Do You Make Your First Impression Your Best Impression?

No matter who you are or what you do, the way you dress and present yourself has a major impact on your success.

Within the first three seconds of a new encounter, you are evaluated… even if it is just a glance.
People appraise your visual and behavioral appearance from head to toe. They observe your demeanor, mannerisms, and body language and even assess your grooming and accessories – watch, handbag, briefcase. Within only three seconds, you make an indelible impression. You may intrigue some and disenchant others.
This first impression process occurs in every new situation. Within the first few seconds, people pass judgment on you – looking for common surface clues. Once the first impression is made, it is virtually irreversible.

The process works like this:

• If you appear to be of comparable business or social level, you are considered suitable for further interaction.
• If you appear to be of higher business or social status, you are admired and cultivated as a valuable contact.
• If you appear to be of lower business or social standing, you are tolerated but kept at arm's length.
• If you are in an interview situation, you can either appear to match the corporate culture or not, ultimately affecting the outcome.
  

It is human nature to constantly make these appraisals, in business and social environments. You may hardly have said a word, however once this three-second evaluation is over, the content of your speech will not change it. When you make the best possible first impression, you have your audience in the palm of your hand. When you make a poor first impression, you lose your audience’s attention, no matter how hard you scramble to recover it.
You can learn to make a positive and lasting first impression, modify it to suit any situation, and come out a winner. Doing so requires you to assess and identify your personality, physical appearance, lifestyle and goals. Those who do will have the advantage.
Success comes to those with integrity, those that are resourceful, and those that make a fabulous impression!

Global Image Group

Drop your egg meeting instead of reading the complete project plan

At one of our customers we have a weekly "Leg je ei meeting - Drop your egg meeting" .
Just to let the other team-members know what you've been doing and what you're planning to do, where you've problems with and where you found solutions for. It takes only 20 minutes but everyone stays up to date,...

meeting sequence

Put the less important issues at the top of the agenda, not the bottom. If you put them on the bottom you may never get to them. Ensure any urgent issues are placed up the agenda. Non-urgent items place down the agenda - if you are going to miss any you can more easily afford to miss these.
Try to achieve a varied sequence - don't put all the heavy controversial items together - mix it up.

meeting outcomes

Decide what outcome (ie what is the purpose) you seek for each issue, and put this on the agenda alongside the item heading. This is important as people need to know what is expected of them, and each item will be more productive with a clear aim at the outset. Typical outcomes are:

• Information
• Decision
• Discussion
• Planning (eg workshop session)
• Generating ideas
• Getting feedback
• Finding solutions
• Agreeing (targets, budgets, aims, etc)
• Team-building/motivation
• Guest speaker - information, initiatives, etc

planning and running effective meetings for business,...

In my next posts I'll try to reflect on some essential elements to run an effective meeting.
Priorities, Outcomes, Sequence, Timings, Agenda, Date, Time, Venue.

meeting priorities
What is the meeting's purpose? Always have one; otherwise don't have a meeting. Decide the issues for inclusion in the meeting and their relative priority: importance and urgency.
You can avoid the pressure for 'Any Other Business' at the end of the meeting if you circulate a draft agenda in advance of the meeting, and ask for any other items for consideration. ('Any Other Business' often creates a free-for-all session that wastes time, and gives rise to new tricky expectations, which if not managed properly then closes the meeting on a negative note.)

Meetings - basic rules

Very simple,.. but I think a lot of people still don't know!

1. plan - use the agenda as a planning tool
2. circulate agenda in advance
3. run the meeting - keep control, agree outcomes, actions and responsibilities, take notes
4. write and circulate notes
5. follow up agreed actions and responsibilities

Building confidence for motivation

Learning something new and completely different liberates the mind. Facing a challenge, meeting it and mastering it helps build confidence

Saying thanks is hugely motivational

Saying thanks and giving praise are the most commonly overlooked and under-estimated ways of motivating people. And it's so easy. Saying thanks is best said naturally and from the heart, so if your intentions are right you will not go far wrong. When you look someone in the eye and thank them sincerely it means a lot. In front of other people even more so. The key words are the ones which say thanks and well done for doing a great job, especially where the words recognise each person's own special ability, quality, contribution, effort, whatever. People always appreciate sincere thanks, and they appreciate being valued as an individual even more. When you next have the chance to thank your team or an individual team-member, take the time to find out a special thing that each person has done and make a point of mentioning these things. Doing this, the praise tends to carry even greater meaning and motivational effect.

The Hard Truth: Soft Skills Matter

"IT people need to have the ability to communicate at the board level.Being able to understand the business needs of an organization and translate that to a technological solution—to me, that's where the rubber meets the road." By The Numbers - CIO Magazine ...

Soft Skills

Last week one of my colleagues (Raf) gave me an article about recruiting that appeared in Smart Business Strategies magazine. Who’s hot and who’s not in IT? The decade of the “Nerd” is over. More and more employers are looking for the complete package. Not only the technical experience but also the soft skills are very important. Remember the phrase from your report card -- "works and plays well with others"? That's a critical soft skill, and there are many more, all of them important for any job in any industry.
Are you soft skills savvy? Take the test by Peter de Vogt