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.pdf6. Nod and smile at the speaker.
You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again – nodding at a speaker is a great way to show them that you’re paying attention and you respect what they have to say. Grossman suggests throwing in a smile or two, as well: “I think smiling at the speaker also helps them know that you’re keeping up with what they’re sharing, and if you’ve ever made a presentation, you know it’s sure nice to have some friendly faces in the audience.”
7. Use verbal affirmations with caution.
While it’s great to throw in an occasional “mmhm” or “yes, definitely” in a one-on-one convo, verbal affirmations are a little less appropriate in meetings. Instead of peppering a presentation with short verbal responses, Grossman suggests working on thoughtful, active participation. “The best strategy here would be to paraphrase what’s been said and then ask a question: ‘So what I hear you’re saying is this. Can you tell me what you’re thinking about that?’” he says.
8. Assume positive intent.
It’s easy for us, as humans, to assume that we know what a person is thinking and feeling. That’s why this step is so important – especially when we’re listening to someone that we don’t know, we don’t like, or we don’t have a good relationship with. “We think we know what’s happening in a situation or a scene, when the reality is that we’re diagnosing what’s happening in that scene based on our thoughts, our heritage, our experience, and our biases – and not based on what’s actually happening in the scene,” Grossman explains. “Assume positive intent and that what the speaker is saying is correct – that they want to be helpful and they want to share information that’s going to move this project or the team or the organization along.”
9. Summarize the meeting with the group, if possible.
Can the group spare five to 10 minutes at the end of the meeting to summarize what was discussed? Doing so will help you – and your team –
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determine the key headlines from the meeting and what the next steps are from here. For the most beneficial summary, Grossman suggests asking and answering these three questions: “What are the headlines from this meeting? Who else needs to know the headlines from the meeting? How can we get that information to those people in a timely and efficient manner?”
10. Jot down your own summary after the meeting ends.
If your group wasn’t able to work on a summary together (and even if it was!), take five minutes after the meeting has concluded to put together your own list of important discussion points. “The trap we fall into is we think we’re going to remember everything from the meeting,” Grossman says. “I suggest letting people leave and staying in the meeting room for five minutes. Use that time – in the context of where the meeting happened – to jot down those headlines. That will also help you remember.”
By Heather Finn (https://www.levo.com/posts/ better-listening-skills-in-meetings)
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TEXT 3
Writing Skills – Communicating with Words
Of all the classes I took in college and graduate school, the two that have helped me most in my career have been English Composition and Business English. In these classes I learned effective writing skills which I have used in every job I have ever had. No other job but my work on this site included writing as part of my job description. In spite of this, I was required to write in every job, and it was taken for granted that I would be able to do this.
This is the case with most jobs – whether you must write internal memos, correspond with clients, or help design sales materials. Writing beautiful prose and poetry is a talent. Writing effectively, however, is a skill that can be learned.
Organize Your Writing
Whether you are composing a memo to your co-worker or a report for your boss, you should decide what information you want to convey. Here is how to do this:
1.List each item you need to discuss in your memo or report.
2.Put them in order – from most to least important.
3.Write a brief summary of your entire memo – this will be your first paragraph.
4.Expand on each item listed in step 1.
5.If any action needs to be taken by the recipient, state that in your closing paragraph.
Some Tips
Avoid wordiness. Say out loud what you are trying to write. Listen to how the words sound. For example, the sentence, “I found out that I should take a look at our past sales figures in order to come up with a plan to help us reevaluate our sales technique” could be more simply stated as “I must take a look at our past sales figures to re-evaluate our sales technique.”
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Write for your audience.
Use simple language. You don’t want the reader to need a dictionary to decipher what you are trying to say. You should not try to impress your reader with your huge vocabulary. Chances are you will frustrate your reader instead. Most people are juggling several tasks at the same time, and are interested in receiving only necessary information.
You are responsible for making this happen. Instead of saying, “His gregarious nature credentials him as a superlative candidate for the job,” say “His friendliness makes him a top candidate for the job.”
Stay away from jargon your reader may not understand. If your work is very technical, but the person you are writing to is not well versed in that field, stick to words that person will understand. For example, if you are a Web site designer, this sentence in a memo to your client, a psychologist, will make no sense: “What would you like me to use as the BGCOLOR for your site: #ADD8E6 or #FFFFFF?” Anyone proficient in Web page design knows that this question can be translated to “What would you like the background color of your site to be: Light Blue or White?” However, don’t expect your client to be more familiar with this technical jargon than you would be with her discussion of a psychological term such as trichotillomania.
A cliché a day keeps the reader away – or at least it does not make him or her remember what you are saying. You want your writing to be memorable. Because we hear clichés often, we become desensitized to them. The words, then, are not uniquely associated with your writing.
Rather than saying “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today” in a memo to a subordinate you are trying to motivate. Simply say, “Stop procrastinating. Get the job done now.”
When possible, use the active voice. The active voice makes your sentence stronger and usually shorter. Let’s try these examples. Passive voice: “Sales increased due to the networking I did.” Active voice: “My networking increased sales.”
Don’t be redundant. It is not necessary to say “2 p.m. in the afternoon” or
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“the expectant pregnant woman.” Saying “2 p.m.” or “2 in the afternoon” or “the expectant woman” or “the pregnant woman” all convey what you want to say and are less wordy.
Of course pay attention to grammar. Use Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, available on the Web. A good dictionary should be nearby, along with a thesaurus.
A thesaurus will allow you to keep your writing fresh by helping you find a variety of words to use. Many of these resources are available online.
Proofreading is one of the most important things you can do. Since you probably do most of your writing on a computer, you have access to automated spelling and grammar checkers. Beware though – some words, used in the wrong context may be missed by computerized spell checkers. For example the sentence “To employees attended too meetings two learn about the gnu software,” would pass through the spell check without any misspellings being detected. Have someone else proofread your document, if possible. If time allows, put your composition away, and proofread it later, or even better, the next day.
By Dawn Rosenberg McKay (https://www.thebalance.com/ writing-skills-524855)
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TEXT 4
How to Be Confident in Meetings (Hint: It’s What You Say)
Though Siri will tell you that she’s genderless, there is a distinctly female quality to her voice (at least in her US iteration). There’s a business reason for that: people tend to react more positively to female voices. And yet women are less likely to speak up in meetings than men.
In January 2015, Lean In founder Sheryl Sandberg and Wharton business school professor Adam Grant published an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Speaking While Female.” The piece outlined multiple verticals of research showing that in the workplace, women speak less, are “manterrupted” more, and have their ideas more closely scrutinized.
In his book Wired for Speech, Stanford communications professor Clifford Nass wrote that people prefer for our technology to help us, but we want to still be its boss. In other words: even in tech, the female voice is interpreted as more subversive.
Well, it’s time for a change. It’s time to speak up. Here are five ways to chime with confidence in your next meeting.
Know That Your Thoughts Are Worth Sharing
We’re not talking garden-variety comments that don’t contribute to the task or meeting at-hand, but it is important to speak up at least once in a meeting. Otherwise your colleagues and higher-ups will start to think you have nothing to add.
The biggest hurdle is speaking up for the first time, and if you’re not quite yet read, next time you’re in a meeting and you have an idea, write it down.
Go home and practice saying that idea out loud in multiple different tones. Find the one that resonates with you, that feels like most authentic. Next time you’re in a meeting draw on that at-home experience and be heard!
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Annunciate
If you’re pitching a business or trying to sell your boss on an idea, you need to be articulate and concise.
Attention to the small details of your speech can actually imbue you with a sense of confidence that you didn’t know you had. Elocution may not be taught in school anymore, but vocal clarity brings vocal confidence. And nothing derails a confidence train like being asked to speak up or to stop mumbling.
So, work on annunciation, clarifying all of your consonant sounds and varying your vowel length – these small changes can make a significant difference in how you’re heard.
Speak Slowly
There is a difference between being excited about what you’re sharing and rushing through your idea. When you speak too quickly what you are conveying is that you’re nervous or that what you have to say is not valuable.
If you’re speaking, hold the room’s attention, slowly and confidently. If you’re making them wonder whether you believe in what you’re saying, there is a good chance they aren’t going to believe in it either.
Expand Your Vocabulary
We’re reading less. There’s no way around it. However with dropping book sales comes a dropping vocab. One of the best ways to make sure that you’re ever-expanding your word base is to read. This can be as simple as reading a page out loud every night when you get home. It can be any kind of written word, from fiction to newspaper. Not only will this exercise help you practice annunciation, but you’ll start to learn words without even trying.
The next time you speak up in a meeting, you’ll find there is much greater fluidity to your speech and you’ll be drawing on a bigger vocabulary base.
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Don’t Disqualify Yourself at the End of a Sentence
We hear a lot about women apologizing for their answers in advance and how we should nix this from our speech. What we hear less about is discrediting yourself at the end of a statement or an idea.
This can be as simple as ending a presentation with one of the following colloquialisms: I guess, I don’t know, I think. Make sure that you are ending as strong as you start. Be certain beginning, middle, and end.
Sometimes when we get to the end of what we say, and it isn’t resonating quite right with a room, we get nervous and qualify. Stick to your guns, even if the room doesn’t agree, you can still sit back down with as much gusto with which you stood up.
(https://www.levo.com/posts/how- to-be-confident-in-meetings)
TEXT 5
Tools for a Successful Blog
The Public Relations tool belt is ever expanding. PR is no longer just about newspaper ads, magazine articles, and press releases. While blogging has been around for a long time, there is still much to be gained from blogging and being a part of the online community your customers frequent. There are a few ways to get your blog noticed.
Here are a few things I do to help my blog:
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1.) I try to post daily. Not only does Google reward sites (and blogs) that post regularly, but readers may be more prone to suggest your blog to others when the content is consistently fresh and mildly interesting. This can help your blog’s overall success. Building readership in the beginning is a step all blogs go through, and though it takes time, keep at it.
2.) Participate in other blogs. This could include commenting on posts (after you’ve actually read them, mind you). Rather than simply posting a two word sentence or congratulatory phrase, like “great post”, think about your comment and if it will add any value to the post. If it won’t, don’t worry about posting. Rather, comment about it on your blog if you found it to be interesting. This is a way to contribute to the blog in your own way, on your own blog. Another means of participating is posting guest articles on other blogs. Most bloggers welcome, or should welcome, guest articles, so long as they are relevant and in-line with the rest of the blog. You should also consider adding guest bloggers to your own. A guest article gives readers a new voice to read, and may also provide your blog with some information you may not have considered posting before. Most guest bloggers will also link to the article they wrote for your blogging, bringing more readers your way.
3.) Use Twitter, Facebook, BusinessExchange, etc., to announce your posts. Though it may seem a little “salesy”, it can bring some traffic to your blog. What’s even better is when someone uses the “TweetThis” feature and shares your blog post with the rest of the world. (With applications like TweetDeck, which can update your MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter accounts at the same time, a “TweetThis” option can really increase your reach.) BusinessExchange is brought to us by Business Week; it is a beta site, but it seems to be a great resource already. You can share your articles there with other members of the site.
4.) Optimize your posts. Though search engine optimization (SEO) can be a difficult thing to master, let alone grasp, it is easy to learn how to add more
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‘search engine’ power to your posts. I was referred to a quick, concise overview of SEO. You can find it here.
5.) Offer something of value to your readers. I like to think that readers come here to learn something about public relations, and hopefully they (you) do. I write to be an educational source for people interested in learning more about PR and the PR industry. I also want to offer resources, such as the glossary and blogroll, to add more value to the blog.
6.) Make time and plan ahead. Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, your blog will not magically appear overnight, nor will your readership jump to the thousands the first week you start posting; it takes work. Make yourself an action plan after you set yourself some goals. (It’s hard to work towards something if you don’t really know what it is.) Give it time and you should soon see your hard work paying off.
Note that these all require patience, perseverance, and consistency, but they can be done. There are a few more good things to consider when blogging at Robb Sutton’s blog. He lists some of the reasons why other blogs are doing well, and some things you can change to make your blogging career more lucrative, enjoyable, and worthwhile.
by Ashley Wirthlin (http://saigon.titocovn.com/sites/default/files/ Files/2013/06/w5/PublicRelationsBook_0.pdf)
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