Work experience – does it really matter?
People with experience on their resumes tend to receive more interview requests, and experience is certainly good for personal brand and increasing perceptions of competence. Surprisingly, however, a meta-analysis [1] about the effects of work experience on job...
Measuring for results: Three key principles
We all know it is important to measure for results, but often we don’t know what to measure or how to interpret the metrics. Another issue is knowing what to do – how to change our behaviour – based on the metrics. QUESTION 1: HOW CAN I UNDERSTAND METRICS SIMPLY?...
8 Social Assumptions and What To Do About Them
8 Social Assumptions and What To Do About Them Are your social assumptions about people’s motivations accurate? Have you noticed yourself or others making any of these kinds of statements? Engaging in comm skills training can help you challenge these assumptions and...
Basic cultural themes that affect the workplace: Theme #1 speech patterns
Every piece of communication shared requires a sender and a receiver – someone to send the message and someone to receive it. Inevitably, there exists a space between the sender and the receiver where interpretation of the message occurs. Culture and...
Basic cultural themes that affect the workplace: Theme #2 hierarchy
In the last post I spoke about how speech and silence are interpreted differently across cultures and then considered ways to use this knowledge to improve cross-cultural communication. Let’s look deeper. When there are differences between how people communicate...
“Three cups of tea”: The principle behind building your network and getting results
Yes, you do need to network! In some countries people are introduced or placed by friends and family into jobs or brought into a business. In other countries, graduates find their first jobs because they are automatically placed by an educational institution,...
Dealing with prejudice during an interview: How even you can find the right words to be direct
You’ve researched the company, met up with employees who work there, prepped your answers so you can answer the key questions you know the interviewers are going to ask, put on your “power suit,” and done everything you can to be ready to deliver the...
Effective meetings strategy #1: Using meetings to mine for team talents
People categorize and use routines to deal with things quickly and efficiently throughout the day. This is a natural part of understanding the world and it saves us time. Unfortunately, in a workplace setting, classifying people in terms of what we already know about...
Biology and business: genes and employee performance
Biology, employee performance, and business systems have more in common than you may think. According to the book “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins (first published in 1978 and widely accepted as the most significant communication about the basics of inheritance...
