JUST INFORMING STAFF ISN’T ENOUGH

Today, you must go beyond telling employees what’s going on. You must communicate in ways that affect how they think, believe and act.

¨      Use visuals when presenting information. This allows people to grasp it faster and on different levels. Visuals help people pay attention better and they aid memory.

¨      Meet with employees in small groups. They will be more likely to talk and they will listen better if they know they will get a chance to have their say.

¨      Give people time to ask questions, present their ideas, challenge concepts and interact with each other.

 Important to remember: Don’t think you have had a dialogue when you have talked for 50 minutes of a one-hour meeting and then asked for questions. 

Suggestions: Seek training if you feel you can’t successfully run an effective meeting. You must be able to make people feel comfortable enough to discuss things without feeling that what they say will be labeled as dumb.

TIPS FOR CONQUERING PROCRASTINATION

Read This NOW!!!

 Everyone procrastinates from time to time, especially when faced with an unpleasant task (like making that follow-up call to an angry customer, filing customer paperwork or organizing your work area).

 But it’s a habit that you can change with a little bit of willpower. Here are some ideas to get you started.

 -         Make your goals/tasks part of your daily routine. Decide on a regular time each day to work on your tasks or project and stick to it.

Hint: Schedule your daily time so that you can reward yourself afterward, for instance, just before lunchtime or at the end of your shift, or even at the beginning of the day (your reward is a less stressful day!).

-         Choose your hardest/biggest/most stressful task and do it first. Once you accomplished that, the rest will be easier and faster to do.

-         Concentrate on finishing a little bit or piece of your task or project at each sitting. Try to get out of all the all-or-nothing frame of mind.

-         Find a coworker who tends to put off the same tasks. Make an appointment to work on them together.

-         If there is a difficult conversation you need to have with a customer, rehearse it in your mind, then with a coworker. Once you have practiced it a few times, it won’t seem like such a bad task.

-         Take a look at your workstation. Is it conducive to working? Make sure you have the tools you need, and that they are efficiently organized.

 The bottom line is “Just Do It!!!” Once it’s done, life is good.

COMMUNICATION TID-BITS

 If your team has a tendency to stray from the agenda during meetings, try these lighthearted penalties to keep the meeting on track:

-         Give everybody a toy squirt gun and authorize them to squirt any member who goes off on a tangent or squelches frank and open discussion.

-         Put a coin bank in the middle of the meeting area and charge meeting attendees a quarter for any interruptions or off-topic remarks. Use the money to fund group celebrations.

 Make sure that it remains all in fun, but also use it as a training tool for cretaining better meetings.