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Your first real job interview can be a terrifying experience. Interviewees stress themselves out over what to wear and especially what to say. My experiences with job interviews have taught me not too take them too seriously. My first job interview after graduating college was with an insurance agency for a position that I was not at all interested in. Some people would consider going a complete waste of time but knowing that I would never take the position allowed me to approach the job interview as a learning experience.

I used that first interview to get a better idea of what to say and hone in on what employers were looking for. I did go out and get myself a great job interview outfit and I went in there with all the confidence in the world. One way to communicate your confidence to the interviewer is to give them a good, strong handshake. Where I come from, handshakes are a tradition when meeting a new person. Look the employer in the eye and give them a firm hand. This is a quick and simple way to assert yourself as a confident and self-assured applicant.

Always bring a copy of your current resume with you to a job interview. Be open and honest about your work experience but do not feel like you must be modest. Show them that you are a rare find who has qualities they will not find in anyone else. I feel more comfortable when I can throw in a bit of humor into a job interview. Without being too casual or laid back, I like to ease myself into the interview and help give a more human feel to the experience.  http://www.careerberg.com

It is easy for a job interview to feel forced and unnatural and I find that a touch of humor can ease those feelings. I think that it is very important to be yourself in an interview. You would not want to have to keep up a fade once you have the job and you want the employer to know what kind of person they are really hiring.

Being yourself in a job interview will ensure that you end up in the right place and working at the right place makes all the difference in the world. The more natural and honest you are the better. I like to really put myself out there because I figure that it is important that they like me for who I am so that there is no confusion later as to what they can expect from me and what compromises I am likely to make.

It is very important that you know yourself and what you want in life. Choosing what you want in life can only happen when you create a life based on your own particular design. This design reflects your own personal growth and the way you make them fall into different choices made by you in life, i.e. in relationships, career and jobs and so on.

Right Values, Right Goals
As mentioned, your first necessary step towards your personal growth should be to identify yourself and your likes and dislikes. You should clearly demarcate a line between your needs and wants in life. For your personal growth, it is very necessary that you strengthen your strong suits and talents, a gift which you can identify yourself best. Everyone wants to achieve the best in life, give a push to their career as well as personal life. This can only be realized when you strengthen your core abilities and achieve a higher personal growth in life.

You attitude towards life and society in general is based on some values. Your values automatically are reflected in the way you present yourself to others. This forms an important aspect of your personal growth. When you as an individual contribute more towards your society and community, inspire others through your learning and values, admire beauty and stay connected, you already achieve a different position for yourself, a position, which is unique, and a position that contributes to your emotional, mental and personal growth.

We always, as individuals, set some priorities and goals for ourselves. We lead our lives based on these priorities. However, it is very necessary that these goal oriented priorities do not off sync with our values and ideas. Try not to pursue goals for the sake of pursuing it. This stagnates your personal growth. Therefore, it is always better to write down your goals, which you yourself can identify with and match it up with your values that define your true self. By focusing yourself to a particular set of goals, you can really motivate yourself to achieve what you want in life. It allows you to stay focused, clear in life, and identify your true self in the pursuit of personal growth.

Experiment with Life:
Achieving your goals require commitment and a desire to work on those goals and spend time on them. Change can only take place when you are prepared to undertake certain risks and experiment with different aspects of life. This really shapes and contributes to one’s personal growth. Experimenting with one’s life is very important as it helps you in discovering many facets of life and simultaneously designs your life according to these experiences.

Remove the roadblocks that come on your way when you are designing your life according to your values and goals. Often people are unaware or unable in identifying and removing these blocks. They seek the help of a Personal Coach who helps them in exploring their opportunities, outside perspective and the possibilities of achieving their goal. They guide you through the necessary tools and structures that leave a profound and ever lasting impact on your life. In the long-term, you would reach the higher echelons of your personal growth.

The number of job opportunities available to 6 Sigma professionals has increased manifold in recent years. Qualified and experienced professionals also have the option of starting their own 6 Sigma consultancy business. As for job opportunities, they are available both within the organization and outside the organization.

6 Sigma Job Opportunities Within The Organization

Companies planning to deploy Six Sigma often prefer to provide 6-sigma training to existing employees. This is done to reduce costs associated with hiring 6 Sigma professionals from outside who often charge hefty amounts for their services. Training existing employees is also beneficial because experienced employees are well aware of the company’s business processes and will be able to carry out the implementations far more effectively, if proper training is provided to them.

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Employees who receive the training automatically become entitled to receive the certifications. Combined with practical experience that they will gain during the implementations, they can easily add value to their resumes and enhance their career prospects.

Six Sigma Opportunities Outside The Organization

6 Sigma job opportunities are on the rise and candidates do not have to work too hard to find 6 Sigma jobs. They just have to type “Six Sigma” on any popular job site and it is certain that hundreds of job requirements will be displayed in an instant. They can then apply for jobs that best suit their existing job profile. Openings for 6 Sigma professionals are available both for fresh candidates as well as experienced candidates, but opportunities are certainly more for candidates having more two years of implementation experience.

Companies prefer seasoned 6 Sigma professionals because they have the expertise to execute 6 Sigma projects more effectively and efficiently. Another interesting detail is that job opportunities are more for high-level professionals such as Black Belts rather than for low rung Six Sigma professionals such as Green Belts. This is because companies prefer utilizing their existing workforce for low rung 6 Sigma jobs by providing them the requisite training.

This, however, should not dissuade candidates from opting for Green Belt training because in the field of 6 Sigma, one can always keep on moving to higher levels of professionals, just by getting the requisite training and certification. A candidate starting his career as a Green Belt can easily become a Black Belt by getting the requisite training.

It is true that training is essential for enhancing career prospects in the field of Six Sigma, but there are other factors also that affect the career prospects of a 6 Sigma professional. To make it to the top, Six Sigma professionals need to have creative and problem-solving abilities. Good communication and inter-personal skills are also a prerequisite for professionals aiming to make their mark in the field of 6 Sigma.

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With the dotcom boom of the past decade, call centres have become buzzing hives of activity in almost every industry. From bookings to customer support and sales management, everything that does not necessitate in-person contact is being outsourced to call centres.

This has led many of today’s youth to apply for call centre jobs – whether as part-time work to earn pocket money in college days, or for full-time sustenance.

While applying to a call centre job, here are some tips that one should keep in mind:

1. At home or in office? There are a number of at-home call centre jobs available, and for no sign-up fees whatsoever. You can work full-time or part-time, but you may have to submit to an in-person background check or occasional reporting to meetings at the company’s office.

2. Have excellent listening skills. Train yourself to listen – to people with different ways of speaking, to people who stammer, to people who don’t want to see reason, and to people with less-than-fluent language. This is the first prerequisite for a call centre job.

3. Look online. As a lot of call centre jobs are location-independent or offshore, they are usually advertised online rather than by word-of-mouth or the local papers.

4. Apply to call centres in areas of your own expertise. Nothing can substitute learning gained by experience. If you are deeply familiar with a subject thanks to schooling or simply exploring it as a hobby, choose that area to apply to. For example, someone interested in cars could apply to a car company’s customer support call centre.

5. Office hours. Night shifts are not always safe or feasible for everyone, so do not apply for night-shift-only jobs if this is the case for you. Even at home, fix your hours – do not bite off more than you can chew.

6. Look at organisations’ pages, not just job portals. Keep track of the organisations who typically hire at-home or in-office call centre workers. They will probably advertise on their own pages a precious few hours or days before putting up the same job on a portal.

7. At the interview, stay focused. A lot of young people go into call centre jobs for a quick buck. This attitude seeps into their manner at the interview too. DO NOT let this happen to you – stay serious, stay focused, and show that you are dedicated to the job you are applying for.

8. Get some experience in customer service. Most of us have had at least some experience in customer service. This could be at the neighbourhood fair, volunteering at school events, or during a brief internship. You can put this to good use in your call centre job.

9. What makes good customer service? Evaluate what you would do to give good customer service to people accessing your call centre, as your interview panel is very likely to ask you this question.

10. Make the best of what you have. Experience and training, in curricular and co-curricular fields, will all come to use when you place your job application. Get your resume professionally written, to present the talents you have in the best way to get a call centre job. Even if the job is just for your pocket money, apply for it with speed and sincerity – call centre vacancies never stay long!

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If your destiny seems to be to live suffering without ever getting anywhere, and without having any hope of salvation, you can change it without spending money, and without going anywhere. You don’t need to waste your time with work that won’t give you any pleasure, and you don’t need to depend on anyone.

You simply have to learn how to exactly translate the meaning of your dreams with my method of dream translation, derived from the method of dream interpretation discovered by Carl Jung. This is a fascinating occupation, like looking for a real treasure, and finding it!

You’ll be able to verify by yourself without delay that my method’s translations work, are very real, and really help you understand what the wise unconscious mind is telling you in your dreams.

I spent 19 years curing people that suffered from grave mental illnesses through dream translation, which means that my method doesn’t look like all the vague suppositions of various dream interpreters. I’m a very serious dream translator who respects the unconscious superiority and exactly deciphers the dream messages, paying attention to the meaning of each dream symbol, because the dream messages work like medicine for the dreamer, and they must be really exactly translated in order to help him or her.

You’ll be happy for sure because you’ll have the unconscious’ wise guidance in your own dreams, always showing you all the dangers in the way, how you can be successful in your life, how to use all your capacities, and a lot more. The unconscious mind is a real encyclopedia that never ends, because it knows everything.

Change your destiny, change your personality and change your life today. Become strong, and start living free of the past.

Take notes of your own dreams and start reading all my articles, so that you may verify by yourself how serious and true my method is, since I give you many free lessons about dream translation in many of them.

I give you free advice, and information, so that you may feel safe, and start seeing the benefits of the true knowledge you’ll have when you seriously learn the dream language, the same way that you really care about learning a certain foreign language when you have to live in another country.  http://www.careerberg.com/

I’m not writing suppositions or my opinion when I talk about the meaning of dreams, but about real knowledge, which begins with the brilliant discoveries of the psychiatrist Carl Jung, as we shall always remember, even though I had to correct many of his mistakes. He was a pioneer, and could not be completely perfect from the beginning.

He must be honored because he worked very hard in order to discover the right code for a perfect dream translation. Without his work, I would not have been able to discover more and simplify his complicated method, which I precisely followed in the beginning.

You have his research and my research giving you all the answers you need in order to enter into contact with the wise unconscious mind that knows everything about you and your life, and can save you from all mental illnesses, so that you may find real wisdom, and therefore have a brilliant destiny that you’ll be proud of, and that will bring you real happiness.

For leaders managing constant change, conflict is built into the very fabric of their organizations. When conflict is not dealt with well, it can create strained relationships and grow to sap the time, energy, and productivity of even the best teams. Dealt with positively, conflict can also be a catalyst that sets the stage for needed changes. You will never deal with conflict perfectly, but here are a few tips worth using in dealing with your most difficult people: http://www.careerberg.com/

1. Talk to people instead of about them. Dealing with conflict directly may be uncomfortable and lead to some disappointment, but it cuts down the mindreading and the resentment that can occur when problems are not dealt with directly. Timing, tact, and taking distance will always have their place, but make sure you still keep conflict eyeball to eyeball.

2. Be a problem solver not a problem evader. We are taught from childhood to avoid conflict and often vacillate between the pain of dealing with unresolved problems and the guilt over not dealing with them. Such vacillation saps energy and time; it can affect morale and turnover. Problem solvers avoid avoidance; they learn to deal with conflict as soon as it even begins to get in the way.

3. Develop a communication style that focuses on future problem solving rather than getting stuck in proving a conviction for past mistakes. You want change, not just an admission of guilt. Winners of arguments never always win, because consistent losers never forget. You want results, not enemies seeking revenge. By focusing on future problem solving, both can save face.

4. Problem solvers deal with issues, not personalities. It’s all too easy to abuse the other party instead of dealing with issues. Be assertive but affirm the rights of others to have different positions, values and priorities. When you personalize disagreements and attack back, you invite escalation. Keep the focus on mutual problem solving not name-calling.

5. Honor, surface and use resistance. Attempts at threatening, silencing or otherwise avoiding criticism of change will only force resistance underground and increase the sabotaging of even necessary changes. Explored resistance helps build clarity of focus and action. Push for specific suggestions. If criticism is extensive and continues even after facing it, it may not be resistance-know when to admit that you are wrong!

6. Redefine caring to include caring enough to confront on a timely and consistent basis. Avoid labels that give you or others excuses for not confronting a problem-They are too sensitive or too nice, scene makers or people who have contacts, too old or too young, or the wrong race or gender. If you believe people cannot change or benefit from feedback, you will tend not to confront them. Instead, treat all equally by caring enough to be firm, fair, and consistent.

7. Avoid forming “enemy” relationships. The subtle art of influence is often lost in the heat of organizational battle. When interaction becomes strained or bias exists, the negative interaction coupled with the distance that often results invites selective scanning and projection. We see what we want to see to keep our enemies “the enemy.” If a relationship is limited to polite indifference and significant negative interaction, expect polarization and an “enemy” relationship. In such relationships everyone loses. Take seriously the words of Confucius, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” Even your most difficult people usually have some people they work well with. Make one of those people you. Don’t look for the worst; learn to look for the best in even difficult people.

8. Invest time building positive bridges to your difficult people.Abraham Lincoln reportedly said, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” Don’t be insincere; look for ways to be sincere. It takes a history of positive contact to build trust. Try building a four-to-one positive to negative contact history. Give specific recognition and ask for assistance in the areas you respect their opinions. Work together on a common cause and search for areas of common ground. By being a positive bridge builder, you build a reputation all will see and come to respect even if a few difficult people never respond.

Finally, don’t forget to spend some time looking in a mirror. Ron Zemke put it well when he said, “If you find that everywhere you go you’re always surrounded by jerks and you’re constantly being forced to strike back at them or correct their behavior, guess what? You’re a jerk.” Influencing others starts by making sure that you’re not being difficult yourself. http://www.careerberg.com/

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Employers face major challenges when they consider the increasing difficulty of finding skilled people, a younger workforce with different attitudes about work, and a growing population of older workers heading toward retirement.

A recent study shows 85% of HR executives state the single greatest challenge they have in managing the workforce is their organization’s inability to recruit and retain good employees and managers.

Picture this scenario — John is the CEO of a large organization experiencing high turnover. His Human Resources staff was spending more and more time recruiting, hiring, and training replacements. As soon as they got them trained, they would be gone in six months. Customers were upset and complaints were increasing.

John decided to explore the main reasons people were quitting. He identified new strategies and tactics such as creating an emerging leaders program, providing training for managers, and improving their employee recognition program. As a result, they are now attracting better talent and more importantly, have retained their best people. The Human Resource Department is happier because they are not spending all their time conducting training.

Few businesses realize how much employee turnover impacts their bottom line. It takes $7,000 – $14,000 to replace a typical employee. Replacing a key manager costs the same as buying a new Honda. In the healthcare arena, it costs up to $185,000 to replace a critical care nurse. The question then arises, how can a business survive when the cost of turnover and recruitment runs into the millions of dollars each year?

Businesses can improve their ability to attract, retain and improve productivity by applying the following five-step PRIDE process:

P – Provide a Positive Working Environment
R – Recognize, Reward and Reinforce the Right Behavior
I – Involve and Engage
D – Develop Skills and Potential
E – Evaluate and Measure

STEP 1–PROVIDE A POSITIVE WORKING ENVIRONMENT

Jim Goodnight is the co-founder and President of SAS in Raleigh-Durham, NC. SAS is the largest software development company in the United States. Their progressive work environment and host of family-friendly benefits keeps their turnover rate far below the national average. Jim said, “My assets leave work for home at 5:00 or later each night. It is my job to bring them back each day.” Wise executives realize the responsibility for creating a positive work environment cannot be delegated. It starts at the top.

Have you ever worked for a bad boss? One of the main reasons employees quit is the relationship with their first-line supervisor. The fact is many supervisors and managers are unaware how their actions and decisions affect employee turnover. A critical aspect of an effective retention strategy is manager training. Properly trained managers play a major role in an effective recruitment and retention strategy. Managers need the skills, tools, and knowledge to help them understand their employees’ retention needs and be able to implement a retention plan designed to increase employee engagement in the organization.  http://www.careerberg.com/

STEP 2–RECOGNIZE, REWARD AND REINFORCE THE RIGHT BEHAVIOR

Money and benefits may attract people to the front door, but something else has to keep them from going out the back. People have a basic human need to feel appreciated and proud of their work. Recognition and incentive programs help meet that need.

A successful reward and recognition program does not have to be complicated or expensive to be effective. Graham Weston, co-founder and CEO of Rackspace Managed Hosting, gives the keys to his BMW M3 convertible to his employees for a week. This creative way to reward employees has a bigger impact than cash. He says, “If you gave somebody a $200 bonus, it wouldn’t mean very much. When someone gets to drive my car for a week, they never forget it.”

At First American, managers present a Greased Monkey Award to the computer technician who is best in resolving problems with computer programs. The award is a plastic toy monkey in a jar of Vaseline along with a $50 dinner certificate.

An equipment distributor rewards each employee’s work anniversary with a cake and a check for $200 for each year employed. Twice a year employees’ children receive a $50 savings bond when they bring in their “all A’s” report card. In addition, they reward employees with a “Safety Bonus Program.” They screen each employee’s driving record twice a year, and anyone who has a citation is removed from consideration. Those employees remaining at the end of the year divide $2,000. On Fridays, all employees rotate jobs for one hour. This builds a stronger team, unity, and improves communication within the company.

STEP 3–INVOLVE AND ENGAGE

People may show up for work, but are they engaged and productive? People are more committed and engaged when they can contribute their ideas and suggestions. This gives them a sense of ownership.

The Sony Corporation is known for its ability to create and manufacture new and innovative products. In order to foster the exchange of ideas within departments, they sponsor an annual Idea Exposition. During the exposition, scientists and engineers display projects and ideas they are working on. Open only to Sony’s employees, this process creates a healthy climate of innovation and engages all those who participate.

TD Industries in Dallas, TX has a unique way of making its employees feel valued and involved. One wall within the company contains the photographs of all employees who have worked there more than five years. Their “equality” program goes beyond the typical slogans, posters, and HR policies. There are no reserved parking spaces or other perks just for executives — everyone is an equal. This is one reason why TD Industries was listed by Fortune magazine as one of the “Top 100 Best Places to Work.”

STEP 4–DEVELOP SKILLS AND POTENTIAL

For most people, career opportunities are just as important as the money they make. In a study by Linkage, Inc. more than 40 percent of the respondents said they would consider leaving their present employer for another job with the same benefits if that job provided better career development and greater challenges.

Deloitte is listed as one of the “Top 100 Best Places to Work.” They discovered several years ago they were losing talented people to other companies. They conducted exit surveys and found 70 percent of those employees who left to take new jobs and careers outside the company, could have found the same jobs and careers within Deloitte.  As a result they created Deloitte Career Connections, an intranet-based development and career coaching program for all employees. During the first week of implementation over 2,000 employees took advantage of the program and viewed internal job openings. Not only does the program provide new job opportunities, but Career Connections offers a host of career development tools such as self-assessments, tools to develop resumes, and articles on various job seeking strategies within the company. Skilled people will not remain in a job if they see no future in their position. To eliminate the feeling of being in a dead-end job, every position should have an individual development plan. http://www.careerberg.com/

STEP 5–EVALUATE AND MEASURE

Continuous evaluation and never-ending improvement is the final step of the PRIDE system. The primary purpose of evaluation is to measure progress and determine what satisfies and de-satisfies your workforce. The evaluation process includes the measurement of attitudes, morale, turnover, and the engagement level of the workforce. Here is a checklist of items that should be included in your evaluation and measurement process.

• Conduct an employee satisfaction survey at least once a year.
• Initiate interviews and surveys concerning the real reasons people come to and leave your organization.
• Improve your hiring process to create a better match between the individual’s talents and job requirements.
• Provide flexible work arrangements for working parents and older workers.
• Hold managers responsible for retention in their departments.
• Start measuring the cost of turnover.
• Focus on the key jobs that have the greatest impact on profitability and productivity.
• Examine those departments that have the highest turnover rates.
• Design an effective employee orientation program.

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As you maintain and grow your small business, it’s important to keep continued focus on some of the solid practices that helped get you to where you are today. This list is intended to help you do that because it’s easy to start to look to far ahead and forget that they way you were doing business wasn’t broken in the first place.

1. Develop and Maintain Your Company’s Mission – Basically what we’re talking about here is creating a strategic direction for your company and doing your best to stick to it. That’s hard sometimes for a newer, small organization that is trying to make it’s own place in the marketplace. Sometimes you have to roll with the changes and adjust your expectations and plans mid-stream in order to survive. However, keeping these changes to a minimum in order to stay focused on the good planning and ideas that got you this far is also important. And customers like consistency.

2. Build Strong Vendor and Customer Relationships – This one is critical to the long-term viability of your company. Developing a trust and loyalty with customers is an absolute must. It is the same with the vendors you deal with. You are their customer so keep that relationship strong – if you’ve found good vendors then you will reap long-term rewards from the solid relationship you will have built and maintained with these suppliers – just as you and your long-term customers will reap benefits from each other.

3. Hold Employees Accountable – Holding employees accountable for their individual tasks and responsibilities is no different than doing the same with your own kids. Train them to be responsible for what’s assigned to them or given to them and they will be better employees in the long run for it. Of course, you must give opportunities for recognition, rewards, and advancement (and if not advancement, at least more responsibility) if they are successful. Parents, does this sound familiar?

4. Create a Solid and Loyal Employee Base – A loyal and well-trained workforce will help your business move forward and stand up strong against the competition. It will also help to reduce employee turnover which means less lost productivity spent retraining new staff.

5. Develop Your Management from Within – As you create and develop your small business, it’s like that it is a one-man or one-woman show for awhile. As you grow, it can be very difficult to want to relinquish any of that decision-making and control to someone who comes in from the outside. Trust your own judgment as you add skilled resources to your company and find ways to delegate increasingly meaningful tasks and responsibilities so that at the same to you’re actually working toward upgrading your management. Building that loyalty amongst your employees – as we discussed in #4 above – will help you to build a great resource pool to base all of your future company growth upon.

6. Never Lose Focus on Quality –  This is probably an obvious one, but when the economy looks the way our current economy does, it’s easy to think about cutting corners. That’s fine to do internally as you reduce some operating expenses, freeze wages, freeze hiring, or possibly even letting someone go, but don’t reduce the quality that you provide to your customer. As a customer myself, when I start to see quality decrease, I go elsewhere. It’s hard to gain a customer, but it’s very easy to lose one quickly if we don’t continue to provide what they expect and are accustomed to. http://www.careerberg.com/

7. Keep an Eye on Operating Costs During Growth – Just as you continually work to maintain the quality that got you to where you are in your marketplace and customer standing, you must also remember to try to maintain your production cost perspective. When there is a venture capital injection, or a growth spurt, it’s easy to start to think too big and spend accordingly. The prudent business owner maintains the focus on efficient, solid production practices and therefore maintains his/her grip on operating expenses and likewise on lower-cost production.

8. Grow Wisely – This one has been discussed on these pages before. Grow, but grow prudently and not too fast. Trying to grow too fast can kill a small business quickly as too much emphasis can be placed on growth and not enough on the customer relationships and the product quality that got you to that growth point in the first place.

9. Maintain Operations Excellence – You are driven as the small business owner/operator. As you experience success, growth, and customer loyalty, make sure that you continue to focus some resources on maintaining the strong infrastructure within your organization. Because if that falters, it can quickly affect everything about your business – and your customers may see it even before you do.

10. Build Solid Business Processes – Stop and take the time to define in an appropriate level of detail what your business processes are. Establish meaningful employee and business processes and practices and stick to them. Managing by the seat of your pants may work for a short time, but once growth has started you’ll continually be behind the eight ball if you aren’t working off of established management practices. You can’t be struggling to maintain control all the time and serve your customers well…it’s a battle you’ll eventually lose if you aren’t prepared.

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There is only one thing worse than delivering bad news to your boss. That is not raising the red flag when you know trouble is brewing, because it is a cardinal sin to let your boss be surprised.

No organization escapes the negatives forever. Budgets are not met. Deliveries are late. Machines don’t work. People are caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

It is important to your career success to learn how to deliver ill tidings, as well as how to receive them.

There are at least four major things wrong with failing to blow the whistle when stuff hits the fan.

First, ignoring bad stuff won’t make it go away. It’s bound to surface sooner or later, probably at the worst possible time.

Second, most problems can be fixed, wholly or in part, if addressed soon enough.

Third, left unattended, most problems simply get bigger and more difficult with time.

Fourth, when you fail to report the bad news, you are leaving your boss vulnerable to being blindsided with a problem and the accusation from his boss that he doesn’t have control of his organization.

Forget any notion that you may be a hero when you have to carry the problems to your boss, no matter who’s at fault. Chances are you will take some bruises; whistleblowers are not popular. In ancient times, kings cut off the heads of messengers who brought bad news.

Five Steps To Defuse The Situation

There is really no easy way to report disappoints and shortfalls; however, you can take five steps to help defuse the situations and ease the pain.

1. Have all of the facts in hand. Report them succinctly; no dodging and ducking.

2. Be patient; let the boss vent his or her anger and frustration.

3. Offer a solution, or at least some way to cut the losses.

4. Don’t be defensive. If you are solely to blame, take the heat yourself; don’t try to lay it off on others. However, if a group of which you are a part is at fault be sure you report in the “we” mode. Try to depersonalize the matter as much as possible.

5. Be sure to make a practice of reporting good news, too. Avoid being identified as one who always bears ill tidings. http://www.careerberg.com/

How To Receive Bad News

Just as it is important to quickly and accurately report bad news, it is necessary to know how to handle the storm warnings that are reported to you. These four steps will help.

1. Stay calm and collected when an associate reports bad news to you. If you have a reputation of blowing up when such reports are made, you discourage the flow of information that is necessary to function as a leader.

2. Don’t go off half-cocked. Gather all the facts: who, what, when, where, why? Define the locale, type and extent of the problem as quickly as possible. Assess the damage. And double-check your information.

3. Initiate damage control .

4. Report the situation to your boss in the same fashion as you expect to be reported to. If you have been able to clear up the problem, report it anyway. Get credit for handling the matter without taking up his time.

If you have not been able to eliminate the problem, explain the steps you have already taken to prevent further damage, along with your recommendations for getting rid of the cause of the problem.

Hopefully, you are working for an organization where the messenger gets shot only if he’s late with the news.

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Conflict in the workplace is a painful reality and a key reason for poor productivity and frustration. Do you have people in your workplace that cause problems for everyone else? Do they create additional work for others? One point is clear–conflict does not magically go away and only gets worse when ignored.

Certain types of workplace conflict are readily identified. Other forms of conflict may not be so easily detected. Small, irritating events such as negative attitudes occur repeatedly over time and can cause people to strike out at each other. In many cases, conflict occurs at the senior level of the organization. In these situations some kind of intervention is needed.

What type of workplace conflict requires intervention? Anything that disrupts the office, impacts on productivity or poses a threat to other employees needs addressing. The degree to which you tolerate a situation before intervention may vary. A manager may not feel it necessary to intervene when a minor exchange of words occurs between employees–unless such an incident becomes a daily occurrence and expands beyond the employees initially involved. However, a situation where one employee threatens another requires immediate action. When handling conflict, some basic guidelines apply.

Understand the situation

Few situations are exactly as they seem or as presented to you by others. Before you try to settle the conflict insure you have investigated both sides of the issue.

Acknowledge the problem

I remember an exchange between two board members. One member was frustrated with the direction the organization was taking. He told the other, “Just don’t worry about it. It isn’t that important.” Keep in mind what appears to be a small issue to you can be a major issue with another. Acknowledging the frustration and concerns is an important step in resolving the conflict. http://www.careerberg.com/

Be patient and take your time

The old adage, “Haste makes waste,” has more truth in it than we sometimes realize. Take time to evaluate all information. A too-quick decision does more harm than good when it turns out to be the wrong decision and further alienating the individual involved.

Avoid using coercion and intimidation

Emotional outbursts or coercing people may stop the problem temporarily, but do not fool yourself into thinking it is a long-term solution. Odds are the problem will resurface. At that point not only will you have the initial problem to deal with, but also the angry feelings that have festered below the surface during the interim.

Focus on the problem, not the individual

Most people have known at least one “problematic individual” during their work experience. Avoid your own pre-conceived attitudes about individuals. Person X may not be the most congenial individual or they may just have a personality conflict with someone on your staff. This does not mean they do not have a legitimate problem or issue. Focus on identifying and resolving the conflict. If, after careful and thorough analysis, you determine the individual is the problem, then focus on the individual at that point.

Establish guidelines

Before conducting a formal meeting between individuals, get both parties to agree to a few meeting guidelines. Ask them to express themselves calmly—as unemotionally as possible. Have them agree to attempt to understand each other’s perspective. Tell them if they violate the guidelines the meeting will come to an end.

Keep the communication open

The ultimate goal in conflict resolution is for both parties to resolve the issue between themselves. Allow both parties to express their viewpoint, but also share your perspective. Attempt to facilitate the meeting and help them pinpoint the real issue causing conflict.

Act decisively

Once you have taken time to gather information, talked to all the parties involved, and reviewed all the circumstances, make your decision and act. Don’t leave the issue in limbo. Taking too long to make a decision could damage your credibility and their perception of you. They may view you as either too weak, too uncaring, or both, to handle the problem. Not everyone will agree with your decision, but at least they will know where you stand. http://www.careerberg.com/