Related Articles

Counseling Interviews for the Marginal Employee
ACTIVE LISTENING: The most frequent cause of failure in therapeutic counseling interviews is the interviewer's tendency to talk too much. Numerous studies have shown that in counseling interviews the average manager will talk as much as 85 percent of the time.

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How Businesses Can Stop Wallowing in Bad Debt and Prevent It in the Future
"Become the Squeaky Wheel", a new book just published, explains that getting customers involves more than advertising. Michelle Dunn presents examples of credit procedures and policies to help creditors or business owners collect bad debt and prevent it in the future.

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Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: Improving Workplace Safety
This article relates to the Safety and Working Environment competency and explores how your employees feel with regard to their physical and environmental working conditions, the quality of their equipment and tools, and overall attention to safety within the workplace. Every organization is responsible for ensuring the health and safety of their employees.

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The Dog That Didnt Bark
A few weeks ago, after consultations with others in an association I represent, I made a partnership pitch to another organization with similar interests. If the idea comes to fruition, it will radically change our organization.

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Boost Your Leadership Skills Simply By Answering The Question, What Does Our Organization Really...
The difference between leaders is ears. Good leaders not only ask good questions, but they actually listen to the answers.

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Does Your State Like To Keep Your Workers Compensation Secrets Hidden?
Workers compensation secrets are hidden deep within piles and piles of bureaucratic mumbo jumbo. They are sometimes used as high priced paper weights for over worked government workers who may or may not be totally interested in seeing that you find the exact information that you are looking for.

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How to Set Up a Conference Call
The methods in which you set up a conference call vary between the different services you use, and what type of conference calling you are using. There are three main types of conference calls, all with different methods of set up.

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Try It Out On Your Team First
Wow! You're brilliant! You have a great idea. You've looked at it every possible way to find holes in your logic, fallacies in your assumptions.

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Avoid Outsourcing Pitfalls in the Injection Molds and Stamping Dies Markets
When looking to outsource overseas for Plastic Injection Molds or Stamping Dies there are many things to consider. Usually price is the first thing to be looked at, that's probably why you're looking overseas for a new mold or die source-to save money.

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Top Ten Tips About Communicating with Your Employees Effectively
Communication is the basis of who you are as a manager/leader in business. The rules are simple and the good news is that you can learn them and develop your skills.

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How Managers Can Help Retain Their Best Employees
A major problem for employers today is attracting the best talent, and then retaining key employees. Research shows that the key ingredient for retention lies within the manager's ability to understand what employees really want.

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A Leadership Screw Driver: The 90 Day Improvement Plan
I was talking with first-line supervisors in a utility company about how to deal with poor performing employees."You've gotta put the screws to him!" suggested one supervisor to his colleague who was having trouble managing one particular poor performer.

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Auditing Improves Effective Planning
Speak of operations assessment, and we'll hear its significant value. Speak of an audit, and we'll run for the nearest emergency exit.

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Problem-Solving Success Tip: Define the Problem First
Define the Problem First. It seems obvious, but how many times have we gone to a problem-solving meeting and the discussion started with either whose fault was it or an assertion about the proper solution?Explain what the problem is-what went wrong, what are the symptoms, what is the impact on your business and your customer's business.

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Make a Difference - Sweat the Small Stuff First
My background is in retail management - yes, running stores, from tiny ones you couldn't swing the proverbial cat around in, to huge three floor jobs. Yet there are some guiding principles which, like Giuliani did for New York, that make a difference on a smaller scale.

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The Measurement of Manager Training
THE MEASUREMENT OF TRAINING: Evaluation is one of the most valuable - and challenging - aspects of a training manager's job. A well-planned and on-target evaluation process can be the tool which separates a superlative training department from a merely satisfactory one.

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Measure for Measure
Can you imagine playing hockey without a goal? Basketball without hoops and nets? Football without a goal line? Golfing without holes or greens?There may be leagues where it doesn't matter whether anyone is keeping score, but not the big leagues. Champions of the Super Bowl, the Stanley Cup, the Masters can only be determined when there is someone keeping score.

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Weaknesses of Wishing
When you're starting a business, you might wish for a lot of things, like having more than enough customers or not having to do marketing. But wishing is weak willed, having no momentum behind it.

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Big Company Intelligence on a Small Company Budget
Information is the lifeblood of the economy. That's especially true for businesses, because the ability to identify current customers and locate new prospects makes the difference between boom and bust.

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Temporary Employees and Operational Problems; Your Use of Temps Might Reveal Warning Signs
A recent Washington Post article, described the life of temporary employees working at an automobile plant in Kentucky. Working at a fraction of what permanent employees make at the plant, some employees had been working as temps for extended periods, as long as three or four years, when early indications had been they would be permanent within six to 12 months.

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