Featured post by Terry Kaufman from YourEnglishSuccess!

One day I went to HSBC to interview my customers and their non-native English speaking colleagues. I wanted to understand their communication case better and get greater insight into Anglophone and non-Anglophone interactions.

During one interview, I was amazed at how eloquently one individual, Mr. Boyer, clearly expressed the essence of Sustainable English:

“An environment is friendly when everyone understands the stakes, objectives, and viewpoints of others.”

As I was preparing my program and notes, I had originally defined it as:

An environment that is friendly towards non-native speakers – it consists of clear English, collaboration, and focus on mutual understanding.

Mr. Boyer expressed exactly what the communication-friendly environment has to offer, when it is implemented and fully operational.

Every native English speaker has the potential and ability to create his/her own personalized environment to accommodate non-native speakers.

Less frustration. More success.

The best way is to handle a panel of interviewers is to
take them on one at a time. The board or panel is not one
entity, but several individuals coming together with the
common goal of hiring the best candidate for the job. At
the same time, each person has his own agenda or
department’s interest at heart. For example, the HR manager
will be checking to make sure you are a good fit with the
culture and people working at this company. The hiring
manager will want to know about your technical skills or
business know-how. And the person from accounting will want
to know if you are savvy enough to operate a business
budget.

Board or panel interviews are usually rather formal and
organized, using a standard set of questions for all
applicants. This type of interview is typically used in
academia, government or for high-level executives but can
be used for any other type of position in any company.

Another multiple-type interview is the team or “good
cop/bad cop” interview. The team is usually made up of two
interviewers, one who asks the questions and one who takes
notes. The two typically trade roles, which can be
confusing if they have different styles. In fact, one
person may be kind and gentle and the other more harsh or
pushy. Just remember, these inquisitors are working
together toward the same end. Treat them equally, not
favoring one over the other.

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Brett was in a quandary. He had been running his sales and
marketing consultancy for nearly three years - and while he
wouldn’t describe himself as successful, he had just about
managed to keep his head above water.

One of Brett’s issues however, was how to value his service
- for although he felt he was every bit as good as his
competitors, he mistakenly believed that clients bought
primarily on price.

This had led to Brett undercutting the competition - and
while initially this policy had won him a significant
number of new clients, it wasn’t long before he realised
that his modus operandi was costing him far more than he
realised.

Not only was it hard to increase prices once they have been
set, but Brett also found - much more worryingly - that the
kind of clients who bought on price alone were the kind of
clients who didn’t like paying at all.

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Most small business owners and independent professionals
start their business primarily because they have knowledge
and skills that are in demand.  While they understand
intellectually that they have to market and sell, often it
does not translate on an emotional level. Many business
owners tend to look at marketing as a necessary evil and in
many cases have negative beliefs toward it.  They could not
stand to be hounded by those pesky salesman in their
previous jobs and do not want to “become on of them.” As a
result, the tendency is to focus on the aspects of our
business that were the reason we chose to go into business
in the first place, the actual application of our knowledge
or skills.

What is a marketing mentality and how is it developed?
There are three components all that link together.  The
first component is belief.  What are the underlying beliefs
that affect our mentality?  It encompasses our attitudes,
thoughts, fears, expectations, and lack of experience.  Our
actions are shaped by what we think about, what we assume
to be true and where we choose to focus.  If the thoughts
are negative or avoidance minded then we will see marketing
as undesirable and in some cases unethical.  It will
manifest in self talk such as I don’t deserve referrals, my
marketing won’t work anyway, I will look desperate, if my
service or product is good the market will know that, I
don’t like networking etc.

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Management consultancies have a reputation for ripping off
their clients.  But is this always deserved?  There are
many reasons for engaging management consultants.  You may
need a particular technical skill, you may need an
objective, third party opinion, or you may have some short
term needs for expertise in change management.  There are
also lots of instances when you shouldn’t use consultants:
you’re not sure what the problem is and you want them to
tell you; you have a budget you need to expend by a certain
date; you want them to make some people redundant.  These
are not good reasons for engaging a consultancy and will
inevitably lead to disappointment.  Taking a responsible
role when contracting with consultancies will ensure this
disappointment is avoided.

First Step:  Decide whether you need a consultancy or not

To decide whether it’s appropriate to engage with a
consultancy or not, consider the following:

What is the need or problem you want to address and why do
you think this need or problem exists? Will it be solved by
this intervention or will the underlying issue still exist?
What skills are you looking for?  What value might a
consultancy bring to your business? What risks are there to
your business in using an outsourced resource?

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Over the last few months there has been a lot of talk of
recession. Wherever you look and whatever you read, ever
since the American subprime crisis, talk of a recession
seems to be bombarding us from every possible media. Every
expert there is seems to have something to say about
whether there will or whether there won’t be a serious
recession and if there is, how long will it last and just
how severe will it be?

If there is a serious recession, learning how to keep on
selling in a recession will be vital. Sales training might
well be the key.

I have worked with many clients who have weathered
recessions, grown their businesses through recessions and
even set up and started successful businesses in
recessions. Now is not the time to be panicking. Now is the
time to be checking your sales activities, sharpening your
sales training activities and applying solid sales
principles.

1. Believe you can and stay positive!

One of the problems with all of this talk about recession
is that once people believe there is going to be a
recession they start to feel negative about their
prospects. The nature of belief is such that people only
tend to see what they believe rather than believing what
they see. Once you believe that there is going to be a
recession you tend to only notice articles, comments and
statistics that support your beliefs.

What’s more, your negative beliefs quickly affect your
outlook and the way that you feel about your business
prospects. Think about it for a second… If you thought
2008 was going to be a great year for business, your best
year yet; how would you feel? Conversely, if you thought
2008 was going to see a major recession and that it was
going to hit you and your business hard; how would you feel?

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Generation Y (the young men and women born after 1977) are
different from other generations in many respects, from
their political views to the careers they choose (or don’t
choose).  Their presence in the workplace is truly making
an impact, causing employers to worry, fret and scratch
their heade, and asking,  “What do I do to attract the
20-something worker, and once I have them, how do I keep
them?”

When it comes to loyalty, the companies Gen Y works for are
last on their list.  These millennial leaders are
ambitious, and if you can’t find a compelling reason to
stick around, they won’t. They will either find a better
job , or they’ll move back in with mom and dad (hey…free
rent and a packed fridge is not a bad deal after all, and
moms and dads are allowing their 20-something age kids to
move back home in droves).

Many employers are labeling Gen Y workers “demanding” and
“self-serving” (not a smart move) and when you look at the
fact that over 64 million workers will exit from the
workforce by the year 2010, this puts employers in a talent
deficit dilemma.  The pools they have to dip  from are
these young men and women from ages 22-30.  So, if you want
to attract the young knowledge work, I highly recommend
that you stop calling them names and start doing what you
can to accomodate their needs, even if outrageous.

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Do you want results . . . or are you satisfied with excuses?

The barrier to irresistible growth is not the unstoppable,
uncontrollable external change, but fixed (and frequently
unexamined) ideas of how to respond to those changes.

John Kenneth Galbraith, the late economist, noted that “The
enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march
of events.”  And the tide of expected future change in our
society is now rapid and breathtaking to most — whether we
consider irresistible forces like the advent of the
Knowledge Age (with knowledge doubling in many fields
within a few years, months, or even days), the electronic
improvements in communication choices (the potential number
of ways for you to receive or send a message will continue
to grow rapidly for many more years), shifts in work
activities (from routine fulfilling of standard tasks to
Peter Drucker’s knowledge work) and stability (as a result
of down-sizing and a “free agent” work force),
demographic-driven social changes (ever older populations
in the developed countries and ever younger ones everywhere
else), weather volatility (both in temperatures and
storms), the movements of currencies and markets, social
mores of the moment (fads get shorter and shorter), or
personal styles of the young (differentiating from older
teenagers, not just from adults).

There is no doubt that today the world has become much more
complicated and interconnected. For businesses,
globalization means that the number and distance of
customers, suppliers and competitors have grown
geometrically. Such interconnectedness also means that what
affects one can quickly spread and affect all, like the
rapid expansions of computer and human viruses. These
connections mean that economic and financial adjustments,
especially in prices and currency values, travel faster and
further than before. Your irresistible growth enterprise
must be agile in adapting to these changes. I believe that
making rapid and best use of sudden changes in powerful
conditions no one can control is the key to becoming an
irresistible growth enterprise.

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Only a relative few have made significant, successful
adjustments to changing conditions from irresistible forces
(such as financial markets, weather, demographics, new
technology, and attitude shifts).    There is perhaps no
more interesting an example than Berkshire Hathaway, which
started as an owner of a failing textile mill that
eventually did go out of business due to adverse conditions.

Since then, Warren Buffett, Berkshire’s founder, has
successfully navigated the changing tides of business and
financial markets over the years to built one of the most
successful companies ever.  Unlike Microsoft, and Intel
which had relatively few important shifts in irresistible
forces, Berkshire Hathaway has weathered many by
redirecting its resources and energies into new, more
promising directions.

After having been primarily a portfolio manager of a
handful of common stocks for many years, the company has
recently shifted again to emphasize purchasing and
operating companies.  You too can learn to catch the full
benefit of today’s volatile and rapidly changing forces and
spur your enterprise on to greater and more rapid growth
than ever before.

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The days of simply browsing through the Sunday newspaper
and sending out a few resumes in order to win your next
career opportunity are over. The days of retiring after
having worked for just one or two companies are also over.
Downsizings, mergers, offshoring, acquisitions, corporate
reorganizations, consolidation, and other change
initiatives have required rapid adaptation of workers, hard
career decisions, and frequent transitions. These days, the
average worker will hold approximately ten jobs before the
age of 36. The average worker will change careers several
times during his or her lifetime.

While the timeframe for your job search will vary with the
specifics of your situation, a commonly cited statistic is
that the average job search will take anywhere from three
to six months from initiation to the day you begin your new
job. The U.S. Department of Labor indicates that the
average length of unemployment in the U.S. is currently 18
weeks (a little over four months), but this figure covers
all professions, all industries, and all professional
levels. Another common job search statistic tells us that
you can expect to spend approximately one month job
searching for each $10,000 in salary you are seeking.

Do you have a job search planned in 2008? If you do, and if
you are looking forward to your next job search with dread,
you are definitely not alone! Job searching can be
incredibly stressful. But, with some planning, genuine
effort, and sincere commitment, you can minimize that
stress and land a new job - one that is personally,
professionally, and financially rewarding - faster than you
may have thought possible.

Here is a checklist to help you achieve a fast, successful
job search in 2008.

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