Tag Archives | information
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7 Types Of Effective Communication And Why You Need To Know Them

By on February 1, 2012 in Personal Growth, Success, Tools, Wisdom

It’s not enough to know  whom you are talking to, communicate, influence, and in the case of our children perhaps teach. If you want to be effective in your communication, you need to understand the best way to reach them. This has been proven time and time again.

This is the key to success, better relationships, and higher productivity at work. In fact, this strategy has been shown to lower stress by minimizing conflict and encourage camaraderie and teamwork, whether personal or professional.


Roosevelt and Churchill in conversation (Zorba the Geek) / CC BY-SA 2.0

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a customer, client, child, spouse, co-worker, or members of a board or committee. You must connect in the manner that resonates with them. It sounds difficult, but it really isn’t once you start practicing it.

Types of communication:

Informing – Some people just want the facts laid out for them. They pay attention to facts and figures, studies and other concrete data.

Analyzing – These people don’t want specific facts, but rather a summary. You need to offer an analysis and boil down the information or request in a meaningful matter.

Persuasive – This type of person wants to know what’s in it for them. Why should they agree to act in a certain way or perform a specific action? They must be convinced. Present your argument.

Mediating – Compromise, compromise. With these people, you have to be willing to give a little. They need to feel heard and respected. Find the common ground and find the solution that satisfies you both.

Emotional – This kind of communication is all about feelings. Knowing what is important and what touches these people is the key. Appeal to their emotions and connect on a compassionate and understanding level.

Entertaining – Wit, humor and levity influences these people. Serious facts are useless, be interesting and lighthearted when possible.

Inspiring – Offer motivation, inspiration, and big picture results. These people need to feel as though they are making a difference, some kind of impact.

The way to practice communication that is more effective requires that you improve your observation and listening skills. Pay attention to the people around you and be more interested in general. We could all use a little more of that.

What type of communicator are you? It helps to understand that too.

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The One Thing You Must Do to Gain Control of Your Inbox

By on December 19, 2011 in Productivity, Simple Steps
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Image via Wikipedia

Simple Steps

Do you cringe when you open your email? How could you possibly have 42 new emails overnight you ask?

If you’re lucky they’re spam (that’s easy to take care of with a good spam filter,) but usually they’re not. Many of those messages are announcements, updates, sales or some other form of mailing list torture that you’ve somehow gotten yourself into; social media updates, group messages, retail ads, community, news or parenting digests, the list of our informational interests is endless.

You may have thought it seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course you don’t want to miss out on a good sale. You have to keep up with the latest news and industry updates. You never know when you’re going to receive a fabulous new recipe or tip that will change your life.  But now, the informational deluge is overwhelming. You cannot conceivably read every one of those emails if you ever want to get anything else done. They must be multiplying while you sleep…

You could just delete them. That’s probably what you have been doing, isn’t it? How’s that working?

Great for a few moments, but they just keep coming back, stalking you like that weird kid in 7th grade who wanted to walk home with you every day…but gave you the creeps. You just knew eventually you were going to have to tell him to leave you alone. Right? Or did you just try dodging him, ducking over to another street or walking fast so that he maybe couldn’t keep up? That’s just sad…

Well the same thing happens in your inbox. You can run, you can hide, but you will never get away from the unwanted stalker emails unless you take a firm proactive action.

Wait! It’s easier than it sounds.

Unsubscribe. Yep, that’s it. That’s all you have to do.

Look for the link at the bottom of the email. You may have to log in and change your email preferences or settings, especially if it’s a group or membership.

But that takes time. Stop whining and just do it. A few minutes now will save you minute after minute, week after week after week. Those minutes add up to many hours of your valuable time wasted.

I started doing just a few unsubscribes each day for a week or two. It took maybe 10 minutes at most. The funny thing is it would have taken me at least that amount of time to sift through them to get to the important emails. And after a couple of weeks my inbox was so light, I could see white space around the edges.

Try it for a week and see if you don’t notice a difference.

*If you can’t possibly live without some of these updates, use your email program to create a filter for updates or sort them into a separate folder for later review. Pay attention to which ones you actually read on a regular basis and unsubscribe from the rest.

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Veterans Day

5 Lessons Veterans Can Teach Us About Life and Business

By on November 11, 2011 in Personal Growth
Veterans Day

Rather than just celebrating another day off from school, and for many of us work, maybe we should take a look at what we can learn from those brave men and women we celebrate on Veteran’s Day.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts – When you work together as a team, the results you achieve can be far greater and more productive than anything an individual can accomplish. Enlist help and collaborate as a team when possible.

Do it even if you don’t feel like it – Some days we don’t feel like making calls, writing proposals, cleaning up the kitchen or getting up and driving to work. So what! Don’t even think about whether or not you “feel” like doing something. Just move on to the next item and complete it.

Keep your eye on the big and the little picture – Advice abounds, “think about the big picture” or “just focus on what’s in front of you,” but the reality is…you need to pay attention to both. Place your attention on doing what’s in front of you and pay attention to the details, but also keep in mind the overall goal and what you’re trying to achieve.

Be clear on what you’re trying to accomplish – You need to be very clear on what you’re trying to do and why. What is it that you want out of your life, your business or career and what specifically is the desired outcome for each project or goal. You can’t get where you want to go if you don’t have a destination in mind.

Plan, but be flexible – Plan your actions, decide what you’ll do, how and when, but also be prepared to deviate if necessary. It’s often not possible to plan for every contingency, so when things shift or schedules change be willing to be flexible and regroup.

Can you think of anything I’ve left off? Have you learned a valuable lesson from a veteran that you’d like to share?

Question everything, move forward, enjoy the journey.

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Save Time and Space – Go Digital

By on October 3, 2011 in Simple Steps, Tools

Simple Steps

Go digital!

Save your documents in electronic format whenever possible.

Then scan everything in paper format onto your computer that you really need or want to save.

Save either locally on your hard drive, in the “cloud” or on a back-up storage.

Minimize the storage of papers as much as possible.

Opt for electronic statements and invoices whenever you can.

Set aside time –  or ask an assistant if you are lucky enough to have one – to scan in old documents and agreements.

The result – You will free up enormous paper file storage space and make retrieval and sharing so much simpler.

Question everything, move forward, enjoy the journey.

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Keys to Your Most Productive Life

New eBook – “Keys to Your most Productive Life” Will

By on September 7, 2011 in Productivity, Success, Tools

I’ve just released my first ebook!

Keys to Your Most Productive Life  is a brief, but valuable guide packed full of tips that will help you - Learn how to maximize your time and energy to live the most productive life possible!

Keys to Your Most Productive Life

Figure it out, Clean it up, Get it done

Do you never seem to have enough hours in the day?

Are you buried under piles?

Do you get to the end of the day and ask where did my time go?

Are you perpetually running behind?

Do you have projects, dreams or goals that you never manage to get to?

Do you feel that how you spend your time is out of sync with your life and work values?

It doesn’t have to be that way! Change is possible…

An invaluable guide at an affordable price – $4.99    Add to Cart

If what you’re currently doing isn’t working or maybe you’d just like it to work even better, then this short, but value-packed ebook will offer some simple steps to maximize your productivity, increase your effectiveness and get clear about what you really want. We all know the old adage; the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Clearly most of us are not insane, but for some reason we think this rule doesn’t apply to us. If we can just work faster, harder and be more determined we can whip ourselves in to shape.That’s just not reality.

Keys to Your Most Productive Life will help jump-start your productivity and guide you toward your most productive life… higher efficiency, organization, clarity, focus, success. This ebook will both the nudge in the right direction and the guide on how to get there!

Buy the ebook for only $4.99 now! And get started living a more productive life!  Add to Cart

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Information Diet Challenge

By on May 9, 2011 in Personal Growth, Success

Weekly challenege:

The productivity challenge for this week is to trim your information feeds; Twitter feeds, RSS feeds, daily blogs, news feeds, etc. If you’re like me, then you can all too easily get sucked into the information vortex by either incessant curiosity or the voracious need to know feeling that fears you might miss something important!

You can only process a certain amount of information and then your brain goes on overload and your retention rate is dismal. You will be much more informed and decrease your time wasted in the “black hole” of information if you prune your information sources with a discerning eye.

Over the next week, go through your daily information routine as you normally would, but each time you are checking the news, reading your RSS feeds, daily blogs or scrolling your Twitter feed ask yourself the following question:

Does this information add some kind of value to my life?

  • Does it add to my knowledge base and is that knowledge useful to me?
  • Does it teach or improve a useful talent or skill? (I.e. productivity!)
  • Does it make me laugh or uplift my spirits in some way?

If the information source does not meet one of these criteria, then it is very simply not worth your time. Now, for the hardest part; discard the duplicates. Choose the two or three best sources in each area; news, industry reviews, social media, technology, finance, personal development or whatever your particular areas of interest might be. Start trimming!

My task will be to trim the Twitter feeds I am following to a manageable level and cut my RSS feeds by 50%. I will keep you posted on my progress.

Please share your goals for this week’s challenge and let us know how you are doing

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email

Productive Email Strategies: Part 2 – “One-Way” Communications

By on April 13, 2011 in Success

emailI realize that for many, the issue of inbox overwhelm is very much about “one way communications.” Newsletters, sales and marketing, jokes, videos to watch, feeds, updates on varied interests and projects can make up a large portion of email piling up in your email daily.

While these communications may often be necessary, sometimes even desired, they can all just get to be too much. They can completely take-over your inbox and completely overwhelm even the most organized and efficient among us.

There are some simple steps we can take to combat this insidious dribble of incoming information. Simple yes; easy no. We humans are wired to seek information. We want to stay informed, in the loop, knowledgeable. We hate not knowing everything that’s going on around us. We might even go so far as to say that our insatiable curiosity has turned into an information addiction. Though many of us are still in denial about that…

What you can try to trim the incoming flood:

  • Chill with the newsletters. Really. Only subscribe if the information is truly valuable to you in some way. If you find yourself skimming or deleting without even reading, it’s time to unsubscribe.
  • Use an RSS reader. Instead of signing up for daily or weekly emails, subscribe to the sites RSS feed and use Google Reader or something similar to store and manage your information. Get it out of your inbox!
  • Be very selective when sending jokes, chain emails, video links, photos and that sort of thing. For the most part that kind of stuff is more appropriate to post on Facebook usually. Everyone loves a cute pet or a good laugh; once in a while is fine, but not on a regular basis.
  • Opt out of those sales alerts. If you need to buy something you can search the internet for sales or discounts. If you don’t need it then you shouldn’t be wasting time getting alerts about it. It is a waste of your valuable time and inbox space and will probably save you money too!
  • Likewise, opt out of those marketing emails. Nearly every time you sign up on some website and give out your email you are going to be placed on a mailing list. Unless you are waiting for some specific information from the website uncheck that box during the sign-up process. If there wasn’t an option or you missed it, opt out or unsubscribe as soon as the marketing emails start showing up.
  • Get it in digest format if possible. Instead of getting a notification every time someone posts on your LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook profile of conversation, opt for a daily digest. Another option is to use and inbox filter to divert them to a separate folder, get text alerts or turn off the notifications totally. You can always log in daily to look.

There are so many strategies we can employ to weed out and trim down our email volume. With a little diligence we can move closer to an efficient, streamlined inbox that is a useful tool to share valuable information. Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be for anyway?

If you missed Productive Email Strategies: Part 1 – Effective Communication, I highly recommend you go back and read it. The most effective approach to a manageable inbox is streamlining what goes out as well as what comes in.

 

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Productive Email Strategies: Part 1 – Effective Communication

By on April 11, 2011 in Success

emailMost business professionals I know acknowledge that email is the biggest obstacle to overcome in their daily routine. A necessary and oft times indispensable tool; it can also be a huge detour that easily leads you off the path in your quest for productivity.

In thinking about how to minimize this stumbling block, (we really can’t remove it, but we can “manage” it) I realized that much of our email volume is made up of repeat requests, follow-up emails and “reply-all” updates. I came up with a few simple strategies that help me (when I actually use them) and might help you too.

Email communication strategies:

  • Be concise.
  • Communicate “action steps” first, not last.
  • Number your questions if you must have more than one.
  • Be clear about what you want.
  • Include deadlines.
  • Use “FYI” for emails that have no actionable information.
  • Don’t send “Thanks!” emails.
  • If you can’t respond or carry out the request fully now, acknowledge and tell them when you can do it.
  • Use “reply all” judiciously.

You may not always be able to achieve the elusive “inbox 0,” but anything you can do to reduce unnecessary email will save you time and inbox clutter.

I realize that for many, the issue of inbox overwhelm is also about “one way communications.” Newsletters, sales and marketing, jokes, videos to watch, updates on varied interests and projects can make up a large portion of email piling up in your email daily. We’ll discuss some strategies for that in Part 2 – “One-Way Communication”…

 

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How to Keep Your Printed Documents Organized

By on October 19, 2010 in Success

Today’s post is a guest post contributed by James Adams, a technology and productivity blogger.

 For those who work in a busy office, time-management is one of the most important things one can learn. After all, not being able to manage time effectively can lead to serious issues within an office, from missing meetings to just simply not getting enough work done in a day’s time.

One of the basic tenants of time management is organization. Learning how to organize one’s workstation is crucially important to getting a lot of work done throughout a day, and perhaps the most important aspect of this is keeping one’s printed documents organized at all times. While many people have immense problems learning how to organize their documents correctly, the fact is that once one learns just a few basic strategies, organization practically falls into place and can make the day far more productive.

Here are five great ways to get your documents organized, reduce clutter and be efficient and ultimately feel happier at work.

1. Set Up Your Office Strategically

One of the biggest hurdles for those who struggle with organization is directly related to the setup of the office. While most offices try to keep printers and copiers central to each workstation, others feel as if the dark corner at the back of the office is the best place to put their machines. This inevitably leads to issues, as employees don’t want to have to trek to the back of the building to pick up their printouts every ten minutes. By centralizing your copiers and printers, you’ll be making the situation far easier on your employees, and will ultimately be helping to improve organization throughout the office.

2. Keep Employees on the Same Track

Many offices fall prey to employees that print out documents, only to leave them sitting in the printer for half of the day before they pick them up. This is by far one of the worst organizational caveats, as it is close to impossible to stay organized when random printouts are hogging up the printer. By making it clear to your employees that this is not okay, you can minimize the potential for backup that might be affecting your office.

3. Only print what is Needed

Another issue that plagues many offices throughout the world is the employee that prints out absolutely everything – even emails! The fact is printing out every document that graces the computer screen is simply unnecessary. Not only does it lead to disorganization, it is frankly a huge waste of paper, ink and resources. By having a dialogue with your employees and stating that only necessary documents should be printed, you can put a halt on this issue before it gets out of hand. The more one is allowed to print anything they want, the worse the situation will get.

4. Reduce Stacks

Many people allow piles upon piles of printed documents to take ownership of their workstations, concluding that dealing with them at the end of the week is the best way to go about things. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, and often results in lost time and heavy disorganization. Instead of waiting until the end of the week to deal with stacks, make an effort to not allow them to accumulate at all. If you must use stacks (as this is simply how some people operate), be sure to deal with them before leaving work at the end of each day; otherwise, you’re bound to lose track of important documents.

5. Create a Filing System

One of the most important things you can do to prevent being disorganized is to create an extremely versatile filing system. Just as you wouldn’t place hundreds of documents on your computer’s desktop, you shouldn’t do so with your paper documents. By filing away your documents as soon as you are finished dealing with them, you’ll know exactly where everything is and will not have to deal with piles of random printouts. This is imperative for those who find that they often have to refer back to their documents at a later date, and is a crucial detail that should be learned early on in any career.

James Adams reviews ink supplies at Cartridge Save. He also writes for blogs around the web where he posts about the technology and productivity.

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Create Your Own Network

By on July 29, 2010 in Success

Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want or what you need! Chances are good that you will get it and you might just help someone else out in the process.

My quick story: My regular readers know that my husband is deployed to the Middle East; that’s just background information. Last week I received an email from our local family services coordinator at the base that went out to all of the spouses/partners of the deployed service members. It’s great that we have communication from the base, but what was lacking was a community of support for the wives. No support network existed, so I suggested to the base that we start one, offered my assistance and they agreed.  Now we have our own network; a private Facebook group where we can share thoughts, concerns and ask for help from one another. We are growing quickly and are slowly developing a broader reach and a valuable connection. Who knows what may come of this; parenting help, career assistance, sharing of skills, mentoring and of course friendship.

Another result of this project was that I decided that more sharing of information and support was needed by military spouses as a whole and knew that I could fill that need. So, out of this experience came not only a new support network, but a new website – GuardWife.com – and a book on deployment from the family’s perspective is in progress.

Lessons learned:

  • Speak up and ask for what you want!
  • Chances are good that someone else needs the same resource that you are looking for.
  • If the network doesn’t exist; create it yourself.
  • If you find a need out there that is not being met; FILL IT!

You may be able to make money from your innovations and ideas or maybe not. You never know where they will lead you. The important thing is that your need will be filled and you will most likely have added to your network and helped others along the way.

If you want to read more on stepping outside your comfort zone, read Key Questions: What Are Your Limitations?

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