Much of a ResourcefulManager's success is tied to soft skills. They may not sound important, but they may be the most critical skills of all and critical in your professional development. These posts will help you stay abreast of what's working and not working.
Clichés are so easy to use – but they are a cop-out.
You may think they are great ways to motivate your team, but they’re so overused they no longer have any meaning – or motivational power.
Or they are simply ambiguous and have no impact.
Are your really that unoriginal?
Here are seven business clichés you want to steer clear of:
No matter how hard you try, sometimes you and your team fail.
Yep, mistakes happen.
And your immediate thought: We can’t let that ever happen again.
But sometimes it does.
It doesn’t have to. There’s a new way, backed by research, to recover from both team and individual setbacks.
Despite all the hoopla about how tech skills will drive the future, it turns out soft skills, like communicating and coaching, top the list when it comes to being a most valued employee.
Even the tech-types are now saying so.
Two recent Google studies suggest overlooking soft skills is to your detriment.
Forget cleaning out your closets or cleaning up your diet.
Make 2018 the year you clean up your communication.
Ditch the clichés and buzzwords. Put meaning and credibility back into what you say – and what you write. You’re sure to get better results if you do.
Here are 11 all-too-popular workplace words and phrases that have seen their day come and go – and why you really do want to make a point of putting them to rest this year.
It seems we find ourselves in meetings all day long. Some are pretty productive, but I bet you find yourself in a lot more meetings that just seem to be a waste of time.
And you end up asking, “Is this meeting REALLY necessary?”
The cost of bad meetings is staggering: $37 billion dollars are wasted every year in the U.S. on useless meetings.
Well, this great infographic/flowchart from our friends at fundera can help you decide whether you should hold that meeting at all. So next time you think about calling a meeting, walk through this flowchart first.
Ken Jennings says knowledge isn’t trivial.
As the winningest Jeopardy! contestant of all time (74 matches in a row), Jennings knows something about knowledge and trivia.
Like this factoid: “Trivia” is the only word you’re not supposed to say on air as a Jeopardy! contestant (as in, “I was always good at trivia”).
Why? Because trivia equals trivial, and Jeopardy! isn’t trivial. (Jennings’ payday of $3.4 million certainly wasn’t.)
But in this age of being able to ask Google or Siri for a piece of information, is knowing stuff still important to managers and supervisors for anything besides winning on TV game shows?
Jennings, who calls himself a “nerdy guy” who “knows a lot of weird stuff” argues it does. And it applies to leaders and managers, too. Here’s why:
“Ughhh, another meeting…I hate them!”
It’s bad if you hear this coming from an employee.
It’s worse if you’re the one who called the meeting.
Even when you keep them short or as infrequent as possible, meetings can induce both groans and mid-day napping.
It’s up to you to make sure they’re fruitful and not snooze fests or meetings from hell.
Here are eight sure-fire ways to get and keep them on track:
Are you a word master? Take our word challenge and find out.
Writing is a critical business skill.
At the least, using the wrong word in a report, proposal or memo can be embarrassing. At its worst, misusing words can damage your credibility and even prove costly.
So, how good are you? Can you get 25 out of 25 right?
Good luck!
“So, what have you got for me today?”
If you only had a dollar for every time you’ve heard that question from your boss. But admit it – on occasion you’ve lobbed one of those at someone yourself, right?
Resourceful managers always want answers – and the quicker and more specific, the better.
Problem is, we might not be asking the right questions to get those answers.
It’s not unusual to ask uninspired questions when we’re at our busiest and need to get things done fast.
But questions that are too vague elicit blank stares. And questions that are overly complicated sound like you’re fishing for a specific answer.
OK, I get it!
You’re busy and pressed for time.
And there are not enough hours in the day to get it all done.
You need to become more productive. Right now!
So we don’t want to waste any of your time.
Here we go, in rapid-fire fashion: 11 productivity tips you can start using today.
