I wish you all a very happy and special Christmas. Please if you are travelling stay safe on the roads and enjoy what the festive season brings for you.

With love and best wishes, Francine.

Customize your own free greeting card

This is a hands on workshop for a small group, with access to a PC, or bring your laptop. Morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea are provided to keep you going for this hands on, interactive and fun day.

Don’t waste any more time trying to figure out how to use social media for your business. Make the most of your precious time and get started the right way!

Full details are available here Social Media Workshop or call ITeC today to register on 4223 3100 (there are only 4 places left!)

Connecting with friends, school buddies and long lost family is one way to use Facebook. I’ve heard some great stories of families being reunited, friends who have drifted apart reconnecting, and I have even met a person who reconnected with “the one that got away”, their lost love, and they’ve gone on to be married.

The personal relationships and connections on Facebook are fantastic and a great use of this free online community.

However, for many of us running businesses, the social aspect of Facebook could be considered a waste of our precious time. And I would agree completely. This is the reason why many, many business owners are still wary of Facebook; avoiding it and believing it is a time waster. And with good reason. Facebook can make minutes and hours dissolve, it can be completely social (even nosey) … but it can be an extremely powerful networking, marketing and growth tool for business.

Facebook comes with a series of challenges. Business owners must understand Facebook, the community and the technology. They have to get the set-up right, determine your business purpose and goals and support them with policies, develop an implementation strategy, and use Facebook consistently to build their community, their reputation and establish a presence, supported by the social proof of their network.

If that sounds complicated, overwhelming or too much hard work .. then you should consider the alternative option, because continuing to ignore social media will ensure your business loses market share.

Facebook does take time. There is a learning curve involved and an education process required for yourself and your employees but social media will produce a return on investment for your business for many, many years.

If you are hesitant, don’t believe that businesses are using, or can benefit from social media, and you need further convincing then you could have a look at results of this Zoomerang survey. Their free report reveals 86% of SMB’s have a Facebook presence for their business and almost half of respondents use Facebook for marketing purposes.

Crowdsourced Logo and Graphic Design by crowdSPRING

Here are 8 things to consider as you prepare to confidently run your meeting because meetings can be time-consuming if they lack focus, the right members, or effective facilitation tools.

On the other hand, they can also be an extremely efficient way to get things done quickly, to support building a team environment, and to enable collaboration among key people to produce a better outcome than possible working independently.

If you are responsible for running meetings, and aren’t quite sure how best to go about creating an effective meeting experience, you’ll be glad you found this article.

Following are a few key steps to successful meeting management. Attending to each of these steps will enable you to repeatedly create a well-organized, productive experience, and therefore build your confidence that you can run effective meetings.

1. Meet with a purpose

If you ask most people, they have been to one too many meetings that seemed (whether or not accurately so) to have no purpose.
Be sure to call a meeting only if you have a clear reason for doing so.
It doesn’t matter what your reason might be.
If you need information from the group, set a clear agenda with key questions ahead of time.
If you want to share information, draft an outline of your key points. If you just want to get the team together to allow for bonding time, then organize it so that an interactive environment will be facilitated (order pizza, etc.)

2. Communicate your purpose/agenda

So, you know why you’re meeting—great!
Now, tell everyone else why you are! Be sure to let all attendees know how long the meeting will be, where it will be, and what information is to be covered.
Be sure to let them also know what the goal of the meeting is—what deliverables, outcomes, etc. are expected so they can come prepared.
Just because you’ve called the meeting doesn’t mean you’re the only one who has to do the talking.
Enable them to participate—sharing relevant information ahead of time, will ensure they come prepared to contribute, and take the spotlight off of you at the same time!

3. Supporting materials

Come prepared with the appropriate supporting materials.
If this is an information gathering session, bring forms or tools for completion. Presentation? Bring slides/handouts, etc.
Whatever will support communication of your key points, gathering of the required information, or structuring of the discussion should be included to create a stronger sense that everyone’s time is being well spent.

4. Everyone present for a purpose

Please ensure that every single individual invited to the meeting is there for a reason. And, more importantly, that each attendee clearly understands his/her specific role.
When planning your meeting consider team members’ roles.
How can they contribute?
Do they have key information, skills, experience that you can leverage in the meeting?
Help them feel useful by letting them know the important role you’d like them to play.
Also helpful in running effective meetings, is to assign meeting management roles before you begin the meetings. Some specific meeting facilitation roles might include:
• Scribe: to record key information, and meeting minutes
• Flipchart recorder: to capture key points, questions visually on flipcharts
• Timekeeper: to help keep to the agenda
• “Devil’s advocate”: should the group tend to always passively agree to all suggestions, it might be helpful (and fun) to assign someone to play devil’s advocate purely for the purpose of creating creative debate and discussion.

5. Outcomes/agreements captured and reviewed

Before you end the meeting, review the agreed upon action items, along with the responsible parties for each item as discussed during the meeting.
If you’ve assigned meeting scribes or flipchart recorders, then this step should be relatively simple.

6. Next steps defined

Discuss timeframes for completion of action items, and also make sure to review next steps.
Set expectations now for a follow-up meeting, should one be required.
Let everyone know what you anticipate will need to be covered in the next meeting.

7. Show your appreciation

Every single person’s time is precious.
So, be sure to thank them for their participation and contributions. Motivate key participants by letting them know after the meeting just how helpful their contributions were during the meeting.
This will help to ensure that next time you need to have a meeting, you’ll find willing participants ready to go.

8. Reflect on your process

Identify what went well, and what didn’t.
Learn from your experience and find ways to improve as you move forward. Don’t forget to seek support from your Human Resources Training group should you be interested in building your facilitation skills.

Following these 8 steps will ensure that with practice, you will be effectively, and smoothly running meetings—with confidence!

Basically it comes down to good time management.

There are many techniques and tips that will help you achieve more in the day and most people can find at least one additional hour in their work day just by implementing good techniques.
That’s not to say that it is easy and doesn’t require some work to set up good time management. It requires some systemisation and organisation, but if you could gain 1 hour every day wouldn’t it be worth the effort!

I suggest every body should learn and develop their time management skills, because I don’t know about you but time just seems to be going so quickly, and I want to make the most of every minute.

Do you find yourself wondering why the staff that you know are full of potential are not applying themselves and their work is sloppy, they’re unenthusiastic and it seems like a real effort to even turn up for work?

Chances are your first impression and your gut instinct about the person are right. They are probably extremely capable and competent and with the right incentive will actually exceed your expectations.

I know you immediately think “I can’t afford to pay more” but the truth is money is not always the desired incentive. There are many ways to motivate employees, increase their enthusiasm and inspire them to achieve greater results for the business.

It starts with being made to feel important.

Every employee must know they have an important role in the business and the role that they play is a vital contribution to the end result. Now you might be thinking “but what they do is not that important”, but I challenge you to give further thought to each and every role in your business because if every employee is not vital in producing your end product – why are they in the business?

A receptionist, for example, is a critical person in many businesses. Although most, when you ask whether they play an important part in the company, will respond with “no I just answer the phone”. That couldn’t be further from the truth. A receptionist is the first point of contact for the company and if a prospective customer rings that business what could be more important than first impressions. Did you know it is the first 4 seconds of any interaction that has the greatest impact – now is a receptionist important?

The simplest way to make employees feel important is to make them feel valuable to the company and you will be amazed by the change in a persons commitment, loyalty and dedication when they feel like their employer values their contribution and their presence.

In fact, it was so important to her that we were told to keep giving them “stuff” until they were thrilled. Considering her products were low dollar value and high volume, I guess she figured there was enough margin in what we sold to give some of the profits back to the customers to keep them happy.

It worked for her. She was an extremely successful business woman who went on to establish the most reputable catering business in the local area. She is retired now and living quite a handsome life so I guess her theory on looking after customers worked out for her.

I’m not saying we should give product away or fold to every customer complaint but it seems many businesses have lost there way when it comes to defining customer service. Or is serving a customers needs enough.

Put quite simply, NO. Serving a customers need is no longer enough to gain a competitive advantage in our highly competitive economy. If you are looking to build a lasting, reputable business you need to exceed your customers expectations.

That doesn’t mean giving your product away, or kissing your customers feet …. but it does require you to evaluate the importance of customers to your business, and to be sure that every person in your business understands that without customers there would be no business!

This is something I often wonder. The truth is, until a number of years ago I had never heard of the concept of soft and hard skills. I was asked the question ‘what are soft skills’ in some University coursework and I was baffled.

Since then I have continued to investigate the power of ‘soft skills’ and the more I learn the more appreciation I have for ‘soft skills’.

These are the skills that really distinguish a person’s ability to excel. Think about any person you know that is really exceptional in their job, and their life, and I bet they have spent time and energy honing their ‘soft skills’.

A person can be highly skilled in their trade or profession but without improving their soft skills they lack the ‘polish’ to become truly outstanding.

That’s not to say that every persons soft skills need improvement. Every person is different. But it goes without saying – every person can benefit from improving their ‘soft skills’.

We see the proof time and time again. We’ll look into some of the benefits and improvements we are seeing in a later post.

The pace of our lives and the hast with which we live heightens the importance of planning and organisation to fit everything we need to into our weeks.

So, planning our time enables us to achieve our day to day and week to week activities and check off our to-do lists but is that enough to really achieve our goals? Possibly .. if your goals are to get through the day or the week, or to do equivalent sales to last year, or to save as much money for holidays as you did last year.

When our goal is to continue doing what we are currently doing then planning our to-do list is probably going to help achieve that. However you are probably not growing as much or as quickly as you could be!

I’d suggest that not enough of us set personal and business goals that stretch us beyond what we have previously achieved. You are capable of more.

When we fail to set goals we are effectively putting limitations on what we can and will achieve.

Here are 5 key reasons to set goals for yourself and your business:

1. It is the process of setting goals that enlightens our subconscious to what we are striving toward. The point here is not to delve into the science, but it is vital that you know it is proven that your subconscious will lead you toward your goals.

2. You are more likely to work hard toward a goal or achievement that will provide you with something you want or need, particularly if you know you will feel happiness and fulfilment once you reach the goal.

3. Making your goals visible and known to your immediate family, friends, support network, mastermind group, or somebody who can hold you accountable is extremely powerful. You will be motivated and driven to make your goals become reality when you have somebody to support you, push you, encourage you and congratulate you on small and large achievements.

4. You are more likely to stretch yourself, move out of your comfort zone and do things that are difficult (or almost impossible) when you know it is contributing to achieving your goals.

5. You will have a really good reason to celebrate along the way and on completion of the year. We all need recognition and reward for hard work and when you can look back on your goals and identify all of your achievements you will have a great reason to party! And lets face it .. if at the end of the year you haven’t completely fulfilled all of your goals you will probably have grown yourself, and your business, more than you would have in several years.
You don’t need to spend hours and hours setting goals for the new year but you do need to take time to write them down, look at them again and again, share them with the people who support and encourage you and … make it happen.