Daily Biz Solutions

Managing virtual employees is different from managing workers who are in the same physical location where you are located, but it is not impossible – and doesn’t even have to be difficult. It just requires a bit of a different mindset and additional reliance on technology.

Communication is Key

Just as is true in a traditional office, effective workforce communication is an important key to successfully managing a virtual workforce. It’s just that communication comes about a bit differently in a virtual work environment than it does in a traditional office setting. conference calls can be a powerful tool for maintaining effective communication with workers who are based in remote locations. Conference call technology allows you to gather your team around a virtual conference table rather than bringing them into a physical conference room for the purposes of interacting.

Bring Your Team Together Virtually

Whether you need to introduce new policies to your team members, conduct group training sessions, or brainstorm for strategies to help build your business, you can accomplish any of these tasks via conference calls. With conference call technology, you can hold staff meetings that are just as rich and productive as would be possible in any office location. Quality conference call services make it possible for team members to come together in a formal, work-related setting no matter how geographically diverse their physical locations are.

Affordable Solution

With a [conference calls unlimited] plan, you don’t have to worry about spending too much on the telecommunications technology that allows you to bring your team together to engage in meaningful dialogue. When it comes to having access to the technology you need to effectively lead your virtual team, the tools that you need are here and available right now. No longer do business owners and managers have to wait for technology to catch up with their needs. You have access to the technology you need to build and manage a virtual team.

By Kerry Patterson

You’re discussing a thorny problem with your work team when suddenly a rather off-the-wall idea comes to you. You enthusiastically explain your brainchild and are met with looks of surprise. You push on ahead and encounter further silence. Finally, one of your more senior employees states: “I don’t know . . . how does everyone feel about this?” After an awkward pause, someone suggests, “Well, if that’s what the boss wants, maybe we can make it work.” Caught up in the moment, you push on ahead with your plan and end the discussion by making assignments. As you exit the tension-filled room, you think to yourself: “Getting people to take part in a meeting is like pulling teeth!” Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Post by Miranda Bouldin, LogiCoreHSV

When ground forces are on the move, or fighter jets take to the air, they remain in real-time contact with their direct commander and upwards through higher levels of command to produce precise results. These clear lines of communication, though they involve different people, hierarchies, and systems are the core of mission success. For businesses, when these lines of communication become disconnected, the result is improperly filled orders, missed expectations, boardroom surprises, and customer dissatisfaction. By creating a system of clear communication tactics in your business, you can increase the number of your company’s “mission successful” operations.

The keys to a successful business communications strategy are:

• Strategic Communications Plan

A comprehensive strategic communications plan is crucial in order to strengthen a company’s corporate identity and elevate awareness of diverse capabilities and services. Develop a plan with various communications tactics that will enhance and increase positive awareness of your corporate profile. A customized corporate communications plan will increase growth and success for both current and future pursuits. Communication tactics and strategies may include targeted advertising, public relations efforts, community outreach/donations, trade show and job fair activity, social media practices, internal communications tools and external communications projects. Implementing these communication tactics will create a strong corporate image, expand local, national, and international awareness, and generate multiple-level media coverage. It is also important to note that your strategic communications plan should constantly evolve as to accommodate to trends in the ever-changing business market.

• Message Architecture

Key messages are developed through research of company’s products/services, position, and targeted audiences. With repeated presentation, key messages ensure dissemination of clear, consistent, and compelling information through all applicable communication channels. Your company’s leadership team should conduct “off-sites” on a regular basis in order to focus and plan on your future. This will allow your key decision makers to strategize, brainstorm, and reflect upon the state of the company. Developing mission, vision, and value statements are crucial and this will provide the added benefit of strengthening your image and corporate identity for business through effective key messaging.
Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Post By Kerry Patterson
 
In today’s well-connected world, hi-tech gadgets and gizmos can help us communicate more easily. Technology has made communication nearly instantaneous, incredibly convenient and enormously accessible. But has it somehow made us less-effective communicators? Should we monitor our method of communication more carefully? Does it really affect our messages?

The answer to all of these question is “Yes” – especially when you consider that many of us are already far too savvy at finding ways to avoid face-to-face conversations that involve strong emotions or high stakes.

When it comes to resolving broken promises, violated expectations or bad behavior with someone at work, resorting to hi-tech methods like e-mail, voicemail or text messages can amplify our problems.

For example, a subordinate leaves a vague excuse on your voice mail after missing a key deadline, or a colleague e-mails your error-filled report to your boss instead of confronting you directly.

According to a recent survey by VitalSmarts, a corporate training company, more than 87 percent of those polled admit that using hi-tech means to resolve a workplace confrontation has not been effective in their experience. Moreover, 89 percent say e-mail, text messaging, and voicemail can get in the way of good workplace relationships.

Even though the majority of respondents agree that we shouldn’t be so indirect in our communication with coworkers, the question remains: When does ease and security trump the need to talk face-to-face?

Regardless of the circumstances, people should think twice before pushing the “send” button and consider what they want long-term—even if the way to get there isn’t always the easiest.

Anytime non-verbal signals are important in deciphering the message, the news is particularly bad or sensitive, negative feedback is being delivered or differing opinions will ensue, face-to-face communication is a must. Consider the following:
• Giving delicate feedback. Good example: You meet one-on-one to tell someone he has a hygiene problem. Any delicate or controversial conversation requires a tête-à-tête. Bad example: You send a group e-mail to the whole team and announce, “One of you really needs to bathe more often.”

• Working through a long-standing gripe. Good example: You set aside a time and calmly and professionally discuss something that has you concerned. Bad example: You e-mail a list of “The Top Ten Reasons Everyone Despises You.”

• Confronting someone who has not delivered on a promise. Good example: As soon as you find out someone has let you down, you factually describe what you expected and what you got. You don’t wait and let it fester. Bad example: You send this person a text message that asks: “How come you aren’t as reliable as most people around here?”

• Delivering a controversial message. Good example: You’re going to reject a direct report’s proposal – one she has worked on for months. She deserves a complete explanation as well as an opportunity to engage in two-way dialogue. Bad example: You leave her a voice mail saying, “Remember that proposal you came up with? Well, we rejected it. By the way, don’t forget the boss’s birthday lunch this afternoon.”

• Delivering bad news. Good example: When letting someone go, you treat the bad news as bad news. You allow the other person to show their concern and emotions. Bad example: You send a singing e-card – “Ta-da ta-da ta-ta: You no longer work here!”

About the Author

Kerry Patterson is the coauthor of three immediate New York Times bestsellers–Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. He is also a sought-after speaker, consultant and cofounder of VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance. www.vitalsmarts.com

by John McKee, Founder and President of BusinessSuccessCoach.net

::: 7 Tactics To Help Professionals Succeed Amid a Politically Charged Company Culture:::

With Primary Elections now underway in many states throughout the U.S., politics are top of mind for Americans from coast to coast. However, beyond Senate and Gubernatorial implications, aspiring professionals should also spend time considering the political climate within their own work place – you know, those productive and counterproductive human factors present between coworkers ‘jockeying for position’ in an office environment.

While office politics are commonly regarded quite negatively as a culture rife with back stabbing, gossiping, and brown nosing, it also has a very strong upside. The key to successfully navigating your way through the propaganda lies with making the system ‘for’ you rather than against you, as is often the case.

The good news is this: effectively strategizing and executing an office politics “action plan” can literally make your career. Do it poorly or not at all, and stagnant wages or, worse, a pink slip may very well be in your future. Indeed, the very nature of office politics is strategy, which differs from office gossip in that people participating in office politics do so with the objective of gaining advantage, whereas gossip can be a purely social activity. Accordingly, creating an office politics “action plan” detailing specific, proactive strategies to circumvent political landmines is a worthy exercise.
Office politics will occur anytime there are 3 or more people in a conversation, which is a very common occurrence in the workplace. It’s imperative to use these opportunities to get yourself, your point of view, and your ideas into play.

Exactly how might one go about this? Offered below are a number of tactics and approaches to help anyone to become more successful climbing the corporate ladder amid a highly charged political climate:

1. Over-Communicate. Keep others apprised of what you are planning or currently working on. Organizations hate to be surprised and often, when they are, it creates a blueprint for failure – personal or for the project, itself. In many companies this can mean taking meetings with people you may not like or respect, but chalk that up to life in the fast lane. If you think withholding information will allow you to surreptitiously gain professional yardage, think twice. Your concealment can be easily sabotaged based on the plight for secrecy, alone.

2. Mentors – These individuals are still the best way to get an objective handle on what’s really going on in an organization as they can better see the forest through the trees. “Company insider” mentors can give you a fast understanding of the company’s culture. But, a mentor need not be within the organization, as outside mentors can provide a new, fresh and completely unbiased perspective on both your personal style – what it is and what it “should” be – and how your company’s politics are working in general. A mentor is also a confidant with whom you can not only strategize your career, but also vent about a nasty boss and/or co-worker and otherwise get frustrations off your chest without feeding into the office political game. And, it doesn’t matter if your mentor is not the same gender, as a different perspective than your own can actually be better for you in the long run.

3. Open-ended Questions – Ask a lot of questions to different people in different sides of the company. And then shut up. When you hear the perspectives of people in departments or operations other than yours, it helps you to see the world as they see it and understand what they deem important. It may be different than what the boss has told you. Ask peers, “old timers” at all levels, and superiors. Take notes. Don’t interrupt, you don’t need to show how smart or experienced you are – just learn.

4. Review Constantly – Seek constant feedback from others. Talk about what just took place in that meeting you just attended, what the last message from the corporate office ‘really’ said, how you did in a recent presentation, what is driving decisions and directives. This could mean after-hours socializing, but the effort can pay off greatly. Many great managers fail because they believe that what’s right is what is going to succeed, which all too often is not the case.

5. Get ‘Buy In’ – It’s important to ensure that everyone who may be influenced by your programs or initiatives is aware of what’s going to happen and feels like they’ve been involved – or, at least, were able to weigh in with their opinions or recommendations. Ideally they’ll be supportive of what you are doing, but at the very least it may reduce friction that could derail your ultimate, longer-term success. Best case scenario is that you learn something that will ensure the success of the activity and your upward mobility, but even in the worst case where others won’t support you, you’ll have learned who’s for or against you and/or the program. Knowledge is power.

6. Give – and Take – Due Credit. OK, it’s true: guys are credit hogs, which gets old and can come back to bite them over time. Yesterday’s stars often trip and fall, and are then surprised that there’s no one around to help them get back on their feet. On the other hand, gals can go too far the other way – giving the rest of the team so much credit that they don’t get the respect from upper management they deserve for their ideas, work and contributions. These women end up watching others, who are less deserving, get promoted past them. Credit those on your team who deserve it, but don’t miss an opportunity to take credit for your work as well.

7. Style: It still Counts – How you present yourself to others – your external façade – can make a big difference in how you are perceived. While this is seemingly common sense advice, all too often we mistakenly think our presentation – our outward appearance, our use of PowerPoint, our buzzwords and jargon – will be universally accepted. It might, but sometimes those in other departments or companies have preconceived opinions about you or your ‘kind’, however stereotypical or politically incorrect. Also, in every situation make an effort in advance get to know the ‘audience’ you are dealing with, and present yourself in l a light that will better ensure acceptance and, accordingly, a better the chance of success.

About the Author

John McKee, Founder and President of BusinessSuccessCoach.net, is the author of “Career Wisdom” and “21 Ways Women in Management Shoot Themselves in the Foot.” He can be reached at 720-226-9072, [email protected], or through his web sites at www.BusinessSuccessCoach.net and www.BusinessWomanWeb.com.