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Handling Workplace Conflicts
No matter where you work, you will end up dealing with some workplace conflicts. It’s just a fact of life that you will disagree with other people, and sometimes these disagreements will occur at work. While conflict isn’t fun to deal with, it’s important that you don’t ignore it. Instead, you should deal with it in a healthy way. Workplace conflicts can come from a number of places: favoritism, opposing opinions, compensation problems, or just someone having a bad day. But many of these problems stem from two main areas: poor communication and heated emotions. Tension in the workplace can...
read moreThe Importance of Communicating Well
Communication. It’s a word that everyone agrees is important, yet many people have difficulty accomplishing it well. There are a lot of measures to define communication effectiveness. The one that I use is to ask myself 6 questions about my communication to ensure that I am communicating well individually and organizationally to build trust, and also ensure that I am accomplishing what I say I will accomplish. Why? When I think through the purpose of a message/conversation, I ask myself what I am trying to accomplish. I think we’ve all seen the e-mail chains in which everyone makes a...
read moreThe Value of a Summer Job
It’s the summer of 2009, and I’m looking to land a job. I paint the town with my resume, and even check back with each business a week later. To my distress, however, no jobs become available for a teenager with no prior work experience except doing chores for my parents. Luckily for me, one of my parents’ friends hears that I like clouds (this is a true fact; I think that clouds are quite beautiful). Did I want to work for a meteorology lab? They were looking for new data processors. It was going to be boring work—running programs, and then fixing the programs when they inevitably crashed....
read moreFinding the Time: Time Management Skills
Job stress comes from a lot of different locations. Some of them are outside of your control, but a few are within it. One source of job stress for many people is poor time management. We are all guilty of it, and sometimes it makes our lives far more difficult than they need to be. However, today I challenge you to manage your time better. And to help you do that, here are five tips for managing your time in your job and reducing stress along the way. If it can be done in 5 minutes, do it now. I am a notorious avoider. I avoid sending emails because they cause me stress, and I avoid hanging...
read moreJob Searching Over 45
I have worked with many clients who worry that their age will adversely affect their job prospects. They tell me, “no one wants to hire someone my age,” and this mindset leads them to feel defeated before they’ve even started looking. It is true that we exist in a working culture where age discrimination can and sometimes does happen. But you shouldn’t let that fear stop you from continuing to pursue your career and job interests. Remember: you have a depth of experience and knowledge of your industry and field that younger workers lack. Use that knowledge to identify hiring companies and...
read more7 Ways to Improve Your Job Security
As was discussed in our recent article, most companies in the United States are “at-will” companies. This means that a company can dismiss an employee at any time and for any reason, without warning. The prospect of this happening is understandably nerve-wracking, which is why you should never stop growing your network and honing your job search skills. However, there are some things you can do to increase your job security and hopefully prevent this from happening unexpectedly. Know how to communicate with your manager. Having unclogged, clear lines of communication with your manager will...
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