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March 8, 2010
By Diane Moore
CAREER MANAGEMENT: Adjusting to a new job
The first few days in a new job are critical to making a good first impression with your manager and co-workers. This podcast offers five ways to start a new job on the right foot. (3 min.)
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Tags: adjusting, career management, new job
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March 6, 2010
By Diane Moore
If you take a look around most offices, you’ll likely notice that there are two kinds of workers. There are those whose work spaces look like something out of a magazine called “The Perfectly Organized Office” and then there are those whose desks look like a nuclear waste area that should be declared hazardous to human life.
I have been fortunate that for most of my career I have had my own office—one that I could decorate and set up to my own taste and, more importantly, one that I could keep as neat and tidy as I desired. A few years ago, I became more attuned to different approaches to workplace tidiness when I changed positions and moved into a large office that I shared with another professor.
It quickly became obvious to me that he and I had very different approaches to handling our work areas. If you’ve ever seen the movie or television show The Odd Couple, you’ll know the differences between neat freak Felix and, how shall I put it, the more “relaxed” style of Oscar. While I don’t mean to imply my co-worker and I were quite that extreme, we may have had more than a passing resemblance to Oscar and Felix.
My co-worker belonged to that unique club of people that proudly display signs like “A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind” in their work areas, while I come from the school of “A place for everything and everything in its place.” I must admit that after a time I started to envy his relaxed approach. He rarely seemed stressed if he had to walk out of the office at the end of the day and leave a jumbled pile of work on his desk. On the other hand, I can lie awake in bed for hours thinking about the mess I didn’t have time to clean up before I left the office.
Even worse, despite the apparent disorganization on his desk, my co-worker could often reach beneath a pile and pull out exactly the thing he was looking for. This made it even harder to be too smug about my tidy tendencies, because sometimes I put things away so well, I can’t find them. And despite the pristine condition of my desktop, it’s often at the expense of my desk drawers, which sometimes look like the Tasmanian devil has taken a turn or two in them. I don’t buy into the idea that a clean desk is a sign of a sick mind, but you could probably convince me that a clean desk is at least a sign of a messy desk drawer.
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Tags: office organization
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March 2, 2010
By Diane Moore
PRODUCTIVITY: 4 ways to reduce distractions
You’re planning to spend the entire morning finishing an urgent project. But drop-in visitors and unexpected phone calls keep you from getting started. This podcast offers four ways to reduce distractions that interfere with your productivity and concentration. (2 min.)
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Tags: distractions, productivity
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March 1, 2010
By Diane Moore
If you had to rate how you feel about your job on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being that you would do it even if you didn’t get paid), how would you rate your work satisfaction? A study released by Statistics Canada showed that 8 percent of workers were less than satisfied with their work. People working in administrative or clerical jobs were among the most unhappy. While 8 percent may not sound like that much, that translates into 2.5 million Canadians (out of a population of 32 million) who are unhappy on the job. I suspect that the numbers in the United States would be similar.
There are times when many of us have to accept and work in jobs that we feel less than enthusiastic about, due to financial necessity, lack of available opportunities or other factors. But I couldn’t help wondering how many people of that 8 percent might be able to find work that they like better if they had the right assistance, encouragement and opportunity.
I’ve always believed that no one needs to or should work in a job they hate over the long term. Spending years of your life in a job you hate is no way to live. While work is certainly not everything in life, if you’ve ever been in a job you dislike, you know how much stress and unhappiness it caused you. These feelings likely affected every other aspect of your life. Although we may have to temporarily accept a position we don’t enjoy for various reasons, we are fortunate to live in a society and a time when the career possibilities available to us are virtually unlimited. In the end, we do have the freedom to choose where, when and how we work.
I have been very fortunate for most of my career to do work that I love. Today most of what I do would get a rating of 9 or 10 on that scale I mentioned earlier. Work can be a joy if you’re in a job that fits with your skills, interests and values. While no job is ever perfect, if your work satisfaction rating leaves a lot of room for improvement, I encourage you to consider what you can do or change to make things better. While it may require you to make some tough decisions and take some risks, in the long run it’s worth thinking about.
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Tags: job satisfaction
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February 27, 2010
By Diane Moore
You can’t go anywhere these days without hearing the strains of Pachelbel’s Canon or the William Tell Overture. While this increased exposure to classical music might seem admirable, it seems to me that it comes at a high price. I’m talking about cell phones, of course. You simply can’t get away from the incessant ringing of phones. In addition to the usual places like the train or bus, I have heard cell phones ring in libraries, during concerts, at the gym, and even in a stall in the rest room! (Yes, the person even answered it!) I also know of cases where phones have rung during a wedding and a funeral. What are these people thinking?
Recently I heard one of my favorite radio personalities make some comments about cell phone abuse. He was feeling quite fed up with phones ringing in movie theaters. His proposal was that on the first offense, the offending parties should have their phones confiscated. On the second offense, he felt they should be taken out into the street and shot. While his comments were clearly overstated (I hope) for entertainment value, there was a moment recently where I wondered if his idea merited more consideration.
I was at the final session of a class I had been attending for some weeks. The professor had gone to great pains to seat us in a circle to engage in a discussion about something that was personal and very meaningful to each of us. About halfway through the activity, a group member’s phone rang quite loudly, disrupting the atmosphere. To my amazement, rather than apologizing and turning it off, he dug the phone out of his backpack, answered it and proceeded to have a conversation in his normal speaking voice about a mundane issue while loudly stumbling around chairs and desks to leave the room.
After he left, there was a moment of stunned silence. The professor carried on without commenting, but I couldn’t help feeling that his opinion of that student had been diminished. I know mine was, especially when the student returned without apologizing and put his phone away (still turned on, of course).
Lest you think I’m a Luddite, yes, I do own a cell phone and consider it indispensable. On the few occasions that it has rung at an inconvenient time, I actually ignored it, then turned it off right away. What a concept! While I agree that being shot in the street may be (pardon the pun) overkill, we should be able to at least ban cell phones in the rest room don’t you think?
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Tags: cell phones, etiquette
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February 26, 2010
By Diane Moore
Recently I received the usual influx of e-mail I get around Valentine’s Day on the topic of office romance. Etiquette experts often seem to disagree about whether it’s acceptable to have a personal relationship with someone in the workplace. While most agree it’s probably bad form to have a relationship with your supervisor, some can point to cases where it worked out, usually because one or both people in the relationship moved to other jobs so they weren’t working together anymore. Some studies have even shown that people think personal relationships between co-workers are okay and may be good for office morale and productivity.
I’m kind of in the middle in terms of an opinion on this topic. For most of my working life, I felt that office romances were never a good idea. This was based on my own observations over the years of a number of relationships taking place between co-workers and seeing unprofessional conduct between romantic partners, including a major argument in the parking lot at the end of a work day, in full view of everyone exiting the building.
However, some time ago I found out about a relationship that was taking place between people I was working closely with at the time. I heard it mentioned quite casually by someone outside the company who knew both people. I was surprised as I had never had any inkling that anything more than a work relationship existed between these two individuals. They were completely professional in the workplace and treated each other the same way they treated everyone else. Even after I became aware of their relationship, I never noticed anything pass between them during work hours that gave an indication they were anything but co-workers. I can’t help thinking they were the exception, but I guess if I had worked with others who were this professional in their handling of their office romance, I wouldn’t know about it either.
I know I’m not the only one who feels ambivalent about the idea of romance in the workplace. Companies range in their policies from encouraging workers to socialize to banning romantic relationships between co-workers altogether. I suppose it can be a happily-ever-after ending for a few people, but I can’t help feeling the stakes are a bit too high and the slope just a bit too slippery for most people to successfully weather.
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Tags: office romance
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February 23, 2010
By Diane Moore
CAREER MANAGEMENT: 4 ways to make a smashing first impression
Did you know that you will meet approximately 10,000 people in your lifetime? That’s a lot of chances to make a terrific first impression. This podcast offers four ways to make a smashing first impression. (2 min.)
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Tags: career management, first impressions
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February 21, 2010
By Diane Moore
When I was 7 years old I received my first hardcover book, Gulliver’s Travels, as a gift. That was the beginning of my lifelong love affair with books. My current collection of books numbers in the hundreds, and by far the bulk of them are self-help books. I have always enjoyed reading ideas that might help me to improve myself or the way that I do things at work and in my personal life.
I had occasion to re-evaluate my addiction to self-help books recently when I heard a speaker on the topic of finding your life purpose. As part of her presentation, she said we are bombarded every day with messages that suggest we are not good enough the way we are. She pointed to the thousands of self-help books available at the bookstore as one example of how the world promotes the idea that we should constantly look at ourselves to see where we can improve. She was clearly not a fan of these books and offered the idea of accepting that we are good enough just the way we are right now.
I was struck for a moment by the thought that everything I write in The Office Professional is designed to help our readers to be more effective on the job and gain greater career satisfaction. I wondered whether I am guilty of perpetuating this concept that we aren’t good enough as we are. I hope not. In listening to this speaker, I was reminded of a popular book (OK, it was a self-help book) published in 1967 titled I’m OK—You’re OK. The premise of the book was that our lives and relationships would be healthier and more satisfying if we would view ourselves (and others) as being OK just the way we (and they) are.
I agree that it is healthy to accept yourself as you are, warts and all. But I also think there is a subtle difference between feeling not good enough and wanting to build on what you have to make things better. The former has to do with self-esteem and the latter with a desire to learn, grow and fulfill our potential.
I love to learn new things and find ways to do things better, and I suspect many people who read this blog or read our newsletter do too. So unless someone can convince me that there’s good reason to stop learning and growing, I’ll continue to add to my book collection and share the best of what I find with you. In the meantime, I’m OK and so are you.
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Tags: learning, potential, self-help books
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February 19, 2010
By Diane Moore
Are you feeling very Olympic today? Although I’m not generally a sports fanatic, there’s something about the Olympics that keeps me glued to the television set to watch the dedication, effort and pride of athletes from all over the world as they live out their dreams and pour themselves, body and soul, into going for the gold medal in their sport. Watching Olympic athletes in competition always leaves me inspired to try just a bit harder and aim just a bit higher in my own life.
We don’t get medals for our performance on the job (although I think we should), but many of us put the same kind of effort into our work just for the sheer satisfaction of knowing that we have done our best and raised the bar on our performance. Athletes use the term “personal best” or “PB” to describe the highest standard they’ve been able to achieve in their sport. They constantly push themselves to improve their PB and rigorously scrutinize their performance for flaws or opportunities to make improvements, no matter how minor, to move their performance up a notch. Establishing a new PB is such a victory that many athletes celebrate this achievement with great pride even if they don’t find themselves standing on the podium to receive a medal.
I’m sure that many of you push the limits of your own abilities in the same way by constantly looking for new ideas or approaches to improve what you do and how you do it. Those of you who strive for your PB every day probably gain tremendous satisfaction from seeing the impact and improvements you make in the workplace, no matter how small. And sometimes we just know that we’ve pulled off a “gold medal performance,” whether it’s soothing an angry customer or meeting a backbreaking deadline.
Although it may sometimes seem as though no one notices when you put in this kind of effort on the job, I’m convinced that, in the long run, being the kind of employee who aims high and strives hard will open doors for you, create opportunities and cement your reputation as a top performer. To those of you who aim for your personal best each and every time, you deserve a gold medal for your dedication and commitment. Bouquets to you!
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Tags: excellence, performance, standards
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February 17, 2010
By Diane Moore
COMMUNICATION: Writing business reports
Many people dread writing business reports, but it need not be a painful task. This podcast offers 6 easy steps to writing a good business report. (4 min.)
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Tags: business reports, Communication, writing
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