Life and Career Skills

Generally, in smaller firms, office romances are tolerated. It is due to the more casual environment of such firms. But larger companies covertly (or very overtly) discourage romance between employees—in particular, those between managers and their staff. If your company has a clear "no fraternizing" policy, then you and the other employee risk immediate dismissal [...]

In the United States, the handshake is the meeting/greeting ritual. And many managers place a lot of emphasis on it. We allow impressions based on the handshake and the rituals that surround it to determine future business relationship. Don’t extend your hand to another unless you gauge by eye contact the individual’s willingness to shake [...]

Anyone who is considering working at home has to recognize a reality: In the office, the whole workplace conspires to help you do your work. When you’re at home, it is just the opposite. Everything conspires against you. All of a sudden everyone wants a bit of your time, taking you away from your tasks. [...]

Don’t underestimate your travel time so you are always in a rush to get to your location. By then, you will be stressed out, unfit to carry out your responsibilities at your destination. You also don’t want to be stressed out upon your return, so allow some extra time at your destination to catch your [...]

A supervisor is a supervisor—neither a buddy nor a close confidant. You may work closely together, but that doesn’t guarantee you will become friends. With some managers, the best you can hope for is treatment with professional respect. It doesn’t hurt, however, if you don’t give your manager reason to dislike you. If you are [...]

If you are unsure about your position with your company, it’s time to update your resume. Rewrite it to play up your accomplishments. If you need two pages, use them—recruiters no longer believe that everything should be communicated in a single page. List yourself with Web career sites as well as search firms. Since companies [...]

Conversing with perfect strangers is not easy. Even those known as outstanding networkers had to learn how. Their secret, they tell me, is preparation. Before you go to an event where you will have an opportunity to meet with people whom you don’t know but whom you would like to know, you should think of [...]

Your goal is to keep the most accessible areas in your office, like your desk and middle shelves of your book case, least crowded, and the least accessible areas, like the very top and bottom shelves of your bookcase and lowest file drawers, most crowded. Begin by creating an in-basket for mail and everything else [...]

List all those tasks you need to do and prioritize them according to one or more of the following criteria: Which jobs and deadlines are mandated from above? These are important assignments, but not always urgent. On the other hand, if your manager is pacing up and down in front of your desk waiting for [...]

The first step in overcoming procrastination is to identify its cause. If due to low self-esteem or a tough project, then prepare an action plan to deal with it. If fear of taking the wrong step is behind the procrastination, seek out others familiar with the work to discuss your ideas. Then you can pursue [...]

Reducing the number of interruptions often demands an adjustment in attitude; that is, you need to accept responsibility for controlling the interruptions in your work. Admittedly, you won’t be able to control them all. But there are ones that you can. For example, you can’t control when someone calls you, but you can control whether [...]

You need to consider values like ethics and integrity like goals critical to your organization’s success. More important, you need to translate those values into behaviors—your own and those of your employees. This makes them more than words strung together, particularly if you incorporate the behaviors tied to the values into performance evaluations. Since your [...]

If you want your performance appraisal to reflect your accomplishments, then you should go to your next performance appraisal with a written list. If your manager isn’t likely to remember each and every staff member’s efforts over the quarter or year, this will ensure that your personnel records make mention of them. You can add [...]

You can argue against this practice but you can’t avoid it once it becomes policy. You can minimize intrusions on your time by making plans before you leave to ensure that most critical issues either are already handled or will be handled by others trained to do so. Teach them what they need to know, [...]

Truth is, we can’t have everything. Rather, we need to determine what we want, then "rightsize" our lives to achieve our wants. That may entail something as extensive as toggling between intensive focus on work and intensive focus on a nonwork life, giving all of ourselves to our jobs for a time, then cutting back [...]

You may have to look at the assignments more closely. A lot of managers carry such heavy workloads that they habitually plunge into one assignment after another without any thought as to how the tasks should best be handled or what work they should do immediately (think "urgent") and what work can wait. They are [...]

Some people fall into the "all work, all the time" pattern and find it hard to get out. Without close family ties or friends to draw them away from their work lives, they may become so consumed that they never develop outside lives. Their work becomes a crutch, one that isn’t very sturdy given the [...]

Actually, you have two concerns: controlling your own feelings of burnout and minimizing the stress your employees feel. As an effective manager, you should provide employees with the information they need to do a good job. You should give regular feedback. You should say "thank you"—regularly. You should involve your employees in decisions that affect [...]