Office Christmas Parties – The Right Etiquette
We have compiled some handy words of advice on how to avoid ruining your good reputation at work by playing it safe at the office Christmas party so you turn up for work the next day unscathed.
You want to be able to go back to work with some anonymity after the work office party. How are you going to be able to look at your work mates the same way as you used to after an embarrassing night of dancing on the tables and being abit of a menace?
Christmas work parties are abit like when we were young and at school, we just couldn’t wait to let it all hang out come the end of the year. The thing is that there can be something very unattractive when an adult acts like a school kid on heat and can undo their good reputation by one night when the build up of emotions are released after a hard year at work.
Socializing with our peers is something that is not all that common with many office work place environments. Even though we see our work mates everyday, there are many characteristics that remain undiscovered. So it really is little wonder that after a few drinks and everyone can finally, at last, lower their guard, that so many regretful occurrences are common in this environment.
There is so much anticipation in the lead up to work parties come Christmas time, and with the added excitement of free booze all night, many stories can be told of how people end up stuck on a 5 hour cruise with their work mates and boss throwing up over the side of the boat.
Don’t make the mistake of deciding to tell your work peers how incompetent one of your fellow workers are. If you go and bad mouth other work mates, no one will trust you and you run the risk of people finding out about your gossiping.
What may seem very innocent to you at the time may have the potential to have devastating repercussions down the track. We are talking about the potential of sexual harassment. Would you put your arm around someone during work hours? No – would you attempt to kiss someone on the lips during work hours? No. This truly is very tricky terrain, if you read someone’s signals incorrectly and decide to act (after 6 beers) then you are foolish and risk being charged with a harassment suit and losing your job.
Restrain yourself from mixing business with pleasure, it’s bound to fail! With so many options to meet new people such as online dating sites or other online alternatives like singles chat rooms , why risk your job and reputation?
If you are looking to cut loose and go crazy, the office Christmas party may not be the most ideal location. The risk is too great, our jobs and financial security need to be protected, and acting up in an improper manner fueled by alcohol is a great way to put all of this at jeopardy.
Female Entrepreneurs: Avoid Falling Victim to the “I Can Do It Myself” Syndrome 2
Time is valuable and no one can afford to spend time on tasks that are non-revenue generating. In the state of today’s economy, every business is looking to reduce costs and increase revenue. The “I Can Do It Myself” Syndrome tells sufferers that they can save X amount of dollars if they just do it themselves; but what many entrepreneurs tend to forget about in this equation is that time is money. Calculate what you can make if you meet with a client for two hours and they sign a contract that’s worth $1,000+ vs. what you are saving by doing tasks such as social media, email marketing, web updates or managing your calendar for $30-$40 per hour. There is no comparison.
The side effects of the “I Can Do It Myself” Syndrome include, but are not limited to: burnout, stress, less time with family, irritability, self-doubt, loss of sleep, loss of revenue and, in some cases, loss of business.
A great prescription for eliminating these side effects is to engage a Virtual Assistant Team. Many female entrepreneurs feel they cannot afford a team, but what they don’t understand is they can’t afford to be without one. Learning to let go, and to let those who have the skills and expertise to handle what they do best while you handle what you do best, will allow you more time to grow your business. With a Virtual Assistant Team you spend less time giving instruction and trying to figure out how things work, while spending more time seeing results. No longer will you have to spend endless hours trying to figure out the latest social media trends and what you should and shouldn’t be using in your business. You can turn it all over to your Virtual Assistant Team.
Below are five solutions a Virtual Assistant Team can offer to your business that will result in a cure for the “I Can Do It Myself”Syndrome:
1. A Virtual Assistant Team can save you an entire quarter per year. If you are spending two hours a day on tasks such as social media, e-mail marketing, QuickBooks or other administrative tasks, you are losing an entire quarter a year! Let me break it down so you can really understand:
2 Hours a Day = 10 Hours a Week
10 Hours a Week = 40 Hours a Month
40 Hours a Month = 1 Week
1 Week a Month = 3 Months a Year
3 Months A Year = An Entire Quarter
2. When you engage a Virtual Assistant Team, the entire team is an extension of your business and is working towards a common goal. For example, the WordPress Specialist VA creates a sales pages for your workshop, the Shopping Cart Specialist VA loads your workshop to your shopping cart and sets up the auto responders, the PR VA prepares your press release announcing your new workshop, the Social Media VA tweets about the event and the QuickBooks specialist VA tracks your ROI for the workshop. One team working together, accomplishing your tasks in half the time in which an individual can.
3. A Virtual Assistant Team delivers one invoice — eliminating tracking multiple invoices issued on multiple dates with multiple pay cycles. One invoice from one team is delivered at the same time each month.
4. Each member of a Virtual Assistant Team has an area of expertise. Each VA on a team is in an expert in their area of specialization. No more having to slow lead time while you are waiting for an individual to ramp up their skills in area that they maybe unfamiliar with and/or have no interest in. One team with many capabilities is working together to help you increase your revenue.
5. When you work with a Virtual Assistant Team, the entire team is familiar with your business. If your assigned VA takes a day off or goes on vacation, you are not stuck looking for someone to fill in for them. With a Virtual Assistant Team there is always a Virtual Assistant available to fill in when necessary.
You let your accountant worry about the financial side of things, you let your lawyer worry about the legal side of things and you don’t worry too much about the money you are spending because you trust your accountant and lawyer are professionals and are representing you in a professional manner. Engage a Virtual Assistant Team and let them worry about your day-to-day tasks while you spend your time handling your business.
Female Entrepreneurs: Avoid Falling Victim to the “I Can Do It Myself” Syndrome
According to the Center for Women’s Business Research, as of 2008 10.1 million firms were owned by women (75% or more), they employed more than 13 million people and generated $1.9 trillion in sales. Many women are becoming entrepreneurs and stepping out on their own, but that doesn’t mean they have to go it alone.
I recently surveyed a group of female entrepreneurs and 75% of the women indicated that time is the most challenging factor — followed closely by money. Many of the female entrepreneurs that participated in the survey seemed to suffer from the same syndrome, one that I call the “I Can Do It Myself” Syndrome.
There are many reasons women have fallen victim to the “I Can Do It Myself” Syndrome, be it because they think they can save a few dollars by adhering to this credo, or because they feel that they cannot trust others to do the job as well as they themselves can.
Teamwork – It Really Does Make The Dream Work 2
The level of trust that the pilots have with each other is understandable the level of trust that they have with the enlisted men and women who maintain their aircraft, and support the team is equally amazing. For the Blue Angels every mission is critical. A successful performance is a matter of life and death. While everyone has his/her role to play on independent teams, each team realizes they are part of several other teams; and that each team must collaborate with all other teams to make any Blue Angels performance successful. While the pilots are often credit with the success of the performance, let’s not forget the rest of the teams that also make significant contributions.
This same concept holds true in every organization. Many times those at the top, or most visible, get the credit for the team’s success. Don’t forget the behind the scenes teams also contribute to the overall success and should be recognized.
Everyone must realize that the team they’re on is part of a larger team, with larger vision and mission. Whether your team is just a few, or a large project team, everyone is part of the bigger vision and mission.
Take a moment and think about the team(s) you work on everyday, and answer the following:
* Does your team communicate effectively at every level?
* Does your team put the team first every time?
* How well do your team’s values align with the purpose, mission, and vision of the bigger team or organization?
* How well are your team members trained in the job functions of others?
These represent just a few of the values of this elite team called the Blue Angels.
© 2009, Gregg Gregory.
Teamwork – It Really Does Make The Dream Work
The third week in May is a very special week in Annapolis, MD. It is Commencement Week for the United States Naval Academy midshipmen, and every year the Blue Angels rehearse on Tuesday and perform on Wednesday afternoon. This year, for the first time in many years, several friends and I went to see this magnificent team perform and perform they did. I took this picture while the aircrafts were moving at speeds well in excess of 400 miles per hour notice the distance between the wings of the two aircraft.
Every Blue Angel performance is based around the center point. For this event, the center point was on the Severn River which borders the US Naval Academy. This is where we took our seats, and awaited the show’s beginning.
If you have never experienced this amazing team in action, you are certainly missing a demonstration of true of teamwork at its best. Watching and hearing the F-18 Hornets approach in and of itself is awe inspiring. Watching them approach from opposite ends of the center point at maximum velocity with minimal separation is nothing short of breathtaking.
Hiring A Personal Virtual Assistant 2
4. Request price and service quotes. Learn about the management of the company that employs your assistant – after all, the management will be responsible for ensuring your VA’s attendance and effectiveness. Look for professionalism and quick response time.
5. Choose a virtual assistant services provider. Once you’ve narrowed down your search to a handful of sources, set appointments to speak with the virtual assistants and their managers. Many call centers will allow you to do a paid trial in order to get to know how you will work together. This is an important period in the relationship and will lead to a better understanding of whether your styles mesh or not.
6. Lock them up! Agree to terms and conditions with your outsourcing services provider that will define:
* Confidentiality – This can be important, as you don’t want confidential information to be used for unintended purposes.
* Virtual Assistant Status – Be sure to clarify that your VA is not an employee. This will help you save money on taxes and other requirements.
* Payment terms – Define the frequency and method of payment.
7. Keep in touch. Check in with your personal assistant at predefined intervals to monitor her progress. If applicable, request reports from your service provider listing daily phone calls, or any other metrics you find important.
Now that you have followed these steps, you should begin to experience the benefits of a more productive work week!
Hiring A Personal Virtual Assistant
Personal virtual assistants have received a lot of attention during the past few years. Much of this attention has come from the success of Timothy Ferriss’ book The Four Hour Work Week. In the book, Ferris outlines strategies to eliminate one’s daily busy work by outsourcing tasks to a low-cost virtual assistant, or VA. Business executives can use personal virtual assistants to handle tasks such as, web design
, web edits, blog installations, posting, and maintenance, accounting and bookkeeping, appointment setting Things to avoid would be one-time tasks that would take less time to do yourself than it would to explain to a third party.
2. Compose a detailed description of the tasks at hand, and a step by step guide your virtual assistant can follow to properly execute them. Specifically outline:
* Exactly what it is you are looking for. Do your tasks require voice related skills, writing skills, or both?
* What schedule you need your VA to work. This is particularly important if you are outsourcing to a different country.
* Communication. Would you rather correspond with your assistant via phone or email?
3. Browse the web to find the personal assistant that would be best for you. Ask around to see if anyone in your network has employed a virtual assistant and solicit their input. If nobody you know has used a VA, try the following:
* Google
* freelancer websites such as elance or guru
* Craig’s List
Challenge By Choice and Resistance to Team Building 2
This should placate any ‘resistant’ members of your team who are resisting based on physical or mental reasons. In saying that however, the team building facilitators, and your team, should encourage all team members to participate to their fullest in every activity.
Next, being told you’re coming on a team building day, without knowing too much about it, can leave people in a number of different mind sets. The most common being;
The “Bring It On” Mind Set – This person is looking forward to being challenged and having a great day out with their colleagues. This person will have a great day.
The “We’ll See What Happens” Mind Set– This person needs more information and will make up their mind when they see what it is all about. This person may or may not have a great day. It all depends on how they react to what occurs.
The “Oh No, Not One Of These Things” Mind Set – This person may resist enjoying the day and the activity. They may even try to get others to buy into their “oh no” attitude. They may not have a good day (or at least may not show that they did!).
The way our facilitators brief the event, run the event and the event itself are superb in terms of shifting some of the ‘Oh No’s’ and ‘We’ll Sees’ to the ‘Bring It On’ space. We estimate 98.2% of participants end up in the Bring It On category
Our advice is also to tell your team what they’ll be doing. Sounds simple but, often times, teams are left in the dark as to what they’re going to be doing for their ‘team building’.
Sometimes keeping the event ’secret’ is necessary and that’s totally cool but, if it’s not, then let your team know a few days out from the event.
We have found that, when teams have an idea of what they will be doing beforehand, they come to the event more mentally prepared, more physically prepared and more competitive.
By pre-warning your team members, you can allay fears about their ability to do it and start building team momentum and anticipation even before the event starts.
Challenge By Choice and Resistance to Team Building
I hate this sort of thing”, “What are they going to make us do?”, “Do I have to go?” – all common comments and questions when certain team members are ‘faced with’ a team building day. Follow ‘team building’ on Twitter and you’ll see these types of comments almost every day.
So, how to win these ‘resistors’ over – after all, you;re not paying money for your team to not enjoy the experience.
Your team will probabaly have extremes – young to old, fit to unfit, pregnant to not pregnant… so the first thing is that any team building event you choose should cater to these extremes.
The key philosophy here is that all activities on team building events should be on a “challenge by choice” basis – that is, you can opt out of a particular activity if you wish. Events should be designed with this in mind.
What I Love About Cooking Team Building 2
So, yes, cooking team building can be fun. At the same time, it produces great results. It gets people on equal footing (getting the CEO washing up with a junior clerk is great to see). Team building events with cooking bring them together immediately as interaction, communication, team work and strategic thinking all play an important role in a team building cooking activity, especially our MasterChef Challenge. And eating together is such a natural way for people to bond.
What I also love about team building cooking is getting people excited about good food and home cooking. So many of the people we work with have gotten into convenience eating. I regularly hear from people after events discovered how much they enjoy cooking, and eating together with their partners, families and friends.
I also love that cooking team building events tick all the boxes for ‘best practice’ team building events recommended in this Harvard Business Review blog post.
But what I really love about cooking team building is that the people who attend love it so much. I get so many hugs and kisses from people as they leave our events that I always think how incredibly lucky I am to do something I love so much.