Business Etiquettes & Communication

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With the expansion of the global marketplace more and more organizations are conducting business across cultures. This has brought about a need for the increase in awareness about business etiquette that exists in various cultures especially the west. Lets Talk Business Communication & Etiquettes Blos focuses on presenting oneself with finesse and making others comfortable in a business setting. This Blog is an effort by Lets Talk institute, Mumbai, http://www.letstalk.co.in targeted at young professionals who are just entering a business environment.

Group Discussion - Group Discussion Etiquette

Many of the problems that arise in group discussion result from members who do not have discussion skills. Being able to properly participate in a discussion group is similar to reading. If you have a lot of experience with discussions, it is likely that you will do well in a discussion group.

However, if you don't have experience with discussions groups, you may not know how to participate in them properly. There is a certain amount of etiquette that you will need to display when you are in a discussion. In this article I will go over these things.

During a discussion, it is important for members to always stay on topic. It is bad etiquette to raise issues that are not related to the subject of the discussion. When members raise issues that are off topic, they can waste time and prevent the group from achieving a certain goal. Most group discussions will have a time limit. The group will have little time to waste talking about topics that are not relevant to the subject. Because of this, it is always important to make sure any questions or statements you make are related to the topic. Another good form of etiquette in group discussions is to ask open-ended questions instead of closed-ended questions.

An open-ended question is one that does not require a specific answer. It is a question that is designed to get the group thinking. The only time a closed-ended question should be raised is if the group has specific information that they need to learn. Open-ended questions are important because they allow the other members to think. If the question is related to a problem, the members may be able to come up with a number of different solutions. If one member interrupts another while they are speaking, this is an example of bad etiquette. You should never do this. It is rude, and it can lead to conflict between you and the person that was interrupted.

It is important for everyone to get their point across. If you have a disagreement or concern with a statement that is being made by someone else, wait until they are finished speaking before you talk. Most group discussions require members to raise their hands before asking a question or making a statement, and this is something you will want to follow. If you disagree with a statement or idea that has been presented by someone else, it is important for you to say it in a polite manner. In a group discussion, it is important to avoid conflict, as this can stop the group from being able to successfully reach an objective.

For example, an example of bad etiquette is saying something like "that idea will never work" or " your idea doesn't make any sense." These are statements that can be damaging to the member you are addressing them to. You will want to avoid this. A good alternative to these two statements are "that idea raises some serious issues" or "I see your point, but there are a number of problems that may arise." These two statements are examples of good etiquette, and you will want to use them if you wish to succeed. There is nothing wrong with not being in agreement with what a person says. However, you will want to let them know this in a polite manner, and you should have good reasons for holding your opinion.

It is also bad etiquette to put down the ideas that have been presented by another person. During the meeting, all ideas should be considered, and no one should be ridiculed because of an idea they have. Their are a number of good reason for this.
First, if one member of the group is ridiculed for having a bad idea, this may make other member uneasy about presenting their own ideas. This could lead to a situation where a sizeable portion of the members aren't actively participating because of fear of humiliation by having their ideas crushed. Group discussions are important events that allow people to brainstorm ideas or solutions to problems. When the members of the group use proper etiquette, the discussion will be extremely productive.

Lets Talk Institute Pvt ltd : learning center for English speaking Skills, Personality Development, Business English, Accent Training, American Accent, Ielts and Tofel in Mumbai Visit us at : http://www.letstalk.co.in

How to identify fake job offers

Posted on : 7:36 AM | By : Lets Talk Institute Pvt Ltd | In : Interview skills , Jobs

I have been of late coming across a lot of emails requesting me to accept job offers paying a deposit to the parent company. We as consultants and recruitment vendors can clearly see through the loopholes. Instantly these mails strike fraudulent if you are a vivacious thinker. But some guys are gullible and they fall a prey to these susceptible mails.

To stop motivating job seekers from further falling into a trap, please do read this article. I also believe this message of mine will be reaching those fraudulent troubleshooters and stop then from executing such mails.

Just read this kind information with utmost care. Currently there have been a lot of emails doing rounds about job offers with a deposit fee. Company will never charge job aspirants a fee or ask for an interview security deposit. Very rarely do headhunters take money.

Hence, the demand for a fee deposit should indicate the offer may not be genuine. Cross-check any job offer by contacting the HR department of the organization. Get the contact details from the company website to contact them. Do not use the contact details given in the email for such verification. Fraud emails usually come from public email IDs with the company name as the user name. A genuine one will come from the company email ID. To make the offer seem authentic, the email will call for submission of qualification documents, experience certificate, and address proof, salary.

The name of the company quoted in the fake offer will most probably be wrong or even non-existent. For instance, its like 'Wipro Group of Industries Limited' or 'Videocon Electronics India Ltd'. Usually, the content and format of the letter is amateurish and has a lot of spelling and grammatical errors. Often, the contact address, phone numbers given in the email are non-existent & false.

Even if they exist, there could be disparities for instance; a Delhi address may have a Mumbai phone number. They call for cash deposit into a designated bank account.

Hence all the best for the new job seekers and May youll get interview calls from genuine reputed organizations, firms and corporate so as to get offer letters to make your parents and near ones proud. All the Best.

Regards

Aakash Kadam

Lets Talk Institute Pvt ltd : learning center for English speaking Skills, Personality Development, Business English, Accent Training, American Accent, Ielts and Tofel in Mumbai Visit us at : http://www.letstalk.co.in

Half Empty ? or Half Full ?

Posted on : 4:08 AM | By : Lets Talk Institute Pvt Ltd | In : positive thinking

You don’t have to know me very long before you’ll hear me say, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?”
I recently heard about two best friends who loved football so much they made a pact that whichever one died first would come back and let the other know if there is football in heaven. Finally, one of them dies and after getting to heaven sends word back to his friend, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is there is football in heaven. The bad news is you’re shooting a penalty corner next Friday.”

Everything is a mixture of good news and bad news. Sometimes, though, it’s difficult to discern what is truly good news and what is truly bad news? Sometimes good news comes disguised as bad and bad news often masquerades as good.
Though I hesitate to admit it, more often than not I’m not a very good judge of what is really good in my life and what is really bad. I think I am, but I’m usually not. And I’ll bet you’re not as good at it as you think you are either. So I look at most things through the lens that almost everything in life has a good news component and a bad news component.
Optimists tend to focus on the good news at the expense of the bad news. Their glass is always half full which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, when the glass drops below half full, or the pitcher runs out of liquid, or someone taints the half full glass with arsenic optimism doesn’t serve us so well.
There comes a point when optimism actually becomes a detriment. While optimists tend to behave in more financially prudent ways than most, extreme optimists tend to have “short planning horizons” and more frequently act in unwise ways.
Manju Puri writes, “The differences between optimists and extreme optimists are remarkable, and suggest that over-optimism, like overconfidence, may in fact lead to behaviors that are unwise.”
Pessimists, on the other hand, tend to focus on the bad news at the expense of the good news. Their glass is always half empty, which again, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, when the source filling the glass is a fire hydrant, pessimism fails to serve us well either.
Pessimism falls short notably in explaining the events we experience, especially problems. According to psychologist Martin Seligman, pessimists tend to explain problems as though they are personal, pervasive, and permanent.
While we tend to embrace optimism and shy away from pessimism, psychologists believe the most successful people are those who are neither overly optimistic nor overly pessimistic, but a healthy combination of both.

Referred to as realism by some, when we consciously take both the good and the bad into account, we place ourselves in the best possible position to deal with a situation or circumstance. After all, being optimistic about something doesn’t miraculously make something good and being pessimistic about something doesn’t automatically make it bad.
So when asked, “Is your glass half full or half empty,” the best answer is always, “Yes.”

Lets Talk Institute Pvt ltd : learning center for English speaking Skills, Personality Development, Business English, Accent Training, American Accent, Ielts and Tofel in Mumbai Visit us at : http://www.letstalk.co.in

MANAGE YOUR TIME THE WAY YOU MANAGE YOUR MONEY

Posted on : 3:43 AM | By : Lets Talk Institute Pvt Ltd | In : Business Etiquettes , effective time management , Managing time , personality development , Time Management skills

Goals, deadlines, appointments… all these cause you to flare up. Let us take a simple example. Say you have to catch a flight scheduled to leave at 7 p.m. It is better to leave in time and reach the airport two hours before the scheduled departure time. You can utilize the extra time having a look at the bookshop.

Even if you have to meet somebody at his office at 11 a.m., it is always good to reach there at 10.45 am. Not only can you utilize the extra 15 minutes to plan your discussions or presentation outline, the other person will respect you for your punctuality and the importance that you attach to the meeting.

Delegation is an important technique and by adopting it, you can spare enough time for yourself to get involved in higher priorities.

THINK POOR, SAY POOR: THINK RICH, STAY RICH.

Your prosperity or your adversity is a result of your thinking mind which keeps you rich or poor depending on how your train it.

You can think and achieve prosperity. How? You cannot select your parents, your children, your relatives, your boss! But you can always select friends. Therefore, keep the company of those who are happy with what they have got in life. When you do so, your “thoughts factory” will produce only positive thoughts.

TAKE THIS JOB AND LOVE IT.

Enjoy your work. Involve yourself fully in it. Do not waste your time looking for the stumbling blocks in your work; learn to remove them. Those who remove problems emerge as leaders. Aim to become a leader… a man different from the crowd.

Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life! Work will be like play and playing will take your away from anger and worries.

Public Speaking - Don't Speak Too Little

Posted on : 11:03 AM | By : Lets Talk Institute Pvt Ltd

One of the most common mistakes that speakers make is to go over their time limit. However, sometimes a speaker makes the opposite mistake, by not speaking long enough. A colleague recently sent me the following email describing her experience with a speaker who spoke too little.

"Hi, Aakash. 

I went to hear an author speak at a local independent bookstore. It wasn’t a book signing—it was a presentation. The author spoke for less than 10 minutes—I’d say about 7 minutes. Since it was a Saturday night and my wife and I had driven 40 minutes one way to see her, we were shocked. We expected much more—something like a few minutes talking about her background and writing the book, then reading a chapter from the book, then a bit more about the topic of the book."

Here are three things that you can do to ensure you're not the speaker who shocks and annoys the audience by speaking too little:

1. Be clear about your time limit.
If you're speaking at a meeting, event or conference, check with the organizer about how long you have to present. And check with the organizer again as the day approaches because things may have changed. Also check any marketing materials or invitations that were sent out to ensure that attendees' expectations match your expectation of the time limit. In the above case, the speaker should have spoken longer or the event should have been advertised as "meet the author" only rather than as a "presentation by the author."

2. Practice.
In order to know how long your presentation will take, you have to practice. And practice doesn't mean sitting at your desk thinking about your presentation, looking at your notes or flipping through your slides. Practice means you say your presentation out loud, in as close to the real environment as possible. So if you're going to give your presentation standing up at the front of the room, you should practice standing up at the front of a similar room, or ideally, the actual room that you will present in.

You are not trying to memorize your presentation word for word; your goals are to become comfortable with the content, be prepared to say it a few different ways and get a good idea of how long it will take.

3. Have extra material ready.
While it's acceptable and even preferable to end a few minutes early, sometimes your presentation takes substantially less time than you practiced. This may happen because another speaker unexpectedly covered much of your content or the organizer reduced the scope of your presentation at the last minute. Whatever the reason, you should have extra content ready just in case. Have some good questions to ask, an additional exercise or handout, or a separate section of slides to use if needed.
When you're trying to decide whether you should go to your extra material or just get done early, use the audience and the meeting organizer as your guides. Are the participants required to be in the meeting or conference session for a certain amount of time so they can get credit? Will they be shocked and annoyed if you end early? And if you decide to use your extra material, it shouldn't be perceived as "fluff" or just filler material with no value.

If you follow these three tips, you won't be the speaker who shocks and annoys the audience by speaking for substantially less time than expected. And you'll be better prepared to meet the audience's expectations of high-value content within the expected time frame.

Checklist to Ensure Job Interview Success

Posted on : 10:18 PM | By : Lets Talk Institute Pvt Ltd | In : Interview skills , public speaking , Resume writing skills

Successful candidates are not born, they are made. Being prepared is the first step for a winning interview to get that job. And being prepared means following the checklist before any interview or meeting.

Copies of Documentation

Have copies of all documentation sent to the company pertaining to the position. This includes the advertised position or any information leading up to the interview. Bring more than one copy of the resume and cover letter sent for the position (and appropriate references if needed), so that one copy is always left in a personal portfolio for easy checking and reference. Don't forget the Skills Statement; this important business document can be used for personal verification and should be tailored for each type of position applying for.

Interview Attire

Physical appearance is just as important (if not more!) than the corresponding business documents of resume, cover letter and other pertinent information. It's important to dress appropriately for the interview and the industry. Even if the interview is for a construction worker, the dress should be neat and tidy .

Basically, pressed slacks with shirt/blouse and jacket are always in style. A tie for men is a nice touch. Of course women can still wear skirts/dresses. The idea is to be comfortable to keep up personal confidence level and still be professional. Dark colours are generally prefered, but if personal style is more red, try going for it! Today there is no hard and fast rule, other than neat, tidy, clean and appropriate. Appropriate means no showing of large cleavage, chest hairs or stomach. This is not a bar or disco, this is a job interview.

Shoes should be closed toe and clean/polished. Fingernails clean of dirt; nail polish all on or all off. Clothes clean and pressed. Body hygiene is important too. Ensure appropriate measures have been taken (shower or bath) so there is no body odour. Wear deodorant – take it with and go to washroom before interview and apply more if needed. Light hand on the perfume/after shaves, especially in light of allergies others may have.

The best attire tip though is a pleasant smile. Be confident and assured in personal manner, and let it show to others.

Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse

Go over any questions that might be asked, including ones that might be difficult to answer. Check out job sites such as Monster to practice at the kinds of questions that might be used. Try practicing answers in front of a mirror to really see how you look to others.

It's this area many job hunters fail on. By not practicing now, the tendency is to freeze during the interview, or answer inappropriately. It's okay to take a moment to think about the question and the answer, but having a dazed look of a deer in the headlights is not a good idea.

Ensure appropriate research has been accomplished on the company, and be prepared to ask any questions about the job or company that may not have been answered in the interview. And yes, it's always a good idea to have a question to ask the interviewer, even if it's just when a decision will be made, and when a follow up call can be made about the job to a contact.

Preparing for After the Interview

Part of preparing is having the names and way of contact for those who attended the interview. Then send thank-you notes for taking the time at the interview, assuming the job is one worth pursuing. Keep a diary of jobs applied for and interviewed for with dates and checkmarks; this allows for easy access to keep track of what's happening on the job search.

Bottom Line

Being prepared will help keep the confidence level up and allow personal talents and skills to shine through at the interview. Be the successfull candidate! Have copies of all business documents, be clean and neat for the interview, and follow up with thank-you notes. Keeping a diary of what has happened along with pertinent dates means follow up to that job will be simple.

How to Make a Better Impression on the Telephone

Posted on : 11:07 AM | By : Lets Talk Institute Pvt Ltd | In : Business English , Business Etiquettes , effective listening in the workplace , Presentation skills , Telephone etiquettes , telephone skills , workplace communication

No matter who you are or what you do, your voice reveals a lot about you. Studies have shown that your vocal qualities account for a vast majority of a person’s impression of you on the telephone. To have a more likeable and confident telephone voice, follow any or all of these five quick tips.

STEPS

1. Look at a photo of something that inspires you to remain consistently positive and upbeat.

2. Smile - When we smile our voices naturally become warmer, brighter and friendlier. (Some sales and customer service professionals even put a mirror in front of them while they work to check their attitude.)

3. Stand Up - On an important telephone call or even when you record your voice mail, stand up. This will generate energy in your body and your voice. (If circumstances make it difficult for you to stand, sit alert with your back erect, feet on the floor and buttocks towards the front of your chair.)

4. Script It – Scripting your introductory calls and incoming or outgoing messages can make you sound more articulate and self assured.

5. Speak slower – In today’s global environment most people do not share the same native tongue. Especially if you are communicating with someone that may be fluent in a language or from a background different than your own, slow down and enunciate clearly. This will give your listener time to absorb what you are saying and in some cases adjust to your accent or translate your words back to their first language for improved comprehension.

6. Use The Callers Name, This gives a personal touch, it shows that you listen to the caller. Write down their name at the start of the conversation(if they give their name) and use it.

TIPS

Taking a few minutes to write a simple script, practicing it while smiling and standing up, and then recording it while looking at your favorite picture or screensaver, will work wonders to create a better impression and leave people with a positive experience of who you are.

To have fun with this you can even play your favorite instrumental music in the background of your voicemail.

We all prefer to interact with people we like and relate with. You can authentically share yourself and connect with others by following these simple steps to lift your spirit and your voice. Invest a few minutes to sound better and you will repeatedly reap rewards for your efforts.

WARNINGS

Does your voice mail say something like, “Hi! This is (your name). I’m currently unavailable to answer your call. Please leave your name and number and I’ll return your call as soon as possible. Thanks a lot and have a great day!"? Or does a computerized voice say, “EXT 3709 - leave a message at the tone"? The messages you leave say volumes about you. If they are unfriendly or haphazard, they can leave your listeners with a negative impression.