TheManager searched high and low throughout the World Wide Web this week to bring you these great posts and articles covering Leadership Development. As requested by a couple of readers, beginning this week, TheManager will include articles and posts from AskTheManager.com among these. Good reading!
Practice Leader By mmorone
Company: Leading provider of Executive Leadership Development Location: Upstate New York Reports to: CEO Salary: Up to $100000.00+/yr. on target total earnings. Challenge We need a talented Practice Leader in order to keep pace with … Worldleaders – http://worldleadersjobs.com
I am a young, newly promoted sales manager who stepped into what feels like a mine trap. I have been appointed to a brand new store filled with employees who lack professionalism and seem to be all out for themselves. I am the youngest associate to ever be promoted into a management position for our company and I feel like I have to make a name for myself by showing that I can make something of this responsibility that’s been given to me. My employees are all older than me, so trying to establish myself as someone that they can count on seems like a major task. Clearly, many of them have an issue working under someone who is younger than themselves. Not to mention the very first day, when our regional manager came to welcome me to the store, the associates were poorly dressed, not occupying themselves with their job whatsoever, and just sitting at our podiums talking amongst themselves. There is obvious work to be done, and I would really like to smother these bad habits before they become the norm. AngelCakes in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
AC, you’ve got your work cut out for you. I wish I could say the next three to six months were going to be easy, but they’re not.
The best advice I can give to you, and any young manager taking over in their first leadership roll, is this: be firm; be fair; and stick to your guns.
The truth is, that no matter how old you are, you want to be led. You want someone, anyone, to provide a vision and a direction that will help you get through your day. Luckily for you, you have salespeople to direct. It might actually be worse if these were front line, union welders or truckers with little regard for their career paths and the protection of a union.
Establish Some Ground Rules
Start right now and establish ground rules. Don’t worry about the feelings of your charges – you owe it to your company to maximize your resources, including labor – the good ones will accept you and the bad ones will terminate themselves.
Tell them exactly what they can expect from you and what you expect from them. Explain the rewards for complying and the punishment for disobedience. I know it’s harsh to see a word like “disobedience” in a leadership development post, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.
Be prepared to, indeed, break some eggs. Decide right now who is worthy of keeping and who needs to go. Give everyone the same chance, but prepare for the loss of those that simply do not want to succeed under any circumstances. Remember that this is not a popularity contest and put your ego in check.
Make sure they understand that you would love for this to be a happy and productive workplace, but short of that, it will at least be productive. Make sure they understand that the ball is in their court. They can all earn more money, get promoted or achieve whatever cachet they seek, provided they allow you to help make them successful.
You Are The Support, They Are The Superstars
Tell them early and often that they are the real heroes of your store, and that you are only there to support them. Then, be prepared to live it.
Your only goal, both stated and actual, is to make them successful. If they succeed, you succeed – though no one is going to succeed if they treat the entire day like one long coffee break. (This is where the ground rules come in.)
What they wear, how they act and how much they sell are all part of the expectations you set early on. If they live up to their part of the bargain, then you will live up to your part – you’ll help them get promoted, you’ll help them close a sale or two, and you’ll go to bat for them when it’s time for raises.
Has This Approach Ever Worked?
At 16, I was promoted to the manager of concessions at our local minor league baseball stadium. I had worked the previous summer in the concessions group, and took over as manager in my second year. (This means that I am celebrating my 30th year in management.)
My crew consisted of 30+ teenagers and senior citizens, all of whom were older than me. To make matters worse, my 19-year old sister and my 18-year old best friend also worked for me.
To make a very long story very short, I was not a great first-time leader, though by the end of the season we had reduced labor costs and increased sales to a level not previously seen by the ball club. Had I not decided to be a lifeguard the next summer, I would have earned a nice raise and would probably still be working in baseball.
During the course of the season, I fired both my sister and my best friend. Because both firings were clearly warranted, I only suffered about 3 weeks of angry stares from the two of them. However, the respect I gained from the rest of the team by setting expectations and getting rid of the two people considered to be the greatest troublemakers was immeasurable. (Once someone sees you fire your own sister, they pretty much tow the line.)
Have Fun
The best part about that summer in the minor leagues is that by the end of the season we all had fun.
There is an old saying that “sales cures all ills.” Like many old sayings, this one is true. You will be amazed at how a little success can go a long way toward invigorating your team to want more. It’s like blood to a shark; they will begin a feeding frenzy for success that you will be unable to stop.
So, AC, my advice to you is this (I like bullet points):
Deliver the ground rules
Set the expectations (for you and them)
Live the vision (which includes awarding punishment, when warranted)
Have fun
The last bullet point will happen all by itself if you succeed on the first three.
Good selling!
(Note from TheManager: To read a related series about the first steps a new manager should take, please follow this link.)
If you’re in business, it’s time you learned how to properly send an email. Just because you can open Outlook and click “send” doesn’t mean you’re qualified to use email as a business tool.
This is the second part of a two part series covering the Twelve Worst Business Email Etiquette Mistakes Ever. In this article, we will explore the Top Six Worst Business Email Etiquette Mistakes Ever, to see numbers 7-12, follow this link.
6) Text Messaging– omg ne1 w/brain noz that email n txt msging r 2 difrent thingstxting is 4 persnl coms n email is 4 bizwe r rotf over the use of txt msging 4 email
Attention Generation Whatever, email is not just a cumbersome way to send a text message, and business email should never be confused with “texting.” Regardless of what you believe the recipient wants to see, you can never go wrong with properly written, grammatically correct verbiage.
If you must send email from your cell phone, get a BlackBerry or some other email-ready smart phone with a QWERTY keyboard, activate your spellchecker, and send emails we can all understand without having to ask a 5th grader for help.
5) Attachment Names – Consider your audience, the recipient. What does the filename “my_resume.doc” mean to an HR manager who receives hundreds of resumes each week?
TheManager once received over 500 resumes for a single position posted on Monster.com. In that mix, there were more than 50 attachments with some variation of the name “my resume.” Needless to say, none of those 50 attachments were opened, and TheManager filled the position with someone who understood this basic tenet of email etiquette.
Naming your email attachments for yourself and not for your audience shows a certain level of inconsideration that borders on disrespect. Of course, most of these attachment missteps are more the result of simplemindedness than they are utter rudeness, though all need to be banished.
Filenames should be as descriptive, yet also as short, as possible. Where you have a file that includes date sensitive information, include a date in the filename. Great examples of this are “…_Aug_08” and “…_081308” (today’s date).
When you’re sending an attachment to a customer, include your company’s name somewhere in the filename. Of the 802 email attachments received in the 4,000 emails examined by the editors of AskTheManager.com, 135 contained just the name of the receiving company in the filename. Hey, we know who we work for – we don’t need 135 documents on our hard drives that remind us of this.
4) Email Stationery – Ugh. Nothing sucks the professionalism out of a business email more than a pretty blue background. Just as email and text messaging are two different communication media, email and wedding invitations are also very different.
Your business emails should never, ever be set to include stationery (sometimes called “email backgrounds”). While there were only twelve examples of stationery usage (from four senders) in the 4,000 emails examined, when those emails were replied to or forwarded, the stationery took over the layout and color of the new email. This required the original recipient to make adjustments to their outbound email, or risk sending out something that was unreadable.
Stay professional, drop the stationery and, while we’re at it, limit your business email signature to name, title, company name, address, contact information and confidentiality verbiage. Including a quote from some long dead philosopher may impress your mother, but it does nothing for a business colleague.
3) Carbon Copy (Cc) – Be careful with this one. Somewhere along the way the initials Cc began to mean “copy carelessly.” Let’s review some email basics:
The “To” line represents the primary recipient(s) of the email. This line also indicates who must take action, if action is required.
The “Cc” line is used for any secondary or tertiary recipients who must be informed about what is in the body of the email. Think of the cc line as sending an “FYI-Only” email to these people. They should not be expected to take any action on the email, nor even be required to read it.
The “Bcc” line, which stands for “blind carbon copy,” is intended to allow the sender to mask the list of recipients. To see the acceptable uses of this line, check out Number 12 on this list by following this link.
The Cc line is not a license to copy the world. Too often, business people get carried away and include a dozen or so colleagues that couldn’t care less about the email. Unfortunately, the overuse of the Cc line grows the amount of email we all receive exponentially; and it slows down the real productivity of all who are “Cc’d.”
The most egregious instances of Cc occur when it’s used to throw someone under the bus (by copying their boss) or to make you look good (by copying your boss). We’re hopeful that the great business leaders of the world do not reward the use of Cc for personal gain. (If you’re so determined to grow your career, buy a book on career development rather than over-copy your boss in emails – if your boss has half a brain, she sees through it anyway.)
Of the 4,000 emails we examined, 3,013 (a whopping 75%) included at least one recipient in the Cc line. Of these, the editors determined that a Cc was only required in 210 – the other 2,803 emails were basically manual SPAM, created by business people with no business email etiquette.
2) Reply To All – Please, for the love of humanity and the sanity of the editors, learn how to use this simple, intuitive button installed in every email program in the world.
The Reply To All button was included in email programs for the primary purpose of allowing one of the recipients of an email sent to many people to respond to everyone else included in the address lines. Unfortunately, there are two instances when this is misused; one is annoying and one can be hilarious, though both are inadvertent.
The annoying misuse of Reply To All occurs when someone copied on an email string with multiple addressees fails to use Reply To All when they intend for everyone to see their response. This is frustrating because it often creates a new branch of the email string complete with its own conversations and conclusions.
The hilarious misuse of this occurs when someone copied on an email with multiple addressees intends to reply only to the sender, and inadvertently hits Reply To All. While we only had one example of this in the 4,000 emails the editors examined, it was still pretty funny.
A colleague (we’ll call him John) of one of the editors was copied on an email sent to most of the top managers at the editor’s company, including a VP that no one respects (we’ll call him Carl). John intended to simply reply to the sender with the following message, but inadvertently hit Reply To All:
You’d better send this by carrier pigeon to Carl, I doubt he knows how to open his own email. – John
Now, unless you’re Carl or John, you have to admit that that’s pretty funny. Carl didn’t find it amusing and John has since been “reassigned.”
1) Using a Non-Business Email Address – While we found only 62 instances of this (from 14 senders) in the 4,000 emails we examined, using a personal email address for business purposes is such a clear violation of proper business email etiquette that the editors almost felt compelled to name the 14 offenders in this article just to shame them into acquiring real email service for their companies.
If you would like both you and your company to appear completely bush league, please continue to send emails from addresses that end in @hotmail.com, @earthlink.net, @aol.com, @comcast.net, etc. And, although people once thought having an @gmail.com address was pretty cool, it’s not so cool for a business email account.
Additionally, if you’d like to look like a complete nincompoop, then continue to use “mustang,” “godawgs,” and “bucnut” before the @ in your emails. (All three of these were actually received by the editors.) The consensus of the editors is that these email handles will guarantee that you will receive no response to your “revolutionary new product” emails.
While we’re on the subject of email addresses, the AskTheManager.com editors mandate that only the following naming conventions (and minor variations of these) should be used for business emails:
FirstName.LastName@BusinessName.com
FirstInitialLastName@BusinessName.com
LastName_FirstName@BusinessName.com
While many startups once thought it was cute to allow employees to use just their first names in their email addresses (pretty convenient when you only have five employees), these look a little silly today. So, bob@, george@, ralph@ and jeff@, please add your last names to your emails if you want to conduct serious business moving forward.
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These are our twelve worst – what did we miss? Do you have an example of something in email that just drives you crazy? Please send us a note at themanager@askthemanager(dot)com, or leave a comment below.
(We think it’s important to note that there are resources to help you write better emails. Understanding how to use all of the features of Microsoft Outlook is a great first step. Outlook 2007 For Dummies is the best Microsoft Outlook training and reference guide available.)
(Editors’ Note: This is a follow-up article to a post by TheManager on August 7, 2008 that detailed the most common mistakes in emails. To read that post, follow this link.)
Proper Business Email Etiquette
If you’re in business, it’s time you knew how to send an email. Just because you can open Outlook and click “send” doesn’t mean you’re qualified to use email as a business tool.
Though email was invented in the 1970s, our use of it as a business communications tool has never quite evolved. It seems that the streams of business emails received by the editors of AskTheManager.com aren’t getting better with time.
Poor grammar, typos and everything in between have become an epidemic among businesspeople. Even when someone is smart enough to employ their spellchecker, it’s clear they don’t understand the first thing about their audience.
The editors of AskTheManager.com argued endlessly, but finally created this list of the Twelve Worst Business Email Etiquette Mistakes Ever. (Perhaps we should have spent more time coming up with a better title for this post, though it’s important to note that we rejected some really terrible names.)
In reverse order, here are the Twelve Worst Business Email Etiquette Mistakes Ever (to assist our readers, we provide links to the best business writing books, tools and resources available throughout this list):
12) Blind Copy – The use of blind copy or “bcc” has, thankfully, been only a minor annoyance in business email. Proper usage is limited to including a colleague in your own company on an email to someone outside your company. Any other use is disingenuous, at best, and displays a very clandestine intention. Managers should read between the lines when they’re blind copied on an email – whatever you do, don’t reward the sender, and perhaps use this as a development opportunity.
The editors of AskTheManager.com examined 4,000 business emails received from individuals (we discarded anything that was sent from an automated program), and we discovered we were blind copied only 3 times, though we did receive a reply from someone who was blind copied on an email where one of the editors was the primary recipient.
Holy crap, we thought. This idiot didn’t realize he wasn’t supposed to let the rest of us know that he was blind copied.
It should go without saying, but don’t ever, ever respond to an email on which you were just a bcc. If you’re the sender, consider eliminating the bcc and simply forwarding the email (after it’s been sent) to those you intended to bcc. This way they can never expose you by replying to everyone on the original email.
11) Spelling – Weird, with virtually every single email program available providing a free spellchecker, that this would even make the list. Among the 4,000 emails we examined, we noted misspelled words in 486 of them (that’s 12%). TheManager’s solution is to check the Help or Options sections of your email program and set up automatic spellchecking. If that doesn’t help, perhaps a dictionary might.
10) Grammar – Of the 4,000 emails we examined, we counted grammatical errors in 544 of them. That’s almost 14%, and that’s too high. Basically, 1 in every 7 emails we received in our business life contained some grammatical misstep.
There’s only one solution for this and that’s education. Buy a book, take a class or hire an editor, but do something to stop the onslaught of crap coming from your email program to your business partners. (We all thank you in advance.)
9) The Subject Line – The editors have two issues with subject lines: first, include one; and second, write a subject line that makes sense. Believe it or not, we received 43 emails without subject lines. While that’s only 1%, we also received 605 emails with confusing, misleading or “lazy” subject lines. Combine these, and over 16% of the emails we examined did a poor job of conveying the true intent of the message they were meant to describe.
A subject line should always be used. Silly to even have to write that, but with 1% of our emails arriving without one, it must be stated.
Additionally, try to give some consideration to the recipient. For example, if the recipient works for ABC Company, don’t send them an email with only “ABC Company” in the subject line – they know the name of their company! Do you want them to guess at the real subject of the email? How do you expect them to file this email to refer to it later? Are you just a selfish person who wants to organize your emails without regard to the recipient?
It’s important to note that TheManager deletes email from unknown senders that contain only TheManager’s company name in the subject line. Not because he’s afraid of SPAM or viruses, he’s just a very particular SOB.
8) Attachment Sizes – Rule number one for the novice email user: Email programs do not allow attachments of unlimited sizes. As crazy as that sounds, it’s true. Typical email programs limit attachments to around 6-8 MB, some less, some more. Even a company’s own email servers will limit the size of an email inbox, making it impossible to receive messages that have extremely large attachments.
The largest attachment received in the 4,000 emails examined was 11 MB. Interestingly, it was a PowerPoint document that consisted of only 15 pages. Why was it 11 MB in size? The sender didn’t know how to properly use PowerPoint and they didn’t bother to compress the images in the document. Once the images were properly compressed, the file size was a manageable 1.3 MB.
The largest attachment the editors never received? Of course, we don’t know what we didn’t receive, but one sender did wonder why TheManager never responded to an email with an attachment. When he asked the attachment size, the sender replied “sixty-two megabytes.” Yikes! The worst part about an email of this size is that any sender dumb enough to think that a 62 MB file will be received successfully, obviously has no idea on how to send something via ftp.
It’s not just email programs that create limits on what someone can receive. All of the editors at AskTheManager.com use wireless CDMA cards from cell phone providers on our laptops. These cards enable speeds about twice that of dial up, which means large attachments can literally crush you when you’re sitting at the airport trying to access email.
The editors all agreed, the largest email attachment anyone should send should be 4 MB, with anything larger being transmitted via ftp. If you thought ftp was a floral delivery company, check out this link. For those of you who don’t know how to compress images in documents, perhaps you want to check out this link.
7) Email Quantity – We all receive too many emails – it’s a fact of business life in 2008. Our issue isn’t really with the amount of diverse emails we receive, it’s with the few senders who don’t know how to walk down the hall or pick up a phone.
Quick Tip: Not every communication needs to be documented in email.
Between these few email offenders and the dreaded email string that goes on forever, we are running out of time to do any real work. The solution? File every email where you are not the primary recipient without reading them, and resist the temptation to keep long email strings alive.
Interestingly, the longest string the editors found in the 4,000 emails examined for this article had only 41 messages included. Everyone predicted the winner would include somewhere closer to 100 emails. Oh well, 41 still seems long to most people.
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While we’re sure none of our readers have ever committed any of these egregious errors, we felt they needed to be reported so that we can, collectively, destroy the offenders with ridicule.
These were the first six in the Twelve Worst Business Email Etiquette Mistakes Ever. Please follow this linkfor the Top Six.
(We think it’s important to note that there are resources to help you write better emails. Understanding how to use all of the features of Microsoft Outlook is a great first step. Outlook 2007 For Dummies is the best Microsoft Outlook training and reference guide available.)
TheManager scoured the blogosphere to bring you these great and not so great posts and articles covering leadership development and management training from the past weekend:
Leadership Development is Essential For Our Communities
What is a community? A community is a group of individuals linked together by underlying similarities such as culture, race, geographic location, economic status, age grouping, sexual orientation, and gender. These similarities unify a …
U.Va. Offers New Leadership Program
The Leadership Development Center at the University of Virginia is pleased to announce the offering of the upcoming leadership program …
Choose Your Boss – Results
Earlier in the week I posted a “Choose Your Boss” blog – here. If you remember I wondered “if entertainers, politicians, musicians, actors / actresses, professional athletes, and celebrities would make great business leaders.” …
Leading Online – The Future of Virtual Leadership Development
I personally see on-line gaming environments as the evolution of virtual leadership development in the way that my outdoor experiential activities are transforming leaders in the real world. As the director of the Challenge Learning …
How Do We Know What We Know?
I found the session very fascinating because there were so many different disciplines brought up that study theory application and utilization – psychodynamic approach, leadership development, action learning, action research, …
TheManager scoured the leadership development blogs on the World Wide Web to bring you these great and not so great posts and articles covering sales management from the past week:
Outlook as your CRM Tool
Unlike traditional CRM or sales management software, Prophet is built into Outlook, eliminating the need to manage multiple contact databases or toggle between separate applications. Built on the .NET 2.0 platform, Prophet works …
Cold Calling–Some Advice to Get the Call Answered
The Inside Sales Experts Blog has a couple of very good posts regarding cold calling. Although I’m not a fan of cold calling and believe there are far more effective methods of connecting with prospects, I do realize that there are some …
Sales Blogging to the Power of 10
For now allow me to introduce the group, I encourage you to visit their profiles at Sales Management 2.0, poke around this great site, and explore each of the members’ individual profiles at:.
You Must Like Your Customer Types If You Are in Sales
If you are in sales, you have to like the types of customers you will be doing business with on a regular basis. This sounds easy enough, but many people who get into sales do not realize the types of customers or prospects they will …
Sales Management – Learn To Lead Your Team
If you have been put in charge of the sales management of a company or organization there are several things that you will need to take into account. First off, you need to learn the importance of becoming an essential part of the …
Action Sales Management Coaching
Have your people set specific goals and connect with them regularly to maintain accountability. Evaluate where people are at from a personal, and/or competency basis to assist you in developing them to their full potential. …
How to Build a Winning Team Every year at the start of football practice, Vince Lombardi, the coach of the Green Bay Packers started his season the same way. His outset account to his players was, “This a football.” Every year, John Wooden, the imaginary basketball …
Know the Key Factors That Go Into Proper Sales Management
There are a number of features included in sales management including being able to create a good sales team. You need to understand the need to organize a good sales team, learn how to do sales forecasts as well as plan your sales; …
Solving the Top 5 Most Difficult Sales Effectiveness Challenges
Senior level sales management participating in the 2004 Miller Heiman Sales Effectiveness survey ranked this as 15 more influential than the survey population as a whole. In fact, the ability to have the right people in the right …
Q. I’m a sales manager who manages three separate sales offices that are 40 miles apart. What are your thoughts about using a blog to communicate company news and events, and deliver sales training to my teams? Andy in Ohio
Great question, Andy, and great idea. There are literally thousands of companies who use blogging software, like WordPress, to maintain private company blogs. Many of them use these blogs just as you described. (A private blog is like this blog, only search engines are blocked from crawling the pages, and you need a login and password to access the articles and posts.)
The great thing about using a blog to deliver your training and communicate events – instead of using email – is that blogs can become a virtual library of information. Email, of course, is deleted or becomes stale after just a few days. With a blog, your team can go back and reference product information, HR memos or sales training anytime they wish. As a central repository of information, blogs are better than the sales manager’s memory or his desk files – and your company’s blog will still be around if you move up (or out).
Because blogs generally show the most recent entries first, your team can login at anytime and read the most timely company information. RSS feeds (included in nearly every blog theme available) can notify your team whenever something new is posted. This allows them to view the post through a free reader – without having to visit the blog.
Adding Outside Resources To Your Blog
Blogs are great because you can file the various training and information topics under categories that make sense, like Product Training, HR Memos, and Proper Sales Paperwork, to name a few. Additionally, you can easily link to any web resources you need – just like in email.
For example, let’s say your company sells replacement laptop batteries and you want your sales team to be able to describe the different types to customers. You could research this and type a blog post, or you could find the resource online and link to it like this: laptop battery information.
While a free or low cost blog will allow you to monitor who logs in and when, you may struggle with the accountability of who actually grasps the material. Of course, I always tested my sales team by managing through results. Those who performed below expectations often found me riding in their car quizzing them about the latest product release or role playing the next appointment.
I’m aware of some companies who monitor their blog activity by requiring their teams to post comments after each blog entry. At the very least, they’re sure their teams logged in and took the time to read an article or post. Blog comments are also a great way to encourage best practices sharing.
How Do You Start A Company Training Blog?
Although nothing beats face-to-face training, blogs are superior to most Learning Management Systems (LMS) primarily because of their cost. In fact, you can start a private blog tonight for no cost (called a hosted blog), or very low cost (called a self-hosted blog).
For all companies, I recommend starting with a hosted blog (free) and then moving to a self-hosted blog if you’re still using the blog as an LMS in a year. The cost for a self-hosted blog will generally run about $30/month.
Note: you may want to purchase the domain name right away, even though you don’t need it for the hosted blog. At less than $10/year, it makes sense to secure something that is easy for your team to remember, like ExxonTrainingBlog.com. There are numerous domain name registrars who make it very easy to acquire a web address. I’ve used both Network Solutions and GoDaddy, and I seem to prefer GoDaddy, though both are reputable sites with similar cost structures.
Buy A Book On Blogging
I own three blogging books, and all three are on my desk next to my computer. I read all three cover-to-cover before I started the serious blogging, and I refer to at least one of them every week. The three books recommend by TheManager are:
WordPress For Dummies – AskTheManager.com is powered by WordPress, a very intuitive blog software that is easy to learn for anyone who’s mastered basic Internet skills like email and web surfing. You’ll need this book whether you plan to use the hosted WordPress blog or a self-hosted WordPress blog. (And don’t worry, this book explains both hosting options better than I can.)
Blogging For Dummies – While there is a little overlap between this Dummies guide and WordPress For Dummies, you really need both to properly manage a great blog.
ProBlogger – Not really necessary for a private company blog, but it has some great insight into the world of blogging that isn’t covered by the Dummies books.
While most blog software, like WordPress, is intuitive, it’s not Microsoft Word – you can’t just start blogging without reading something about how to use it. Save yourself the headaches later, and learn how to blog before you start blogging.
Share The Blogging Duties
The best way to teach an adult learner is to assign them to teach the material themselves. We learn much better when we know we have to regurgitate it in front of an audience later. Don’t try to tackle all the sales training yourself and assign articles and best practices sharing to your sales team. Of course, don’t stop with your sales team, feel free to bring everyone on board to contribute to the company blog:
Ask the HR team to put links to their important forms on the site
Speak with the CEO and ask him/her to post something about the company vision or the outlook for the industry
Ask the operations team to post information about order processing, shipping or any other issue that the sales team can alleviate by following a few guidelines
Ask the admin manager to post articles about how to properly complete paperwork or what to expect from the admin team during a holiday week
Post customer testimonials and complaints (remember – it’s private so you can air out some dirty laundry)
Find relevant articles and training online, and either copy and paste them in your blog, or link to them
The bottom line on private business blogs is this: they’re simple; they’re cheap and they make a great LMS. Once you start a company training blog you’ll wonder how you ever got along without one.
Still a busy week for the Leadership Development blogs – must not be too many moms and dads getting their kids ready to go back to school – and TheManager was able to piece together the best of the Web for your reading enjoyment.
Here are today’s best Leadership Development and Management Training blog posts and articles (present company excepted, of course):
IBM Creates Volunteer Teams Wall Street Journal – USA … and two-thirds of its work force outside the US, is the first to combine international community service and team leadership development in one program. … See all stories on this topic
