Tag Archives: communication

The Fabulous Five

No Comments By Professional Development

Landing a job can be harder than the job itself.

To give you a leg up, here are the five top traits employers look for, according to a recent article by Forbes.

  1. Professionalism: Potential employers assess this from the moment you walk in the door. “From the clothes you wear to the way you stand to the grip of your first hand-shake, presenting yourself as a confident, energetic professional is about as basic as career advice gets. “
  2. High-energy: you want to be the person who raises the energy level, not the stick in the mud. Think about it, who would you rather be around at work?
  3. Confident: sell yourself. If you don’t believe you’re worth it, why should anyone else?
  4. Self-monitoring: no one has the time to babysit you. Make it clear that you’re focused and on task without any help.
  5. Intellectual curiosity: “An employee who will grudgingly adopt a new database is not as attractive as one who is truly passionate about learning new things.”

Do you concur that these are the top five, as an employer or as a coworker? What other traits matter more?

Ritu Walia is an FG Analyst.

Relationship Roundup

No Comments By Tips

In the Relationship Roundup this week, building blocks to fix your communication, using social media to your visual advantage, improving your time management, and increasing relationship intimacy.

Communication fix: Business relationships can be tricky to manage and require special finesse. Learn how to maneuver a touchy communication challenge in this CBS MoneyWatch article. Read it here: http://cbsn.ws/Rt1Wxk.

Being visually engaging: Many of us are still figuring out the role that visual platforms can play in our social media mix. Expert Ekaterina Walker shares how the new visual landscape can add depth to your online relationship building. Read her Fast Company article here: http://bit.ly/Rn77eb.

Executive timing: We can never learn enough best practices for getting time on our side. Read a CEO trainer’s findings about how the most effective CEO’s manage their workload. Read the Inc. Magazine article here: http://bit.ly/QTytYP.

Long slow dinner without interruptions: I love this company’s creativity and mission to bring attention back to the dining table. Read about their social rehab kit here: http://bit.ly/NYYvPL.

Developing powerful partnerships: Building alliances provides the support we’ll need to reach our ultimate goals. Read one bloggers view on the process for aligning the relationships most important to his leadership goals. Read it here: http://bit.ly/NCpFG9.

Kibibi Springs is myGreenlight’s Community Director.

Remote Employees Are More Engaged? Really?

3 comments By Collaboration

Employees who work remotely are actually more engaged with their teams than their “in-office” counterparts, according to a recent Harvard Business Review study. Surprised?

Our own Keith Ferrazzi has published advice on how dispersed teams can be more productive than co-located teams in Harvard Business Review, and yet my initial reaction was disbelief. How can individuals be more engaged with people they never see than with people down the hall? But author Scott Edinger proposes several possible reasons:

  1. Proximity breeds complacency.  Even co-located teams communicate primarily through email. It’s so easy to walk 100 feet to communicate personally that people take it for granted.
  2. Absence makes people try harder to connect. People make more of an effort to connect when they you don’t ordinarily interact with people.
  3. Leaders of virtual teams make better use of tools. When your primary form of connecting with people is virtual, you master many different modes of communication.
  4. Leaders of far-flung teams maximize the time their teams spend together. When remote people do finally get face-time with people they don’t see often, leaders do everything to maximize the precious time spent together.

Do you agree with Edinger’s suppositions? Have you noticed more engagement with remote teammates?

Ritu Walia is an FG Analyst.

Presidential Email Strategies

No Comments By Leadership

There’s no avoiding the fact that it’s an election year. You get bombarded just flipping through the channels, stopping by a newsstand, or even checking your email and favorite sites. In every way possible, election year is upon us.

Personally, I get emails from candidates straight into my inbox. It’s one way of keeping up with important national events and getting news from the campaign trail. It’s interesting to see how many myGreenlight values play into the communication strategies of the presidential candidates. Continue reading →

Relationship Roundup

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This week in the Roundup, how to identify and utilize top contacts, invest in yourself, use social media in business, connect through conversation, and build your community.

Relationship planning for success – If you’ve used myGreenlight’s Relationship Action Planning tools, the concept of the “Critical 100” will be very familiar. In this Harvard Business Review blog, authors Ram Charan and Daniel Casse offer the steps for identifying and utilizing the most important 100 people in your organization. Read the blog here: http://bit.ly/MIoTY6.

Investing in #1 – Often our focus on the relationships that sustain us and our goals can lead to neglecting ourselves. This Inc. Magazine article offers advice on carving out the time to invest in your own development. Read it here: http://bit.ly/OGQw3h.

B2B social media – Great tips from Social Media Today on the best uses of the medium for business. Read the article here: http://bit.ly/NxNm5Z.

Connecting with conversation – Every conversation we have is an opportunity to advance a new and important relationship, learn something new, and/or advance a goal. Learn more about how to get the most out of your conversation in this Entrepreneur Magazine article: http://bit.ly/OU0ApJ.

Building your community – As we build our personal and professional brands, we are also building our personal and professional communities. Read this WordofMouth.org blog on managing the fan, follower, and community member relationship here: http://bit.ly/Om3Pq2.

Kibibi Springs is myGreenlight’s Community Director.

Fixing Your Gmail Autofill So You’re Not Emailing People at Old Addresses

No Comments By Tools & Tech

Have you sent an important email to an associate and realized three days or three weeks later that they never got it because it was an ancient address that Gmail decided to autofill in without you noticing? And once you realized it, you picked apart Gmail but couldn’t figure out how to solve the problem?

Help is here: Complete instructions on how to change the auto-complete addresses in Gmail so that you don’t keep emailing a contact at his or her old address!

(It actually took me a good amount of time and help from a coworker to figure this out.)

  1. First you have to click on the Gmail tab under the Google header on the left side of the page and select contacts.
  2. Once you’re in the contacts section, you can search for the contact you wish to edit in the search field.
  3. Once you’re on the contact page, you can make edits.

Viola! These two minutes of work can save you from emailing the wrong address over and over again once and for all. Get to it immediately when you learn a contact has a new address.

Another idea: Next time you update your own email, send these instructions with your announcement to make it easy on your Gmail-using friends.

Ritu Walia is an FG Analyst.

The Greenlight Highlight: How a Seasoned Project Manager Uses Relationship Mastery to Foster Teamwork

1 comment By Success Stories

Joseph Katucki
Wallingford, CT
Greenlight Member Since: June 2010

Elevator Pitch: “I’m not afraid of trouble, I like solving problems. I am a Project Manager specializing in turning around troubled projects. Currently I’m creating a leadership development program. I also mentor small businesses through the SBA’s SCORE program.”

What experience in your past marked the moment you recognized how important relationships are to your success? 

About five years into my professional career, I remember looking around the office and noticing who were getting fun assignments and promoted the fastest. It was those individuals who were personally and/or socially connected with the management chain.

What’s the coolest things you’re working on at home or at work right now?

I am leading the charge on an innovative leadership development program for the nearly 1,800 members of the Southern New England Project Management Institute (SNEC-PMI). It’s a program that includes a 360 leadership skills assessment, one-on-one feedback and coaching by a Center for Creative Leadership accredited leadership coach, three 3-day workshops facilitated by a hired consultant, and two 1-day events that will be open to the larger SNEC-PMI community.

The lessons I’ve learned about working with a volunteer organization have been invaluable. It’s taken a lot more time to get things moving and I have to approach every interaction with extreme generosity as every individual I rely on is there on a gifted basis. Continue reading →

Relationship Roundup

No Comments By Tips

In the Roundup this week, more strategies and skills to facilitate great leadership and better relationships in your network.

Superhero teamwork – Good team work requires respecting each individual team member’s unique “super powers”. Read the fine art of managing super teams in this article from Thought Leaders, LLC here: http://bit.ly/L5lYeN.

Leadership is not a popularity contest – Popularity and strong leadership have some similar outcomes, but being popular is not a requirement for effective leadership. Leadership trainer, Kevin Eikenberry evaluates popularity can affect your leadership goals. Read his blog here: http://bit.ly/NyrLuJ. Continue reading →

Is Facebook Your Pleasure of Choice?

No Comments By Culture

“Facebook is as pleasurable as food or sex” says the title of a recent Yahoo News article. Two neuroscientists researched and led this study and came to the conclusion that “‘self disclosure’ produces a response in the region of the brain associated with dopamine, a chemical associated with pleasure or the anticipation of a reward.”

Apparently, the reward that the brain receives after posting our thoughts and views on Facebook is very similar to the pleasure from food or sex. This is attributed to a less complex idea that we’re all familiar with. As humans, we love talking about ourselves. In fact, we spend about 30 to 40 percent of our speech disclosing our subjective views. Continue reading →

Relationship Roundup

No Comments By Tips

Communication skills take center stage this week. Learn how to make virtual technology work for you, take control of your communication style, and direct it in a more purposeful and intentional way.

Emails that spark action – Here’s some advice and tips from CBS MoneyWatch contributor Dave Johnson for cutting through email clutter and eliciting the response you intended. Read Dave’s advice here: http://cbsn.ws/L0fydo.

Emotional intelligence – Do you have the heart for leadership? Explore the importance of your emotional capacity and your effectiveness as a leader in this Inc. article. Read it here: http://bit.ly/KYd8KN.

Clear up your communication – You can communicate all you want, but if no one understands you, you’re wasting time and money. This Inc. article offers a self-assessment checklist and tips for clearing up your communication clutter. Read more here: http://bit.ly/KK6o6G.

Communication alignment – Elevating your communication skills elevates your relationship building skills. One of the fundamentals of transmitting clarity to others is to clarify our nonverbal and verbal cues. Read the CBS MoneyWatch article here: http://cbsn.ws/M9Zxae.

Don’t be a virtual violator – With so much of our daily interaction happening via technology, the rules of engagement have changed. Mashable offers the latest business rules for communicating virtually. Read the article here: http://on.mash.to/KYerJE.

Kibibi Springs is myGreenlight’s Community Director.