident staff will produce better outcomes.

There many ways to motivated staff but unfortunately there are as many methods to demotivate staff. So if you are leading a company of a group, you need to know both the positive and the negative elements on motivating staff. Unfortunately most managers are not very concerned about the motivation of the staff, they are focusing to highly on the task performance.
There many ways to make the staff feel motivated. One of the method is to make them felt being belonged to the organization. Not job activities can help. Get them involved in the social work representing the company will definitely help. A sense of achievement will boost their morale, things such as open praise will make them happy, as long as it is done sincerely and fairly.

Building Positive Leadership

Experiences had proven that a positive manager that willingly shows thankfulness and optimism rather than being spiteful or sarcasm, tend to achieve results easier. The work place is now full with educated and able managers who look forward to a challenging and satisfying working life.

self confidence tips

Success and self confident seem to mutually supporting. The self confident will attract success and the success will definitely build up more confidence of himself.

We include self confidence tips to assist you build up a successful career:

1. be positive

Be positive about yourself. Get a positive thought into your mind and find ways to nurture and build the positive image. Distant yourself from the people that have the negative mindset. Speak positively about yourself and the persons around you.

Practice the self persuasion, make a positive statement out yourself before you go to bed. Start each day by telling yourself.. "this is going to be another great day.

2. Visualize your earlier success and get the good feeling that come with the success. By doing this regularly, your self confident will move up.

3. Build up your confident image.

Building image will include the way you speak, the way you dress, posture and body language. Avoid the usage of vocalized pulse such as ..ummm, you know. Use a steady and strong voice, neither shouting or mumbling.

Avoid qualifier words such as 'I wonder if you could' or 'may be I can' or 'I am not sure'

Dress yourself to suit the occasion,... to continue..

wh,,

Communication skills at work

As I was toying with the ideas, looking for the basic jobs skill that are common throughout a large number of jobs, I came across this article, which explain the basic of communication skill at the work place.

Good communication is essential for all level of employees, right from the CEO to the janitors. It is necessary in our effort to build professional working relationship or in the actual work instructions.

In certain situation, such as the communication between the airlines pilots and the air traffic controllers, is so critical and effecting the safety of the aircraft.

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Effective Communication Skills For Today's Managers - Life Lessons

By Charles Ainsworth

Effectively communicating to your employees will result in a more efficient operation and will help achieve the bottom-line objectives of any company, business, or basic interaction. As a manager, your communication skill is critical in directing the actions of your employees. This basic managerial skill course in communication will enable you to become a better manager for yourself, and for your organization. You will learn how to communicate effectively, which will help you to maximize "work through others" to get the job done.

There are many components to communication. Consider verbal communication skills, listening skills, written memorandums/email, telephone skills and non-verbal communication. Also, reflect upon all the people we communicate to: subordinates, peers, supervisors, customers, and groups of people. In addition, ponder some of the reasons, why we communicate: to get and give information, to discipline subordinates, to make assignments, and so on.

We will not be able to explore every facet and component of communication. Rather, we will focus on the general principles of effective communication that apply to most situations and we will point out important things to remember for some specific situations. We will use only as much "theory" as needed to gain basic understanding of communication problems. Primarily, we will discuss what you can do to become an effective communicator.

Our Objectives

Upon completion, you will be capable of:

1) Recognizing communication problems and barriers.
2) Implementing techniques to resolve communication problems and barriers.
3) Demonstrating the basic general rules of effective communication.
4) Using special techniques in specific communication situations.

This is designed to do more than just give you information on communicating. Rather, it is set up to teach you skills which you can apply in your day to day routine.

What is Communication?

Communication is simply the sending of a message to another person. The person sending the message first needs to formulate the message in his head. This involves determining the meaning that the sender intends to convey to the other person. To formulate the meaning of the message, the sender usually draws upon his background attitudes, perceptions, emotions, opinions, education, and experience.

The message is then sent to the listener through both verbal talking and non-verbal gestures. The person receiving this message then interprets its meaning. To do this, the listener uses his background, attitudes, perceptions, emotions, opinions, education, and experience.

Effective communication exists between two persons when the person receiving the message interprets it in the same way as the sender intended it. Sounds really simple doesn't it? Well, it can be.

Who is Responsible for Communicating Effectively?

Managers share the responsibility in communicating effectively with the individual employees themselves. The manager is 100% responsible for communicating effectively with their employees.

This includes establishing an open and trusting climate for communication, as well as demonstrating good communication techniques to their employees. The employee is 100% responsible for taking advantage of the "climate for communication" to express what is important and relevant. For example,it is expected that a manager will ask "are there any questions?" after giving an employee an assignment, but it is also expected that an employee will say, "I have a question", if one should occur to the employee, without waiting for the manager to ask.

Why Managers Need to be Effective Communicators?

o Communication is used so frequently that "we cannot afford to do it poorly".
o Communication has a special power: to create interest, stimulate action, achieve agreement, foster enthusiasm.
o Communication is the primary method that managers use to direct their employee's behavior.
o Communication is the basis for almost all other managerial skills. It is involved in delegating duties to subordinates, motivating employees, demonstrating leadership abilities, training new policies and programs, and counseling performance problems, etc.

Barriers to Effective Communication

o Supervisor inaccessible.
o Supervisor buried in work.
o Supervisor always in a hurry.
o Supervisor maintains a pre-occupied expression; little eye-contact with employees.
o Supervisor only informal with his peers or boss (never with subordinates).
o Supervisor tells employees to "write it up" instead of promoting discussion.
o Supervisor never asks, "How's it going?".

Where do Difficulties in Communication Arise?

The basic source of misunderstanding between two persons are communication failures that occur when the receiver understands the meaning of a message differently than it was intended. We do not always communicate what we intend.

Communication failures arise when there is a gap between what the sender meant and what the receiver thought the sender meant.

Communication failure can be caused by:

o Being so preoccupied that you do not listen to what other are saying.
o Being so interested in what you have to say that you listen only to find an opening to work your way into the conversation.
o Being so sure that you know what the other person is going to say that you distort what you hear to match your expectation.
o Evaluating and judging the speakers, which makes the speaker guarded and defensive.
o Not being able to "see past the words" and get the emotional message of the sender.
o Not trusting the speaker and becoming suspicious of what is being said.

Setting the Stage for Effective Communication

Even before the first word is uttered, various factors are already at work that can affect the success or failure of our communications. Let's examine these factors to see what role they play.

Communicator's Appearance

Before we ever say a word, others have been receiving messages from us. We communicate to others just by the way we dress and groom. In the book Dressing for Success, the author notes that other people conclude about 17 different things about us just on the basis of how we appear.

Many businesses utilize a dress code to guide people to the appropriate type of attire. It use to be traditional within the business world for men to wear a coat and tie. This conveys to others that we are professionals. In addition, conservative colors are preferred to more outspoken colors. This communicates seriousness, stability, and a "down-to-business" attitude. Recent changes have occurred in this area, just always remember that people do make conclusions about you based on your appearance. Understand the expectation as it relates to dress code and insure you are in tune with the company position.

Communicator's Past Conversations

Communication experts tell us that the credibility of the communicator, as determined by past conversations, is a critical factor in effective communication. Credibility refers to the attitude the listener has toward the truthfulness and trustworthiness of the sender's statements. When a listener views the sender as dependable, knowledgeable, reliable, warm and friendly, emphatic, and non-selfish, the message that is sent will be more likely to be received. Unless we seem credible to the receiver. our message will be discounted and we will not be able to communicate effectively with him.

Communicator's Personality

The personality of the communicator plays a part in both the formulation of the message and in how the message is communicated. Each individuals beliefs, opinions, prejudices, feelings, biases, and personal experiences enter into the development of a message. Most of the time this happens quickly, automatically, and out of habit. In addition to influencing what we think and say, our personalities also play a role in how we say the message. You may know of an instance where two managers sound completely different in conveying the same exact message to a listener. For example a result oriented manager may talk in short, concise, action-oriented sentences, while another manager may end up in a long discourse including many details and side points.

The Communication Situation

The situation and circumstances surrounding our communication plays a part in determining its success or failure. Although many types of situations affect the messages we send, one particular type that can easily distort our messages is communication under stress. Stress, by its very nature, makes it difficult for us to "think clearly". In a stress situation, the meaning of the message can be distorted; subtle shades of meaning can be confused; pieces of information can be forgotten; minor points may seem more important than major points. In addition, the wording of the communication may suffer. Uncertainty, nervousness, and confusion can creep into the speaker's voice, resulting in a less assertive statement.

Communicating Effectively - Verbal Communication

Verbal communication means talking. The goal in communicating verbally is to convey a message to another person so that the other person understands it exactly as the person talking intended it. A well communicated message is one which the other person can accurately repeat back in his own words. Verbal communication can be made more effective by:

o Talking about specific rather than general situations.
o Using concrete language, e.g., "merchandise" rather than "stuff".
o Using words familiar to employees; explaining unfamiliar words.
o Including an example to illustrate the point.
o Giving sufficient detail to convey the point.
o Giving details slowly and in order.
o Making it a practice to address the five "W" questions in the topic (if applicable).

Who is involved?
What is the situation; how did it begin?
When will it occur?
Where is it taking place? What you think, believe, feel?
Why will it happen? Why is this important?

Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal communication refers to the gestures and body positions that accompany ones speaking. All people display certain gestures or lack of them when talking. It is important to be aware of your nonverbal communication, for it plays a big role in making your total communication effective.

Effective communication occurs when a person's verbal message and nonverbal message both "say the same thing". Problems in communication occur when the speaker's words say one thing, but his gestures and body language says something else.

Types of Nonverbal Communication

All of the following "says something". In the specific context, they should correspond and reinforce the spoken message.

o Eye contact.
o Position of our arms and legs.
o The distance we stand from others when talking to them.
o Where we sit at a table or in relation to others.
o Smiling.
o Nodding or other head movements.

The manager can use nonverbal behaviors in two ways. First, when speaking, he can monitor his own nonverbal behavior and try to make sure it corresponds and emphasizes what he is verbally saying.

For example:

o When taking charge of a situation, the manager should have good eye contact with his subordinates, stand in a straight posture, use a firm but not overbearing voice,and point to what he wants done.

o Upon noticing customers, the employee should smile to indicate friendliness, make eye contact to acknowledge the customer's presence, tun his body in the direction of the customer to indicate his willingness to help if needed.

The other way a manager can use nonverbal behavior is in "listening to what others are really saying". If the manager notices the employee saying one thing verbally but another thing non verbally, then the manager should suspect that the verbal message being said may be somewhat "incomplete".

Active listening skills is what separates the good from the great. Learn to listen with your ears, eyes and perception paying attention to both the verbal and nonverbal communication.

For example:

An employee who says that he would feel comfortable doing a task but who exhibits folded arms, crossed legs, and tensed neck muscles might not be feeling as comfortable as he thinks. The manager who suspects this might need to keep his eye on this situation.

Written Communication

In written communication, the simpler, shorter, and more direct the better. This can be remembered by the equation:

Effectiveness = Conciseness = Completeness

Try the following tips for achieving concise and complete communication.

o Use simple words; your goal is not to impress your reader with your vocabulary, it is to get the point across.
o Make sure the words exactly express the thought; different words can slant the entire message of your point.
o Make the sentence structure clear; poor grammar, run on sentences, etc., can distort the point you want to make.
o Use a different paragraph for each complete unit of thought.
o Make sure all of the necessary information is included.
o Anticipate questions and include the answers in your message.
o Use only essential words and phrases.
o Make sure your facts, dates, times, etc., are correct.
o Consider the tone of the memorandum. Make sure it doesn't contain antagonism or preaching. I highly suggest that if you are upset about something, it is OK to write out your thoughts and ideas for making the situation better. Then make sure you do not send it, until you read it the next day. You will find in most cases that what you want to say does not change, but how you say it will change dramatically once you are over the emotions you attached to it.
o Make sure it is neat in appearance.

Remember all written memorandums have a dual purpose: you want the reader to receive your message and you want to do it the shortest, quickest way possible without leaving out necessary information.

All memorandums written in this way will be a good reflection upon you.

Phone Conversations

Talking on the phone lies between face-to-face communication and written communication in regard to information we can receive from the other person. Phone conversations do not give us access to the body language of the other person, hence, we miss the nonverbal cues accompanying the words. On the other hand, phone communication does allow us to take into account the tone of voice the other person is using, unlike written communication/email.

Voice tone can be used in two ways. First, we can vary our voice tone to reinforce what we are saying verbally. Managers can convey competence, sincerity, and trust through the tone of their voice when talking to customers or employees.

Secondly, we can pay attention to other people's tone of voice, much like nonverbal behavior, to check on unspoken feelings and thoughts. To do this accurately, practice listening to both the words and the tone of the voice that carries the words.

When talking to someone you have spoken to before, pay attention to changes in their usual voice qualities. Some people speak slow, loud, or clear. When these people change their normal voice qualities, they are communicating something extra to us. It is up to us to look for cues to detect what these changes in customary

voice tones mean. Remember, you can't talk to someone on the phone and someone in front of you both at the same time and do justice to either party.

Communicating to a Group

Communicating to a group can be as simple as making an announcement r as complex as running a training program requiring much group participation. Much of what has been presented in this training applies to communicating to a group. Pre-communication factors, such as your appearance, credibility, and the specifics of the situation plays large part in establishing a successful presentation. Talking effectively and using nonverbal body language to correspond to the spoken words can all be used in group settings. A particularly skillful speaker can even "read" the nonverbal cues of the group as a whole and use this information to adjust his talk.

Listening

Why you Should Listen to Your Employees

o Employees might have helpful ideas.
o Employees might know causes of problems in the workplace.
o Employees might be able to warn me about potential problems I haven't yet recognized.
o How employees feel about things can be a tip-of future problems.

Ways of Not Listening

o Signing routine papers.
o Sorting papers.
o Allowing long telephone interruptions.
o Sneaking looks at the time.
o Gazing out of the window, or at distractions passing by.
o Maintaining pre-occupied facial expressions.
o Calling orders to other employees in between sentences.
o Fidgeting nervously, shaking foot, playing with gadgets, coffee cup, etc.

Inhibiting Communication from Your Employees

Avoid the following to prevent cutting off future communication from your employees:

o Blaming the employee who gave you bad news.
o Getting angry.
o "Falling apart".
o Demanding the employee to justify work that is reported to be not going well.

How should you react to news:
React to bad news by remaining objective; keep your emotions under control; switch to a "problem-solving", "let's get this situation corrected" approach. Respond to good news with praise, acknowledgment and appreciation.

Active Listening
Active listening is comprised of three separate and important skills: attention skills, following skills, and responding skills. Attention skills are those actions you take to put the talker at ease, to non verbally show you are listening, and to best "pay attention to" what the other person is trying to say. Maintaining eye contact, eliminating distractions, and concentrating on both the verbal and nonverbal are examples of attention skills.

Following Skills
These are the skills we use to encourage the conversation along; to get the point the person is making. Nodding our heads, saying "uh-huh", "I see", and "go on" are following skills. Asking appropriate questions to bring out the point is a following skill as is allowing silences without jumping in. All following skills serve two purposes: to indicate to the speaker that you are "with him" and to help him get the point across.

Responding Skills
This is where we determine if we received and interpreted the message as the speaker intended it. Say something like, "If I understand correctly, you are saying ... " and go on to paraphrase that we understand, using our own words. Check out the facts and ideas, the main point of what the speaker said. It is only after we are sure that we understood the message as intended, can we then evaluate, judge, take action, or supply an answer or comment.

Communicating on the Job - Who We Communicate To
Before the message is formulated and communicated, we become aware of who we will be sending it to. How and what we communicate can change depending upon who is the intended audience.

Upward Communication
If we will be communicating to our immediate supervisor, our message might be prepared, formulated, and presented in a specific manner. For example, if we need to seek assistance from our supervisor, asking an open-ended question will result in more information than a question that can be answered yes or no.

Peer Communication
If the communication is intended for a peer, the message might be less "formally" prepared and presented. For example, less background information might need to be given since the peer can "easily relate" to the situation to be described.

Downward Communication
The manager who is communicating to his subordinate may need to do so in a different way than to others. Clear, concise, directions might be the format for much of the messages the manager gives to his employees. In addition, the manager may follow-up many of his messages with, "Do you have any questions?".

Checking For Understanding
When communicating with employees, it is always a good idea to check for understanding. Simply take a second and ask " recap for me what I have asked you to do." By doing this, you can clear up any missed communication that may have taken place. This step is helpful for both parties as it allows them to communicate back to you that they heard and understood your direction. This is a critical step in delegation of tasks.

Communicating With Customers
Communicating to a customer also affects how the message is formulated and delivered. Messages conveyed to customers need to be totally accurate and delivered in a professional and friendly manner.

Purpose of the Communication
When we talk to someone, we usually have a purpose. The purpose of the communication differs depending on the situation and who we are addressing. A manager may communicate for any of the following reasons:

o To motivate employees.
o To teach, instruct, or explain a task.
o To counsel an employee.
o To seek information or assistance.
o To correct an employee's behavior.
o To be persuasive.
o To socialize.

With each of these purposes, the communication changes in order to accomplish our goal.

One of my favorite leaders use to say, that you will have become a master of communication when you are able to tell someone where to go and to have them looking forward to the trip!

Chuck Ainsworth, aka The Origami Warrior is a visionary writer who enjoys learning new topics and putting them into easy to understand terms. He brings 30 plus years of Senior Management experience and provides the insights needed to help others reach peak performance by improving their basic Management and Leadership Skills. He is CEO of Ainsworth Associates, Inc. He currently writes about topics he loves that include: Origami, Origami Warrior Wisdom, Motivation, Training, Management Skills Development, Leadership, Life Lessons, Core Values, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Life After Death - How To Overcome Life Changing Events and more. A published author who loves family, pets, community. While he has spent much of his life traveling, he now enjoys a much simpler life, living in his home town on a small quiet private lake with his family. Follow his Origami Warrior Wisdom daily quotes follow me at http://twitter.com/ChuckAinsworth to get my tweets and be sure to check out other Life Lessons at: http://origamiwarrior.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Charles_Ainsworth

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.