Category: Business (page 1 of 5)

Stacey Abrams on How to be More Persuasive 

 Stacey Abrams, activist, lawyer, and politician, is the first Black woman to run for governor for Georgia and come within 55,000 votes of winning. She was instrumental in helping Georgia Democrats to succeed in the 2020 presidential race and the 2021 Senate runoff. Abrams’s strategy for success is to use powerful words for anyone to achieve success. 

 As the author of a political thriller, Abrams believes the way to be more persuasive is to tell a story and make the narrative about your audience. People tend to be more receptive when they can see themselves in that situation. If the person you’re addressing is a victim of circumstance or can benefit from it, they want to know what you have to say. Abram’s strategy is effective for getting voters to the polls and for anyone in the business sector.

 Abrams uses the literary concept of in media res, the Latin term for “in the middle of things.” Get to the issue first, then go back to what the cause was. People respond when you begin with the problem then go back to how they arrived in the situation. Part of her strategy is never to have misconceptions about her audience. By sharing her beliefs with an audience that didn’t necessarily agree with her views, she convinced people to consider what she had to say. She scheduled appearances at Democratic events, but her strategy involved engaging audiences with different interests and ideas.

 Stacey appeared at Sci-Fi events, local gun shows, and advertised on country music radio stations. A lot of politicians only seem at events geared toward their political party. Stacey believes that we often tell people they aren’t allowed to hear what we have to say. She wanted people to listen to her message. If they disagreed, they still had the chance to make up their minds. It’s more effective to be persuasive by continuing to get the message out. Don’t speak to the audience once, then go away.

 The same principle applies in business. The average person has to see an ad seven or more times before they buy a product. Stacey’s persistence and determination to help fellow Democrats win their elections played a significant role in electing Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. It’s the storyteller’s responsibility to tell the audience the whole story, not just one chapter.

Preventing Burnout and Protecting the Mental Well-Being of Your Employees

Employee burnout is the recent workplace epidemic. It shows up in different correlated signs such as irritation, disrupted sleep, exhaustion, and headaches. These physical, emotional, and mental disruptions are effects of burnout. Having been a burnout victim, Paula Davis has since founded the Stress and Resilience Institute and authoring Beating Burnout at work to give insight on how to avoid the same fate.
Stress at a workplace is subject to discussion, as many believe that it is impossible to have a stress-free- work environment, as is life. However, putting necessary measures in place creates a safe environment for addressing issues before they get out of hand.

Lack of support from leaders, in-effective communication, unreasonable deadlines, unfair treatments, blurred boundaries between home and workplace, unclear job expectations are the major causes of employee burnout in workplaces.

How to Prevent Employee Burnout in Workplaces

We live most of our lives in our heads; making it an inhabitable place is the first significant step to a healthy functioning person. As most of the attributes are mostly intangible, having a degree of emotional intelligence, including self-awareness, curiosity, and courage, are significant prerequisites. Taking the following steps to ensure safe working atmospheres for high productivity;

  • Encourage Paid Time Off; Employees do not utilize their time off because they know of the many company policies on holiday pay cuts. Reforming such company policies encourage increased productivity, and it’s most likely to motivate them.
  • Having Wellness Programs and Health Insurances; Perks of being alive is critical for injuries, health disruptions, and even death. Checking on their welfare by emphasizing additional wellness resources, financial wellness resources, fitness programs, etc., fosters an excellent long-term employee-employer relationship.
  • Having Wellness Programs and Health Insurances; Perks of being alive is critical for injuries, health disruptions, and even death. Checking on their welfare by emphasizing additional wellness resources, financial wellness resources, fitness programs, etc., fosters an excellent long-term employee-employer relationship.
  • Creating a positive conflict environment: Having hall meetings, period to period surveys about the work setting encourages positive feedback and actionable consequences. Laura Delizonna, a Stanford University instructor, author, and speaker, states that psychological safety is not about being friendly and polite but transparent and authentic. This attribute breeds a constructive ground for the positive feedback.

Employee burnout affects both the employee and the employers alike. Approaching the issues through prevention saves both parties the unlikely aftermath. The meaningful collaboration eventually breeds growth for those involved.

The Importance of Humor in a Leadership Position

When asked to name quintessential leadership qualities, most folks will mention strength, courage, wisdom, and compassion. These are all important attributes, but there’s another key social skill that is often overlooked. Humor, or the ability to make people laugh, is the oft-forgotten quality.

A serious leader who never cracks a smile will have a hard time connecting with employees. They’ll struggle to build the warm, human relationships that strengthen a team. Humor is the balm that loosens up the meeting room and allows true connections to take place. Here are four concrete benefits of using humor to boost leadership.Build Trust

Would you trust a person who never laughs? It’s difficult to acknowledge your shared humanity with someone who’s hopelessly serious all the time. When employees see that you’re a full-fledged person just like them, they’ll find it easier to trust you.

Encourage Open Dialogue

If your meetings are too serious, then it can be hard for people to break the ice. Your employees might have questions, concerns, or ideas that they’re too nervous to express because of an overly tense atmosphere. Just by cracking a joke, you can lighten the mood and invite people to speak their minds.

Improve Employee Morale

A serious workplace is rarely a fun place to be. When employees feel they have to check their sense of humor at the door, they’ll be counting the hours until they can go home and return to their normal selves. By making it clear that laughter is encouraged, you’ll make everyone happier to be in the office.

Boost Performance

When you use humor to your advantage as a leader, you create a better working environment. This, in turn, makes your entire team more productive. Collaboration will increase as people truly enjoy working together in the lighthearted atmosphere you’ve created. People will work harder because they’ll be pleased with their working relationships. All this will improve your team’s overall performance.

Running a business is a serious matter. That’s why you should get serious about injecting some humor into the workplace. Not only will it make you a better leader, but it will also make your job (and everybody else’s job) a lot more fun.

 

For more information, check out Nhcc.us

How to Support Generation Z in the Workplace

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone in the workforce, but Generation Z may be getting hit the hardest right now. They may not be in the most danger of dying from COVID, but their lives are being disrupted at the worst possible time. The younger members of Generation Z have had their educations disrupted, and the older members have had to enter a workforce that is unlike anything we’ve seen before if they can find employment in the first place. Things will be hard for them, and it’s up to you as an employer to support them during this trying time.

Focusing on Skill Development

Since young people’s training and education have been so thoroughly disrupted by the pandemic, employers will need to focus more on on-the-job training for their Gen-Z employees. This may not seem like a big change, but it will involve being patient with your youngest hires and prioritizing intergenerational mentoring in the workplace. It might also mean extending orientation periods across the first year of employment to make up for the training and education a new hire might not receive thanks to COVID.

Stress Management

Generation Z has reported higher levels of anxiety and depression over the last several years, and that only stands to get worse during the pandemic. Unfortunately, not many employers have put measures into place to address the effects of stress on their employees. That will have to change as younger people enter the workforce. This can include support groups for those who are just starting out in their careers and coaching interventions to boost their confidence. Being a new hire is hard enough, but it will be even harder for those who feel the pressure to succeed despite not being able to receive the training and education they need.

Emotional Intelligence and Understanding

Thanks to everything that has been happening this year, Generation Z might be more vigilant to the emotions of others in the workplace. This needs to be taken into consideration by their employers and older coworkers. There is an unfortunate tendency to belittle and underestimate younger generations and how they perceive the world, but they are the future of your workforce, so respect their emotional intelligence and understand they are just as capable as anyone else even if they will need to go about things differently than you did.

Tips for Conducting Effective Interviews

Interviewing is an activity that most businesses devote a lot of time to. It involves exchanging information between two individuals looking to fill a job opening, promotion, special tasks, or other inquiries. It also provides employers with a chance to delve deeper into the skills and qualifications of candidates.

How to Prepare Effectively for Interviews

Every interviewer’s main aim is to find the best-suited person for a particular task or job. It is therefore important to prepare in advance by following the tips below:

Prepare Relevant Questions

The preparation process of an interview takes up the most significant part of the process. Coming up with a list of interview questions takes up time, but it is a necessary step. The questions need to be aligned with the job requirements and the organization involved. Follow-up questions can also provide more details than some of the canned, rehearsed responses.

Prepare for Candidates’ Interview Sections

Interviews should generally be a two-way street. Candidates should be encouraged to ask questions about the company. Excellent candidates will ask intelligent questions about:

  • Ongoing and future projects
  • Expectations of the company
  • Culture of the company

How to Conduct an Interview

Many interviewees go to an interview filled with fear and anxiety. The interviewer is responsible for guiding the conversation and making the candidate feel encouraged. There are various ways to do this:

  • Support interviewees by nodding while they try to bring out a point or answer a question
  • Repeating phrases or rewording questions to sound more rhetorical
  • Using meaningless expressions such as “Umm…” when seeking an emphasis on a point

An interviewer uses his questions as a tool to develop information. The questions should be in a particular order and a broad pattern. It allows candidates to respond with the information they feel essential.

The information gathered from interviews is analyzed from an objective and subjective view. The content presented is confirmed through questions. Interviewers also try to assess the attitude and feelings of candidates.

Conclusion

Many interviews fail due to simple mistakes, such as failing to document what is discussed. Collecting this valuable information can help come up with follow-up questions. It also helps discover mistakes and errors that may have been previously missed.

Leadership Lessons from the CEO of Waze

If you haven’t heard of the hit app Waze, I’ll quickly break it down for you. Waze is a company and app for your smartphone that makes driving easier. It can tell you about potential traffic delays, give you the most optimal route for getting to where you wanna go, and even allow you to set up carpools. Like any successful business, it took time and hard work to get where they are now. They didn’t always make the right decisions or handle situations perfectly while on their way to the top. Noam Bardin, the CEO of Waze, has learned a lot since Waze first began, and understands that the lessons he’s learned can be used to help other entrepreneurs succeed in their endeavors, especially in a world where we’re living with the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are a few leadership lessons from Noam Bardin, CEO of Waze.

Early Adopters Aren’t Always Helpful

When it comes to releasing a product into the world, such as Noam did with Waze, you’re going to have early adopters who are on board for the concept and those who tend to wait it out and see what those early adopters have to say. Noam believes that while early adopters are great, they’re not always as helpful as you might hope when you’re trying to determine the needs of a wider audience. You’ll likely have to work hard in order to bring early adopters on and it’s important to stay vigilant as making that leap from early adopters to a mainstream audience is where things really begin to escalate in difficulty, especially as something that an early adopter loves about your product may not work for a wider audience.

Be Willing To Let People Go If They’re Not Cutting It

When first starting your business venture, you may bring on a small team of passionate individuals to help you reach your goals and make your dreams a reality. While that small group may be integral to your business now, remember that this might not always be the case. For example, you may have a team member who performed exceptionally well when your company was only made up of 15 or so individuals. Once you become larger, it’s possible they just won’t perform to that same capacity. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses in the business world, so you have to be willing to let a teammate go if they’re just not the right fit for your business any longer.

Take Your Time Discovering Your Passions

When you’re in your 20s and fresh out of college, you’ll likely be thinking about your big business plan that’s going to set you up for life. Noam believes that at that age, you should take the time to find yourself and what you’re passionate about instead of focusing on your career. You may find that what your original business plans are something you don’t care about at all, and instead create a vision of something you’re truly passionate about.

Building an Office Culture That Will Last

Having a positive culture in your company office is one of the most important parts of success in today’s business world. Employees all over the world constantly leave their jobs in order to seek a space where they’ll truly be appreciated and feel like more than just a body. When your office has a strong culture, employees are more motivated which can ultimately lead to better performance and productivity, which can only be good for your business. But how does one go about creating a strong, lasting office culture?

Open Communication

One of the most important features of company culture is open communication between leaders and employees. Leaders need to be transparent. Transparency builds trust, even in the worst situations. While the idea of giving your employees bad news can be stressful, it shows them that you trust them with this information. This, in turn, will make them trust you. When there’s a sense of trust between leaders and employees, everyone will be more motivated to work their hardest and be open and honest with one another about what is or isn’t working for the company.

Get Everyone Involved

Organization involvement is great for building a positive culture within your office. When everyone is involved, they feel like they’re truly part of a team and that their voices matter within the company. This, like having open communication, can make employees more motivated to work their hardest in order to help the company succeed. Give your employee’s leadership positions that give them new responsibilities, such as being a project lead. When trying to make decisions that affect the company overall, get your team involved, and ask what they think. Hearing multiple perspectives is a great way to help a company grow and employees will know that their opinions matter.

Invest In Your Employees

A great way to build a lasting, positive culture within your office is by investing in your employees. This means helping them grow their skillset and pushing them out of their comfort zone in order to help them succeed further. This is a great way to not only motivate your employees but help them grow into a role they may have thought they couldn’t take on. This is great for both them as an individual and for your company, meaning they can take on new responsibilities that can bring your company further.

Fostering Self-Discipline as a Leader

When you’re in a leadership position, not only do you set an example for all of your subordinates, but you’re also responsible for a lot more than the regular employee. It stands to reason that you should be good at disciplining yourself so that you can attain more of the goals that you have set out for yourself. In fact, fostering self-discipline will not only make you happier and help you reach your goals more quickly, but it also helps you set out some of the best examples for your employees so that they too achieve more, thereby making everyone around them more successful and helping your company thrive. Here are some ways that you can get yourself in the habit of using self-discipline.

Work on Your Weaknesses

We all have shortcomings, but developing self-discipline is about learning how to overcome them. It’s easy to do the things that are fun or come easily for us, but it’s a lot harder to develop the skills in areas where you struggle. If you want to be more productive, you should work on your weaknesses because they’re often a lot easier to overcome than what you might think. Plus, you’ll reap the rewards many times over when you show yourself and your employees that it’s possible to move past weaknesses.

Make Goals and Execute

If you want to know where you’re going, you need a road map with destinations. Making clear goals is easy for some, but you need to be able to put it into practice. Write down your goals and the steps you’ll take every day or week to accomplish them.

Don’t Cut Yourself Short

Some people think that there’s a limit to how long they can do something or how hard they can work. Those people often put limits on themselves, and then they only live up to the caps that they’ve arbitrarily placed on themselves. Give yourself plenty of room to grow by not putting caps on your willpower and ability to work.

If you’re trying to develop self-discipline as a leader, it’s a worthy goal, and you’ll probably find that you’re living a happier life when you do because you’ll achieve your goals and inspire your employees to achieve theirs.

How to Stay Focused While Working From Home

Working from home can seem great at first, but it may get a bit more difficult as time goes on. Staying focused and making sure you have a productive workday from the comfort of your own home is a lot harder than it sounds. Luckily, there are a few things you can do throughout the day to help boost your productivity and keep you focused.

Take a Walk

One of the simplest ways to improve your focus at work is to just take a break and go for a walk. Take a pause from work and leave your desk for a while. After hours of staring at a laptop and sitting in one place, the body can start to wear down and your mind will easily lose focus. To make sure this doesn’t happen, stand up for a bit or take a walk around the block. It’ll improve your work and your day drastically.

Get Moving in Your Seat

When you’re not on a break or walking around, you can easily do some exercises while you are working. Engage in some seated exercises to get your blood flowing and keep your mind focused. Easy ones to try are neck flexion, upper trapezius stretch, strengthening shoulder shrug, chest bicep stretch, and more. If you’re going to spend all day at your desk, doing these exercises can make it easier and more comfortable for you.

Designate a Working Space

Be sure to pick a spot in your home and make it your designated working area. Even if you don’t have a desk, use the kitchen table, a chair in the living room, or even sitting on your bed. Just make sure to set it up in a way to assign it as your work area. And use it for only that If it feels too much like home, it can make staying focused a lot harder. By having a designated area, you are more likely to stay in the workflow and keep up your focus. 

Set Up a Schedule

As you work from home, keep a detailed schedule for your day and make sure to follow it. Don’t just wake up, roll out of bed, and get to work two n=minutes after your alarm goes off. Set up your morning routine just as you would if you were heading out to work instead of working from home. Schedule in your breaks and write down goals for the day so you know what needs to be done and how much time you have to do it. This will allow you to have a more productive day. 

Helpful Podcasts for Small Business Owners

Being a small business owner has its benefits and challenges. As a leader, it’s important to always brush up on your skills and learn new ways to run your business. By being open to new strategies and influences, you can greatly improve how your small business operates and functions. Podcasts have become a great outlet for small business owners. Take a look at the most helpful ones:

 

Entrepreneur on Fire

This entrepreneurially driven podcast is hosted by John Lee Dumas. Each episode of Entrepreneur on Fire runs about 30 minutes and focuses on subjects such as operating a business and becoming successful. Many of the episodes listeners have the chance to hear Mr. Dumas interview successful small business owners. With everyone from tech start-up founders to solopreneurs, listeners are able to hear about their journey to success. 

 

Online Marketing Made Easy

Marketing is a huge factor when running a small business and an incredibly imperative skill to have. The podcast Online Marketing Made Easy is hosted by Amy Porterfield who discusses the ins and outs of online marketing. The topics of each episode Amy Porterfield give advice for marketing an eCommerce business or blogging for business and brings on guests to joining the discussion to lend their helpful knowledge. 

 

Real Money Talks

A great podcast for empowering entrepreneurs is Real Money Talks. The host Loral Langmeyer uses each informative and entertaining episode to educate and empower entrepreneurs. This podcast’s main focus is to teach how to have important money talks that are straight, to the point. Not only is this great for entrepreneurs, but it can also be applied to everyday life. If your main concern as a small business owner is money, this is the podcast for you.

 

The EntreLeadership Podcast

As a business owner, it’s always important to brush up on your leadership skills. The EntreLeadership Podcast is the perfect resource for lessons on becoming a stronger and more effective leader. This show is hosted by Ken Coleman who uses each episode as an opportunity to provide listeners with new leadership and business strategies to help a business grow and flourish. This podcast also features celebrity business owners as guests to offer their tried and true business advice.