Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Can't quite master the ideal tone for the emails you send employees and customers?  Or, do you have employees whole struggle with the tone of their emails?  You might want to check out ToneCheck . ToneCheck , a software program that works with Microsoft Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010, helps to ensure your tone is clearly communicated and understood. It acts somewhat similar to an email spell checker, and you can select the suggested alternatives or ignore the advice. The program evaluates words and phrases for the intensity of eight primary emotions, allowing you to adjust the overall tone before you send your message. ToneCheck scans your messages for terms that may be inadvertently conveying: • Affection • Friendliness • Amusement • Excitement • Sadness • Grief • Fear • Uneasiness • Anger • Shame Over 165 billion email messages are sent worldwide each day. The average worker will spend 10 years of their work life dealing with email. And, sometimes, perhaps a...

Here are 10 tips for how to maximize employee involvement : Have active ways to listen to your employees. Check often with employees to see if the information you are sharing with them is what they need and what they want. Share information about customer satisfaction with employees. Discuss financial performance with your employees and be sure everyone understands the importance of profitability and how they can contribute to profitability. Allow ad hoc teams among employees to form to address organizational problems and work with those teams to tackle the identified issues. Encourage employees to make suggestions for improvement whether those ideas are large or small. Take an idea from one employee and share it with other employees and teams and let everyone make a contribution to build upon that idea. Train! For long-term employees, find ways to keep their jobs interesting through new assignments and challenges. Conduct meetings around specific issues and brainstorm so...

A manager who can't make a decision or who can't make a timely decision will frustrate his/her employees. Equally bad, a lack of decision will impede the progress of the manager's team. Some managers make endless requests for data as a way to postpone their having to make a decision. Employees end up spinning in circles, slicing and dicing the information far beyond what is truly needed for the manager to make a decision. Some managers are simply afraid to make a decision in fear of making a "wrong" decision. These managers don't necessarily request needless data, but simply just never decide. Successful managers gather the data from their employees, make any truly necessary follow-up requests (probing beyond what their employee may have researched/gathered on their own), and then make their decision...knowing that in virtually all cases most decisions are not black and white "right or "wrong," but are the best decisions made at that tim...

Many Human Resource (HR) managers have moved away from questions like "What's your weakness?" and prefer behavior-based questions , which ask you to: describe how you handled specific situations at your former jobs If you about to interview for your next leadership position, be prepared for questions like these (from an article in Reader's Digest ): Tell me about a time when your integrity was challenged . What was the situation, and what did you do? Tell me about a time you had to work with someone you did not personally like . If you could come to work with only three tools to get your job done, what would they be ? What personal and professional development have you been engaged in outside the workplace over the past year? Describe your Outlook calendar on a typical day

" A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

Can't decide what business book to take on your summer vacation this year to accompany your "fun-reading" books?  I recommend David Grossman's, You Can't Not Communicate, 2 ."  Why, because this updated installment of his previous best-seller with virtually the same title is an easy read and one you can finish in an afternoon. More important, David gives you lots of practical, real-world, wise, straight-forward advice on how to communicate more effectively as a leader -- all tips and techniques you can start to do when you return from vacation.  So, taking an afternoon to read this book even while you are on vacation will be well worth it! Particularly helpful are the: Top 10 must-do strategies for persuasive presentations Five easy strategies for managing the company rumor mill Twelve must-have skills for effective two-way communication David also explains: the importance of having a "messagemap" ways leaders at ...

National Volunteer Week is April 21-27 .  The week when nonprofit organizations throughout the U.S. will celebrate and honor their volunteers. If you are not already volunteering, what a great time to start.  And, if you are a workplace leader who supports a volunteer program at your business, you already know that by encouraging employees to give back to your community you are: building teamwork motivating employees attracting new hires In fact, job seekers much prefer companies that have a strong volunteer program. And, a growing number of businesses are rewarding employees who volunteer by giving them extra vacation time and other incentives. Fortunately, throughout the U.S. there are hundreds of volunteer opportunities where employees can contribute individually, or where leaders can organize teams of employees to volunteer together on a routine and scheduled basis. To find organizations in need of volunteers, go to Volunteer Match and type in your z...