Archive | Personal Effectiveness

09 February 2010 ~ 3 Comments

Office Politics: It’s Personal

Our 5-part series on positive office politics, (The P Quotient) is drawing to a close.  In this final installment, Jane Perdue looks at personal influence, one of four key behaviors needed for a person to be considered politically savvy in a productive way.  
Just tuning in to this fascinating topic?  Start here for the first [...]

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04 February 2010 ~ 2 Comments

Do You Trust Your Agenda?

As part of an ongoing blog series on Positive Office Politics  (follow #OPQ on Twitter), Susan Mazza asks “What’s Your Agenda?” In this blog post, she explores personal motivations and how they show up in the workplace.  She says:
We ALL have agendas. You could say our ambitions, no matter how altruistic or noble they may be, [...]

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21 January 2010 ~ 7 Comments

Thank Your Mentor Today

Today is Thank Your Mentor Day, which is part of National Mentoring Month.  Who knew?  Over the years I’ve had LOTS of fantastic mentors, and this is a perfect time to give them a well-deserved shout-out. The list below represents my former work team leaders, company executives, peers and fellow entrepreneurs. Interestingly, none of them [...]

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20 January 2010 ~ 3 Comments

The Phoneless Business Person

Today I attended a networking luncheon for the newly formed Grand Rapids Entrepreneur’s Club.  This fledgling organization was started by my colleague Cyndi Sullivan.  Years ago, Cyndi and I were on the founding committee for a different networking group; I’ve come to admire her work ethic and positive, pay-it-forward approach to networking. The Grand Rapids chapter is [...]

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19 January 2010 ~ 10 Comments

Networking Inside the Company Walls

This post is part of a series on positive office politics, or The P Quotient. It’s a collaborative effort with fellow bloggers Jane Perdue, Mike Henry and Susan Mazza. Jane kicked off the series with a look at the competencies cited as key to being politically astute. She also takes a swipe at the myth [...]

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22 December 2009 ~ 11 Comments

Sensible Shoes

The other day, I was talking with a fellow blogger.  We were discussing the types of blogs that have large readerships in the “human” arena: Human Resources, Learning and Development, Leadership, etc.  My friend observed that some of the most popular blogs are those that are “edgy” in some way.  That was really good food [...]

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20 November 2009 ~ 5 Comments

Your Personal Branding Ledger

Reputation Management.  Personal Branding. Credibility-Based Relationship Building.  No matter what the name, it all comes down to the fact that your interpersonal behaviors create an impression of “who” you are as a person. Are you reliable? Trustworthy?  Do you get things done?  The people with whom you interact are making these judgments about you based [...]

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12 November 2009 ~ 6 Comments

Does Your Garage Have Curtains?

Lately my musings on the people equation have turned to the human tendency to compare ourselves to one another.  It must strike a chord with people because the blog posts have generated some lively discussion.  See my posts on the effects of praise and how to “run your own race” to see the thread of [...]

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09 November 2009 ~ 5 Comments

Whose Race are You Running?

The other day I had lunch with a colleague.  Sally is a mentor to me and it’s always a treat when we get together to talk shop. At one point in the conversation Sally said, “Do you ever look at someone else and wonder, “They’re so successful [running their business]. How do they do it? [...]

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22 October 2009 ~ 0 Comments

What’s Your Networking Style?

I recently gave a presentation on Networking Styles to members of the GRAPE organization (Grand Rapids Area Professionals for Excellence.)  Several of my colleagues indicated interest in attending, but could not, so here’s a summary, divided into three parts. Part I, “What Savvy Networkers Know”  outlines my “nuggets” gleaned from years of building a strong [...]

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