Poor Communication costs you, both professionally and personally. One source estimates employee misunderstandings cost organizations $37 billion per year. “Misunderstandings” are defined as: actions or errors of omission by employees who were misinformed (or misunderstood) company policies, business processes, job functions or a combination of all three. Additionally, communication barriers resulting in productivity losses had a cumulative cost of $26,041 per year per worker. Leaders must make a conscious decision to improve. Eighty five percent of our success in life […]
A clear, effective communication skill is one of the best attributes a person can develop. It equips you to be successful professionally and personally. By communication, we mean stating your needs clearly and listening to others with the intention of fully understanding what they are trying to say. It is a “two-way” street. Can you identify with this example? It is the job of leaders to go to the unknown and find out what’s there. Asking employees for honest […]
As a leader of a group, a team or an organization you must remember to focus on the impact you have on the audience. When you are coaching or evaluating your own interactions, do not focus on how you delivered the message (what you said or what you did), focus on the reaction you see. That is the true test of a productive session. Regardless of the vehicle used to coach (a story, an assignment, a book to read), […]
Meetings can cost a lot of money if they are not productive. If your manager has put you in charge of leading an upcoming meeting, ensure it goes well by using these guidelines: Goals: have specific, tangible SMAART Goals for the meeting, as well as sub goals. Transform the goals into questions. Questions: ask questions that get them thinking about the whole organization. The objective is to get them to see, think about and consider the entire map and not […]
When my brother-in-law started applying for jobs in our home town, everyone had advice and recommendations. “I know someone at the car factory!” “Don’t forget the cabinet company!” “The rolled aluminum plant is always hiring.” There was one piece of advice that he heard over and over. “Don’t work at the foundry. We’ve heard it’s risky over there and we don’t want you getting hurt.” The foundry paid well and had great benefits, but its safety record was lacking. Managers […]
I’d been a dedicated customer of a local food company from the day they opened. Lily had started out as a small-scale gardener and baker, selling her vegetables and sweetbreads at area farmers’ markets. That’s where I discovered her, and I made her table a regular stop on my Saturday morning rounds. As demand grew, she hired a few friends to help her expand her garden and bakery. After a few years, she had requests from local restaurants, a regular […]
My first work experience after graduation was in a departmental office at my university. In most ways, it was a pretty nice job. The pay and benefits were good, the work was interesting, and most of my coworkers were nice people. There were only two problems: Rick and Martha. Our office only had 10 people, and these two were bringing it down. Their main hobbies were griping and complaining. Whenever a new project came up, they fretted and revisited things […]
I used to live in a small town with a fairly depressed economy. Over the previous two decades, they’d lost the farm machinery plant, the appliance plant, and the industrial restaurant equipment plant. Good jobs were hard to come by, people were hurting, and most young people left town as soon as they turned eighteen. When a new plant announced it was moving to town, you might have expected the local community to be overjoyed. After all, it was […]
We have found that working with teams and organizations on soft skills can be very valuable in improving team camaraderie as well as productivity and profitability. Teaching soft skills like empathy can help your team be more in tune with your clients, their direct reports, other departments, as well as family and friends. The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence found that training on this type of interpersonal skills showed increases in daily production as high as 20% and […]