Welcome to the guest blog.
As part of the expansion to help more people tap into their unique talents to communicate, connect and come alive, I've decided to include other voices on the website. I hope the ideas here will help you in your business and in your life. Enjoy!
All my best,
Victoria
Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Flickr.com
Following the rules is one of the infamous “soft skills,” those qualities that are difficult to quantify but that help a businessperson succeed. These skills include many of the things I’ve written about here: courtesy, honesty, dependability, a willingness to cooperate, adaptability, and integrity. These are skills that are difficult to teach. How can you make a person more honest or dependable? If you are someone who struggles with these skills, learning them can be very difficult too. Often these skills are learned at an early age, taught by parents and teachers and reinforced by friends and cultural context. Someone who follows the rules has likely always been contentious about his behavior. He is probably someone who did very well in school, never got into any kind of trouble with the law, and was a well-behaved child. Fortunately though, following the rules is one of the easiest soft skills to learn. It is quantifiable.
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Posted by
Anni M.
Business-cards-review.blogspot.com
In some contexts, self-promotion is a dirty phrase. It evokes self-involved businessmen with naked ambition, people who are unashamed of pushing their own strengths even when those strengths are exaggerated. As maddening as it is, often these people do succeed. Their relentlessness and drive wear on bosses and managers. Eventually, they give in, promoting the obnoxious loud mouth over the more industrious but reserved employee. Why does this happen and what can you do about it? While there is little you can do to stop that annoying self-promoter in his tracks, you can learn how to do your own inoffensive self-promotion. The first step: stop feeling guilty about touting your accomplishments.
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Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Lyriquediscorde.tumblr.com
Human beings are built to fall in love. We see an attractive person and we react. We want to be closer to that person, even if we don’t know why. We get butterflies in our stomachs, our hearts race, our palms sweat, and we suddenly acquire a stutter out of thin air. There is no stopping attraction when it hits. It happened to me once, when a new general manager sauntered through the door of my office like an epauletted Major General out of a 1940’s war movie. His hair was dark and curling, his nose was Roman, and he was every bit as imposing and magnetic as Don Draper or Brad Pitt. I didn’t have time to think or to make a decision, my reaction was immediate and impossible to ignore. I actually blushed! Working with this man for the ensuing two years was an exercise in self-control, discipline, and frustration. If he’d shown any interest, I don’t think I could have resisted dating him, regardless of my long-standing policy to never date co-workers.
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Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Ingramsonline.com
Yesterday I began a discussion about the University of Northern Iowa College of Business Administration’s guidelines for gendered communication in the workplace. What started as a simple discussion of gender in business became an exploration of the many deep-seated stereotypes that are infused into our most well intentioned organizations. In an effort to help women navigate the complex and gender-biased business world, CBA is perpetuating the cycle of unequal treatment. They are encouraging their students to work within the stereotypes rather than encouraging them to simply be good at conducting business. I don’t blame CBA. I think they are trying to help their students succeed in a realistic way, but it does illuminate the larger problem: How can women find equal success if they are not held to equal standards? Surely, men and women are different, but the equation is so individual, so variable, I don’t think we can draw any real conclusions on a population scale. But that doesn’t stop people from trying, over and over again, to put men and women in their own little boxes, ignoring the gray area entirely.
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