Saturday, June 9, 2012

Six Essentials For Finding A New Job

Here are half a dozen essential tips for landing the right job -- in good economic times or bad:

Try a Sales Technique

Be prepared during a telephone screening or a first interview to make the "60-second sell," a four- to five-sentence summary of your biography and career accomplishments, according to Robin Ryan, a career counselor and author of 60 Seconds & You're Hired!

"When they say, 'Tell me about yourself, why should I hire you?' you have a memorized statement about why you'd be good on the job," says Ryan.

Work Your Personal Network

Networking doesn't have to be confined to business contacts, especially when you're trying to break into a big company that may use automated software to screen applicants.

Ask everyone you know if they have a connection to a specific employer; the goal is to get your resume forwarded to a hiring manager via the company's internal network, rather than having it come from the outside and get lost in the shuffle of other applicants.

"Microsoft gets 100,000 resumes a month -- how do you think they're going to find you otherwise through that cyber hole?" Ryan says.

Expand Your Horizon

Julie Jansen, a career coach and author of I Don't Know What I Want, But I Know It's Not This, recommends attending professional association meetings in a related field as well as those in your own specialty.

For example, although your experience may be in marketing, add gatherings for finance executives or other fields in which you could apply your skills and experience to your regular schedule of ad and marketing group meetings.

Another networking strategy is to give it the old college try by tapping alumni -- even those you don't know.

"Most universities have online directors of alumni, so I'd go that route if possible," says Jansen. "If not, contacting the alumni office would be Plan B."

Check Your Skill Set

Although you may not have the time or financial resources to pursue an advanced degree, taking additional coursework in your field to boost specific skills can get you noticed by a recruiter. Also, don't forget to cite key experience gained from volunteering for community, school or nonprofit groups.

"Look at your transferrable skills, including project management, budgeting, supervising others and organizational planning," Ryan says.

Know Your Worth

Even during a downturn, it's a mistake to settle for less just to get the job. Before accepting an offer, consult a salary survey or online salary calculator to make sure the package is competitive within your field.

"It's an outdated idea that you should take anything to get your foot in the door," Ryan says. "It could take you 10 years to get a decent salary."

Do It Daily

Whether it's posting your resume in the common area of your apartment building, or sharing your job hunt with your doctor, dentist or dermatologist, you should incorporate your search for work into every aspect of your daily life.

"Do something every single day that is about looking for a job," Jansen says.

Thanks to Robert DiGiacomo, for Yahoo! Hot Jobs / Career Advice Monster / Monster
http://career-advice.monster.com/job-search/getting-started/6-essentials-for-finding-a-new-job-hot-jobs/article.aspx?WT.mc_n=CRMUS000096

 
 

Nerve Cells Key To Making Sense Of Our Senses

ScienceDaily (Nov. 20, 2011) — The human brain is bombarded with a cacophony of information from the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin. Now a team of scientists at the University of Rochester, Washington University in St. Louis, and Baylor College of Medicine has unraveled how the brain manages to process those complex, rapidly changing, and often conflicting sensory signals to make sense of our world.

The answer lies in a relatively simple computation performed by single nerve cells, an operation that can be described mathematically as a straightforward weighted average. The key is that the neurons have to apply the correct weights to each sensory cue, and the authors reveal how this is done.

The study, to be published online Nov. 20 in Nature Neuroscience, represents the first direct evidence of how the brain combines multiple sources of sensory information to form as accurate a perception as possible of its environment, the researchers report.

The discovery may eventually lead to new therapies for people with Alzheimer's disease and other disorders that impair a person's sense of self-motion, says study coauthor Greg DeAngelis, professor and chair of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester.

This deeper understanding of how brain circuits combine different sensory cues could also help scientists and engineers to design more sophisticated artificial nervous systems such as those used in robots, he adds.

The brain is constantly confronted with changing and conflicting sensory input, says DeAngelis. For example, during IMAX theater footage of an aircraft rolling into a turn "you may find yourself grabbing the seat," he says.

The large visual input makes you feel like you are moving, but the balance cues conveyed by sensors in your inner ear indicate that your body is in fact safely glued to the theater seat. So how does your brain decide how to interpret these conflicting inputs?

The study shows that the brain does not have to first "decide" which sensory cue is more reliable. "Indeed, this is what's exciting about what we have shown," says DeAngelis. The study demonstrates that the low-level computations performed by single neurons in the brain, when repeated by millions of neurons performing similar computations, accounts for the brain's complex ability to know which sensory signals to weight as more important.

"Thus, the brain essentially can break down a seemingly high-level behavioral task into a set of much simpler operations performed simultaneously by many neurons," explains DeAngelis.

The study confirms and extends a computational theory developed earlier by Alexandre Pouget, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester and a coauthor on the paper. The theory predicted that neurons fire in a manner predicted by a weighted summation rule, which was largely confirmed by the neural data. Surprisingly, however, the weights that the neurons learned were slightly off target from the theoretical predictions, and the difference could explain why behavior also varies slightly from subject to subject, the authors conclude. "Being able to predict these small discrepancies establishes an exciting connection between computations performed at the level of single neurons and detailed aspects of behavior," says DeAngelis.

To gather the data, the researchers designed a virtual-reality system to present subjects with two directional cues, a visual pattern of moving dots on a computer screen to simulate traveling forward and physical movement of the subject created by a platform. The researchers varied the amount of randomness in the motion of the dots to change how reliable the visual cues were relative to the motion of the platform. At the end of each trial, subjects indicated which direction they were heading, to the right or to the left.

The experiments were conducted at Washington University, and the team included Christopher Fetsch, now a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Washington, and Dora Angelaki, now chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine. The research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, and the James McDonnell foundation.

Story Source: The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Rochester, via Newswise.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Thanks to University of Rochester / Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111120134821.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

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How To Spot A Liar At Work

"You can count on my support."

"It wasn't my fault."

"You're next in line for a promotion."

Really?

Wouldn't it be great to know when we're being lied to? If only spotting falsehoods were as easy as it is portrayed on television shows like "Lie to Me" and "The Mentalist." But in real life, deception detection remains an inexact science.

Lying triggers stress
For the vast majority of individuals the act of lying triggers a heightened stress response. These signs of stress and anxiety are obvious, if you know where to look. Basically, research shows that the mind has to work a lot harder to generate a false response. One theory, posed by Daniel Langleben, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania, is that, in order to tell a lie, the brain first has to stop itself from telling the truth, then create the deception, and then deal with the accompanying emotions of guilt, anxiety, and the fear of being caught.

Spotting deception begins with observing a person's baseline behavior under relaxed or generally stress-free conditions so that you can detect meaningful deviations. One of the strategies that experienced police interrogators use is to ask a series of non-threatening questions while observing how the subject behaves when there is no reason to lie. Then, when the more difficult issues get addressed, the officers watch for changes in nonverbal behavior that indicate deception around key points.

In business dealings, the best way to understand someone's baseline behavior is to observe her over an extended period of time. Note her speech tone, gestures, blinking patterns, etc. Once you've assessed what is "normal" for a co-worker, you will be able to detect shifts, when her body language is "out of character." Just remember (and this is key), that the atypical signals you detect may be signs of lying—or a state of heightened anxiety caused by many other factors.

One of the biggest body language myths about liars is that they avoid eye contact. In fact, many liars, especial the most brazen, may actually overcompensate (to prove that they are not lying) by making too much eye contact and holding it too long.

12 tell-tale signs of lying
My best advice is not to rely on any one signal. You'll be more successful if you look for clusters of behaviors (three or four body language cues that reinforce one another). To increase your chances of spotting a falsehood, watch for a cluster of body language cues that include:

1. A fake smile. It's hard for liars to give a real smile while seeking to deceive. (Real smiles crinkle the corners of the eyes and change the entire face. Faked smiles involve the mouth only.)

2. Unusual response time. When a lie is planned (and rehearsed), deceivers start their answers more quickly than truth-tellers. If taken by surprise, however, the liar takes longer to respond, as the process of inhibiting the truth and creating a lie takes extra time.

3. Verbal cues. When lying, a person's vocal tone rises to a higher pitch. Other verbal cues include rambling, selective wording (in which one avoids answering the question exactly as asked), stammering, and the use of qualifiers ("To the best of my knowledge." "I could be wrong."). It's also been noted that liars use fewer contractions: "I did not have sex with that woman" rather than "I didn't . . . "

4. Under or over production of saliva. Watch for sudden swallowing in gulps or an increased need to drink water or moisten lips.

5. Pupil dilation. One nonverbal signal that is almost impossible to fake is pupil dilation. The larger pupil size that most people experience when telling a lie can be attributed to an increased amount of tension and concentration.

6. Change in blink rate. A person's blink rate slows down as she decides to lie and stays low through the lie. Then it increases rapidly (sometimes up to eight times normal rate) after the lie.

7.  Foot movements. When lying, people will often display nervousness and anxiety through increased foot movements. They will fidget and shuffle their feet and wind one around the other or around the furniture. They will stretch and curl their feet to relieve tension, or even kick out in a miniaturized attempt to run away.

8. Face touching. A person's nose may not grow when he tells a lie, but watch closely and you'll notice that when someone is about to lie or make an outrageous statement, he'll often unconsciously rub his nose. (This is most likely because a rush of adrenaline opens the capillaries and makes his nose itch.) Covering the mouth or eyes are additional common gestures people make when they are being untruthful.

9. Incongruence. When a person believes what she is saying, her gestures and expressions are in alignment with her words. When you see a mismatch—where gestures contradict words—such as a side-to-side head shake while saying "yes" or a person frowning and staring at the ground while telling you she is happy, that's a sign of deceit, or at least an inner conflict between what that person is thinking and saying.

10. Changes in gestures. Often, in an effort to prevent their gestures from "giving away" the lie, deceivers will hold their bodies unnaturally still. At other times, especially after being asked a searching question, they may accelerate pacifying gestures—biting their lips, rubbing their hands together, fidgeting with jewelry, or touching their hair.

11. Micro-expressions. Difficult to catch, but if you ever spot a fleeting expression that contradicts a verbal statement, believe what you see and not what you hear.

12. The quick-check glance. This may follow a less-than-truthful response: liars will immediately look down and away, then quickly glance back at you to see if you bought the falsehood.

A final caveat: If a person really believes the lie, there is no way that you can detect the falsehood. However, unless you are dealing with a pathological liar or a superb actor, you can definitely improve your odds of spotting those who try to deceive you!

About the Author(s):- Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is an executive coach, leadership consultant, and international keynote speaker at corporate, government, and association events. She is the author of The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work.  Her newest book is The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help—or Hurt How You Lead.

Thanks to Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. / AMAMET / AMA—American Management Association
http://www.amanet.org/training/articles/How-to-Spot-a-Liar-at-Work.aspx?pcode=XA9U&CMP=NLC-MovingAhead2010&wm_tag=email&spMailingID=4125141&spUserID=NzQ2ODgwMDYxNwS2&spJobID=126128675&spReportId=MTI2MTI4Njc1S0

 
 

Thursday, June 7, 2012

What Do Office Doorways Say About Leadership?

What do your organization's workplace doorways signal to employees? Whether it's the front door, the employee entrance, or the boss's cubicle doorway, have you ever considered what happens in employees' minds when they pass over their work threshold?

As a leader, you probably haven't given it much thought, but consider this recently reported brain research* published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: people become forgetful when they pass through doorways.

Psychologist Dr. Gabriel Radvansky from the University of Notre Dame conducted memory research aimed at uncovering why humans often forget what they were doing when moving from one room to another. It turns out that passing through a doorway may somehow be involved in how our brain files away information. Dr. Radvansky theorizes that the door acts as an "event boundary" that may cause us to "lose our thought' after we pass through the door.

Interesting.

Could that describe the phenomenon of perfectly responsible adults who walk through their workplace doorway and "forget" how to behave maturely? You know who I'm talking about—outside of work these folks hold positions of responsibility and authority: parent, committee chairperson, elder in their house of worship. But then, they walk through their office door and "POOF!" they seemingly have forgotten their adult capacities back at home. Is the brain's storage system the culprit?

Of course, I'm taking liberties with this research. It's not that people have forgotten how to behave like adults; it's that they don't believe they will be supported in their endeavors to be a grown-up. I firmly believe that the work environment shapes employee behavior. As Geary Rummler and Alan Brache wrote in their book, Improving Performance, "if you put a good performer against a bad system, the system will win almost every time." And guess what? People in positions of leadership are in the best position to create a welcoming "system" that allows people to bring their full adult-ness to work.

This idea of an "event boundary" and the way employees perceive their world can be a useful reminder to those in management. Even though employees don't really "forget" how to be responsible people when they cross their workplace entry, that door does signal something to them.

Give it some thought: What does your office door signal to your employees?

Thanks to Jennifer Miller / People-Equation
http://people-equation.com/what-do-office-doorways-say-about-leadership/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThePeopleEquation+%28The+People+Equation%29

 
 

Five New Skills Job Seekers Need

Job seekers have had the same list of critical skills to brush up on or acquire for decades -- things like careful follow-up, attention to grammar and punctuation, and great listening abilities. But today's overcrowded job market and the ever-shrinking attention spans of hiring managers are creating brand-new job search requirements.      

Here are five new must-have skills for job seekers today:

Pain Spotting

It used to be that you could apply to a job and parrot the requirements listed in the job ad. But simply saying, "You want organizational and communication skills? I've got 'em!" won't cut it now. Every job seeker says the exact same thing in his cover letter. These days, you've got to do more. You've got to figure out -- by reading the job ad and researching the employer -- what sort of business pain lurks behind the job opening.

What are your choices? There's growth-related pain, and there's consolidation-related pain. There's pain associated with customers fleeing, with competitors outsourcing the work and cutting costs, and with a shortage of talent in an industry. When you know or can guess at the pain behind the job ad, you have something of substance to say to a hiring manager. Until then, you're just another banana in a very crowded bunch.

Storytelling

"I have a strong work ethic and get along with all kinds of people" is about as compelling as "I had cereal for breakfast" -- but, worse, it's not even believable. Anyone can claim these characteristics, and nearly everyone does. To get a hiring manager's attention, tell a brief and powerful story that demonstrates what you get done when you work: "When our big Q4 product release was delayed a month, I put together an outbound-calling campaign that kept our accounts from bailing and got us $450,000 in preorders" will let a hiring manager know some of the good things that happen when you showed up, saw and conquered.

Using a Human Voice

The old "results-oriented professional with a bottom-line orientation" style of resume is as out of date as high-fructose corn syrup. A human voice in your resume and your other outreach to employers will separate you from the boilerplate-spouting legions of typical job seekers. Replace tired corporate-speak like "Met or exceeded expectations" with a concrete, visual bullet point like "I sold our sales VP on a matrix territory structure that boosted sales 14 percent." Don't be afraid of the word "I" in your resume, or of using vernacular. Real people -- such as your next boss -- use slang every day.

Showing Relevance

The typical job seeker has a one-size-fits-all resume that gets pressed into service whether the open position is for a purchasing coordinator, a marketing assistant or a human resources analyst. That's no good. Your background won't be relevant to the hiring manager unless you highlight the accomplishments from each past job that have the most in common with the role you're pursuing. For a purchasing job, spell out your negotiating milestones. For the marketing role, tell the reader how you created or maintained a database and about your writing and creative skills. For the HR opportunity, describe the times when you untangled thorny human problems. Update your resume as often as necessary to make sure your most relevant stories come to the fore.

Knowing Your Value

No one will pay you more than you're worth, so know your value before you begin an active job search. Start with Monster's Salary Wizard so you know your market value and don't get lowballed in the hiring process. If you and an employer have wildly different ideas about what your background is worth, keep looking. Even in a tough economy -- maybe even because of if -- your ability to solve expensive employer problems is worth a lot more than peanuts. Arm yourself with information, and then get out there and tell your story.
 
 
 
 

Eight Dangers Of Collaboration

Most of what is written about collaboration is positive. Even hip. Collaboration is championed enthusiastically by the Enterprise 2.0 experts, as well as leading thinkers like Don Tapscott, as the crucial approach for the 21st century. Collaboration creates once-elusive "buy-in or "empowerment," improves problem solving, increases creativity, is key to innovation at companies like Lego, Pixar, and Intuit. It slashes costs and improves productivity.

So why is collaboration as rare as it is?

The short answer is that collaboration is dangerous. Inherently, collaboration says something is happening outside of one's immediate control. This by itself seems threatening to some, but there are several specific reasons why it appears dangerous:

  1. Not knowing the answer. The fundamental premise of collaboration is that you can use it to solve complex problems that are beyond the function of one domain or expertise. That means that each participant needs to be comfortable with a certain amount of ambiguity. Most people have built their careers — perhaps even their identity — on being the expert. They don't like feeling ignorant.
  2. Unclear or uncomfortable roles. Role and responsibilities in the collaboration space tend not to be hierarchical; they are often fluid, changing from phase to phase of the work. This can be especially hard for senior executives, because it may mean taking off their mantle of being the "chief of answers" and becoming part of the "tribe of doing things."
  3. Too much talking, not enough doing. Collaboration means a shift from thinking big ideas alone, and more into the real-time mess of problem solving with others. Shifting work from "I tell, they do" to a "We think together" approach will appear at first to be all about talking. Like we've moved to the land of yack, yack, yack. But thinking together closes a gap. By thinking together, people can then act without checking back in because they were there when the decision got made. They've already had the debates about all the tradeoffs that actually make something work. But that means organizations spend more time in the messy and time-consuming up-front process of designing solutions that'll work.
  4. Information (over)sharing. For collaboration to work, information is rarely left in any silo but is shared and often combined in unexpected ways to reframe problems. For some people, this can mean information overload. For others, who withhold information in order to retain power, the free flow of information is threatening.
  5. Fear of fighting. Collaborating means dealing with conflicting priorities. "Turf" isn't always clear. If you avoid conflict, or don't know how to fight effectively, nothing will happen. Knowing how to debate the tradeoffs between many viable options means knowing how to argue with each other about the business in more open and visible ways. (I've already written about Steve Jobs doing this with his team.) Not doing it well, or doing it wrong — or simply losing? Very risky. Very dangerous.
  6. More work. Often, collaboration happens on top of other work. Participants are already plenty busy with their "day job" and the new project may be especially stressful because of this. Until the problems that any collaboration project is aimed to fix gets solved, a collaboration project can often be overwhelming. Most people describe collaboration in what I call a nice-nice way: If we would just collaborate, then we would do better! But as we've already described, collaboration is about the friction of ideas and the forging of new ways of working. That is not easy, or even nice. And it makes new demands on all of us. It means leaders must do more than just tell people what to do. It also means people within the organization have to do more than say, "Hey, that thing is broken" and then delicately walk away.
  7. More hugs than decisions. The fear is that if we ask for opinions we must listen to all of them, and that we'll create watered down "solutions" by committee. In that way, collaboration is often used synonymously with teamwork or democratic exchange. It shouldn't be. The goal isn't about feeling good; it is about business results. If people have been heard, have participated in creating solutions and then know why the business picks one option over another, than we can all require what Barbara Kellerman appropriately called followership. Leaders still need to make tough calls and direct the focus. Without both Leadership with the capital L and Followership with a capital F, all we get is the equivalent of a group hug and not the results the organization needs.
  8. It's hard to know who to praise and who to blame. Collaborative projects are judged on the outcome, more than the individual efforts than when into them (which are hard to even measure). Leaders have less visibility into who did what. If things go right, they worry about rewarding the wrong people. If things go wrong, they complain about no longer having a single "throat to choke."

Collaborative work is not right for every organization, or in every case. Research shows it works best for organizations that need to solve problems across different parts of the business, where cross-pollination of ideas improves the output, where speed to market is crucial, and where getting people to co-own the solution will create more velocity in the execution of the work.

According to recent research, collaboration has been proven to have a strong corollary to innovation; .81, according to research commissioned by Google.) The empirical evidence tied to collaborative work and results have also been captured through extensive research.

In most cases, there are ways to manage each of these dangers with a specific "how" that will allow people to step into the unknown, create new solutions, and get to the other side of a problem. (That's the specifics described in my first book, The New How.)

But, let's recognize, we can't manage collaboration well until we acknowledge that it's fundamentally dangerous.

Nilofer Merchant (www.nilofermerchant.com) is a corporate director and a speaker on igniting cultures of innovation. Read her book The New How at your peril, for it will change the way you look up and down your organization's hierarchy.

Thanks to Nilofer Merchant / Blogs HBR / Harvard Business School Publishing
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/eight_dangers_of_collaboration.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date

 
 

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Changing Behavior: Immediately Transform Your Relationships With Easy-To-Learn, Proven Communication Skills By Georgianna Donadio

Changing Behavior: Immediately Transform Your Relationships with Easy-to-Learn, Proven Communication Skills

Changing Behavior: Immediately Transform Your Relationships With Easy-To-Learn, Proven Communication Skills By Georgianna Donadio

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"Recommended as a top-tier psychological self-help manual... [a] strikingly original case for the transformative power of receptiveness." Kirkus Reviews FIVE STARS - "Recommended for a wide readership"…"innovative"…"engaging"…"[a] lively presentation." Foreword, Clarion Review "Changing Behavior is a choice pick for community library psychology and self-help collections." MidWest Book Review WINNER - 2012 Indie Book Award "If someone said you could transform your life and enhance your relationships by using a few simple communication techniques that can be applied in almost any setting, wouldn't you want to do that? Wouldn't you want to learn those skills? If the answer is yes, you've picked up the right book. This easy to read guide is loaded with simple skills that have been scientifically shown to have a huge impact on our relationships!" This is what Beth Borg, RN, MHA, Clinical Operations Administrator for the Mayo Clinic, states in her opening comments for the forward she wrote about this unique, color illustrated guidebook for transforming any relationship through easy to learn, proven communication skills. Ground breaking, hospital tested research is engagingly presented in this beautifully illustrated large size book that explores our behaviors and relationships, including the most important relationship of all - the one we have with ourselves. James O. Prochaska, PhD, author of Change for Good and renowned expert and researcher on behavior change, says this about Changing Behavior and about the subject of the book, Behavioral Engagement™, a proven behavior change model which has been pilot tested for over 30 years in Boston area hospitals and healthcare environments: "The model of Behavioral Engagement has the potential to transform relationships that are suffering or struggling to ones that are thriving!" Whether you are looking to bring your personal relationships to a whole new level of intimacy and fulfillment or if you desire to transform your professional communication skills, Changing Behavior provides the knowledge and tools to create lasting change for all types of relationships.

Product Details
  • Amazon Sales Rank: #31374 in Books
  • Published on: 2012-03-22
  • Original language: English
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 138 pages
Editorial Reviews

About the Author
Georgianna Donadio, MSc, DC, PhD, is one of only six American Florence Nightingale Scholars, an award winning Nurse Advocate and an Integrative Health Practitioner. Since 1977, her visionary work has been dedicated to improving the quality of health care delivery and patient advocacy through a Harvard affiliate hospital named Best Practice in Relationship-Centered Care. Whole Health Education® with Behavioral Engagement™ is the first known patient education and health behavior change model developed, tested and utilized in a clinical setting. For 20 years, until retiring in 2008, Georgianna hosted a nationally syndicated cable TV show, Woman to Woman® which explored all topics of interest to women with a special focus on relationships.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
5This book can transform the healthcare system!
By Carol Manglos
Hopefully my title is not too dramatic: However, the principles put forth in this book can add some much needed life to the current healthcare system. I am in the employ of this vast system, and one of the largest complaints from nurses and administration is the lack of "patient compliance.": It is costly and time-consuming, which of course just means 'costly' again. One thing that is not understood, though, is that most people want to make decisions for themselves. For so long it has appeared that the patients are the children and the nurses and doctors are the parents telling them what to do. The response is something like teenagers-NO, we won't do, or fully do, the things you TELL us to do. Now, if we can confer about the matter as adults, and I, as the patient, can have the ownership of my health back again, maybe we will get somewhere! That is the principle that is outlined in this book through a process called "Behavioral Engagement." It engages the patient in their care, and puts the onus for their own good health right back where it belongs...to the patient. The methods by which we approach a patient must change, or the lack of compliance will always be an issue.

Dr. Donadio has a well-written manuscript here and it is greatly worth the read....it carefully outlines the who, what, where, when and why of this valuable process of engaging patients in their own care. A must read for hospital administrators and healthcare workers. The book is well-researched and some pretty powerful people in the field are now endorsing it.

And, it just may change your own relationships as well, to more respectful levels that foster peace.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
5A Revolutionary Approach To Transcending Common Communication Barriers
By Providential Publications
As a publishing and editing professional, I am greatly impressed by Georgianna Donadio's eye opening book. A unique combination of beautiful illustrations, clear and concise prose, thorough and fascinating research and above all, a truly revolutionary approach to improve and enrich all types and forms of communication. This timely book should be read by one and all. It has the potential to facilitate a cultural shift in how we communicate and interact with one another. Highly recommended reading!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
5Dr. Bill Croft
By William L. Croft
Once in while, a book comes along that can make real difference in how we view the world and see others. This book will transform your thinking about "changing behavior". It is very succinct and easy to read. The nuggets of wisdom scattered throughout the pages will enlighten you to why we as humans behave the way we do. Understanding this fact is the first step towards change. While I have read many books on the subject, they are often cloaked in language and mystery that cannot easily be understood even by experienced healthcare professionals. This will be a great handbook to keep by my side when I need help or when a patient needs help. Never underestimate the power of simplicity. When Dr. Donadio wrote the book, she clearly intended to "demystify" this complex subject. She has certainly done this and more!

http://astore.amazon.com/amazon-book-books-20/detail/0983965994

 
 

Only 140 Characters To Help Your Job Search

You're engaged in a job search, and you're on Twitter. What should you say in 140 characters or less that would help you reach your goal?

First of all, you have to identify your target audience and surmise what your target audience would be interested in. As a job seeker you primarily have two audiences: recruiters/hiring managers and colleagues who can refer you to openings. Fortunately for you, recruiters/hiring managers and colleagues have one very important thing in common. They are both looking for the best and the brightest. Recruiters/hiring managers want to identify the cream of the crop when searching for the ideal candidate. Colleagues also want to refer those who will make them look good in the eyes of the company that they refer people to. So your task as a job seeker is to demonstrate you are on top of your field.

Simply advertising the fact you are looking for a job is not sufficient, and if overdone, can prove your undoing. Instead you need to devise a job search strategy that reaches your target audience effectively. One method that you can incorporate into your strategy is tweeting the URLs of articles that discuss new trends in your industry and/or profession. This subtly shows that you are savvy about what is going in your field. This is especially important for people who have been unemployed for awhile because it is easy for employers to assume that if you have been out of work for some time that you are not current with your field.

Another part of your overall job strategy can be to maintain a blog and comment on different aspects of your field. You can tweet the URLs of your different blog posts along with a very brief description to entice your followers to go to your blog. (Using a URL shortener such as bit.ly will give you a few more characters to share more information with your followers.) In addition, you can highlight information that you receive at professional association meetings or professional conferences on your blog, again directing your target audience to your blog posts.

Yet another tactic is to provide links to news videos that are related to your field. For example, if there is a news story about how the proposed financial reform of Wall Street will impact the financial services industry, you can share that video via Twitter. Your audience will appreciate the timely information and also view you positively as a professional because you are sharing useful information.

In order to increase the likelihood of your tweets being found by the right people, you should use hashtags that relate to your field. You may need to do a little research by using variations of different keywords related to your field to find hashtags that are commonly used, but it will be worth your while to do so if hiring managers and recruiters find you as a result.

Lastly, you can increase the visibility of your tweets by connecting your Twitter account to your LinkedIn account so that your tweets automatically show up in your LinkedIn status bar. LinkedIn and Twitter can be used together effectively in a social media job search since they are complementary in nature. Twitter's brevity is its strength, but LinkedIn allows you as the job seeker to go into much more detail about your professional background.

Cheryl Palmer, M.Ed., CPRW is a career coach and a certified professional resume writer. Ms. Palmer is the founder of Call to Career, a career coaching firm that assists people in finding their niche or calling in life as well as finding new employment in a difficult economy.

Thanks to Cheryl Palmer, M.Ed., CPRW / Carrerealism
http://www.careerealism.com/job-search-help-characters/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+careerealism+%28CAREEREALISM%29

 
 

Sustainable Winter: 5 Ways To Prepare Your Business For Cold Weather

snow on the roof

As colder weather sets in, it's a good idea to prepare your business facilities and operations accordingly. Taking some simple steps now can help keep your utility bills low, your business operating efficiently, and your staff healthy and happy throughout the winter months.

Here are five tips for a sustainable winter from the Green Business Bureau:

  1. Stop air leaks. Damaged or poorly insulated windows, doors, and walls lead to cold air drafts that can significantly increase utility bills. Repair broken windows before cold temperatures arrive, and consider weatherizing your office to minimize heat loss. Simple weatherization doesn't need to cost a lot; you or your facilities personnel can apply adhesive weather-stripping to doors, insert insulating gaskets around electrical outlets and switches, and apply insulating film to windows with minimal effort and investment.
  2. Keep the heat where you need it. Cover heating vents in storage rooms and unused offices, so you're only heating occupied work areas. If large portions of your office are unused, consider working with an HVAC professional to be sure your heating system is only expending the energy it needs for your active office space. Ask staff to close window shades at the end of the workday to prevent overnight heat loss and to open the shades during the day to take advantage of natural light.
  3. Maintain your HVAC system. Late fall is a great time for scheduling a professional inspection and tuning up your HVAC system, if needed. Duct leaks, clogged filters, and other issues can reduce heating efficiency by more than 20 percent, so a seasonal servicing of your system can keep your energy costs as low as possible.
  4. Upgrade your HVAC air filter. As cold weather keeps windows closed, winter can also raise indoor air-quality concerns. Poor indoor air quality is estimated to cause or aggravate half of all employee illnesses, which can affect productivity and employee satisfaction. Install a filter with a MERV rating of at least 7 to effectively manage allergens and air pollutants.
  5. Take additional steps to improve indoor air quality. Avoiding office and cleaning products that emit dangerous chemicals is a key step in creating a healthy indoor environment; work with your facilities staff or office manager to choose nontoxic cleaners and office supplies. Maintaining various live plants around the office can also help to filter air naturally when opening windows isn't an option.

The benefits from these initiatives can last long beyond the winter season, too. A greener environment can improve efficiency, reduce expenses, and keep your staff healthier all year round.

What steps are you taking to make sure your small business has a sustainable winter? Share your ideas with us below.

Marcos J. Cordero is the co-founder and CEO of the Green Business Bureau, a leading green business certification organization that helps small and mid-sized businesses implement sustainability practices.

Thanks to Marcos Cordero / Blog Intuit / Intuit, Inc.
http://blog.intuit.com/trends/sustainable-winter-5-ways-to-prepare-your-business-for-cold-weather/
 
 
 

Why Everyone Needs A Resume – Even YOU

I have this conversation frequently these days. It's usually with people who've called me to talk about my resume-writing service, so they know something is up. But this topic also comes up with friends and business associates. One of two things usually brings it up:

  1. I will mention an opportunity that would be just right for the other person. I say, "You should send them your resume." They say, "Oh, I don't have one." I say, "You mean you don't have an updated resume?" They say, "No, I don't have a resume at all. I mean, I did at one point but…" They're voice trails off into silence.
  2. I will say, "I went on your LinkedIn page and it's almost blank. What's the deal?" (I'll just interject here it's not snooping if it's on the Internet.) "Why don't you have your resume on there, along with a compelling summary of what you do?" "Oh, I don't have a resume," they say, either confidently or sheepishly depending upon their circumstances.

I want to say, "Why are you even on LinkedIn? You have 357 connections and no way that's going to turn into work for you." Sometimes I do actually say it (usually, in a gentler way), which leads to me explaining the whole point of LinkedIn and why having a resume is essential, even for them. (More on LinkedIn later.)

Yes, it's true. In the past, lots of people got freelance work – or even permanent jobs – without having a resume. There was a time that when someone who needed a graphic designer or a copy writer or a marketing consultant or even a new VP, Business Affairs would call their trusted friends and associates and their trusted friends and associates would tell them names of potential people to hire. And then the person in need would call a bunch of the referrals and ask those referrals about their experience and accomplishments. Based on that, either finalists would be asked to bid a job or come in for an interview or one person would just be hired depending upon the size and nature of the project.

Here's the thing: Word-of-mouth doesn't work as the only strategy anymore. There are too many freelancers and potential employees and, due to the internet, people's circles are too large.

And, for a big project at a big company – or a permanent position – you don't just get hired by the person who you talked to on the phone. There are people from other departments who need to sign off on you, as well as upper management in the mix. So now, each time you are brought up as a candidate, the person trying to hire you has to regurgitate everything they know about your relevant work history. If there are follow up questions ("Where'd they get their training? Have they ever done work for our type of company?"), they have to go back to you, get the information and then report back. You could see how someone with a resume would have an advantage in this situation.

Here are other people who need resumes:

  • People who have had jobs for a long time who would be open to moving on. I'm not saying you have to be actively looking. These are people who want to be ready when opportunity knocks, because they know a good opportunity won't be available long enough for them to get a great resume together after they hear about it.
  • Most business owners. Yes, you are your own boss but how do people know they want to use your service or invest in you or come to you with a great offer to collaborate on a project?
  • Stay-at-Home Moms who need to make some cash while junior is napping. We all know those work-from-home ads are a scam. Network marketing is almost always the fast track to… making next to nothing while pissing off all your friends. But if you have a successful blog or were a very effective PTA president for three years, you could parlay that into a paid social networking or community advocate position that works for your schedule. If people know about you and what you'd done.
  • YOU. Even if you are 100% happy with your current situation and you do not need nor want any additional income, you still need to be establishing and maintaining your professional reputation. There will come a time when you will need or want to make money some other way than you are now. Your job will end, your current freelance income stream will dry up, etc. You will not want to be starting from scratch.

Here's where LinkedIn comes in:

Your resume no longer sits in a drawer or gets passed from fax machine to fax machine or even by e-mail address to e-mail address. It lives on the web! LinkedIn is the best professional tool to come out of the internet age. You create an identity from yourself simply by having your excellent resume copied onto LinkedIn, along with a compelling summary of who you are and what you do. You build your reputation by commenting in relevant LinkedIn groups you belong to. You connect with people in your field. You help them, they help you.

If someone hears your name as a potential hire and Googles you, your LinkedIn profile will come up and they don't even need your resume sent to them. And sometimes people just stumble upon your profile on LinkedIn and contact you for work. (It's happened many times for me. It can happen for you.) Which is why…

A blank or incomplete or badly-written LinkedIn profile is almost worse than no LinkedIn profile at all.

So if you don't have a resume – or if your resume is not a strong representation of your career in terms of where you want to go with it – it's time to put some time into it. And then get it onto LinkedIn. It will pay-off. Trust me.

Jenny Yerrick Martin, founder of YourIndustryInsider.com, has amassed 20+ years as an entertainment industry professional including almost 15 as a hiring executive and five as a career consultant. She's become an indispensable resource for people who want to break into entertainment, as well as those in entertainment looking to reach the next level or course-correct in their already-established careers.

Thanks to Jenny Yerrick Martin / Careerealism
http://www.careerealism.com/resume-everyone-needs/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+careerealism+%28CAREEREALISM%29