Communication Skills
Why you need to get your message across
Effective communication is all about conveying your messages to other people clearly and unambiguously. It's also about receiving information that others are sending to you, with as little distortion as possible.
Doing this involves effort from both the sender of the message and the receiver. And it's a process that can be fraught with error, with messages muddled by the sender, or misinterpreted by the recipient. When this isn't detected, it can cause tremendous confusion, wasted effort and missed opportunity.
In fact, communication is only successful when both the sender and the receiver understand the same information as a result of the communication.
By successfully getting your message across, you convey your thoughts and ideas effectively. When not successful, the thoughts and ideas that you actually send do not necessarily reflect what you think, causing a communications breakdown and creating roadblocks that stand in the way of your goals – both personally and professionally.
In a recent survey of recruiters from companies with more than 50,000 employees, communication skills were cited as the single more important decisive factor in choosing managers. The survey, conducted by the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Business School, points out that communication skills, including written and oral presentations, as well as an ability to work with others, are the main factor contributing to job success.
In spite of the increasing importance placed on communication skills, many individuals continue to struggle, unable to communicate their thoughts and ideas effectively – whether in verbal or written format. This inability makes it nearly impossible for them to compete effectively in the workplace, and stands in the way of career progression.
Being able to communicate effectively is therefore essential if you want to build a successful career. To do this, you must understand what your message is, what audience you are sending it to, and how it will be perceived. You must also weigh-in the circumstances surrounding your communications, such as situational and cultural context.
Communications Skills – The Importance of Removing Barriers
Problems with communication can pop-up at every stage of the communication process (which consists of the sender, encoding, the channel, decoding, the receiver, feedback and the context – see the diagram below). At each stage, there is the potential for misunderstanding and confusion.
To be an effective communicator and to get your point across without misunderstanding and confusion, your goal should be to lessen the frequency of problems at each stage of this process, with clear, concise, accurate, well-planned communications. We follow the process through below:
Source...
As the source of the message, you need to be clear about why you're communicating, and what you want to communicate. You also need to be confident that the information you're communicating is useful and accurate.
Message...
The message is the information that you want to communicate.
Encoding...
This is the process of transferring the information you want to communicate into a form that can be sent and correctly decoded at the other end. Your success in encoding depends partly on your ability to convey information clearly and simply, but also on your ability to anticipate and eliminate sources of confusion (for example, cultural issues, mistaken assumptions, and missing information.)
A key part of this is knowing your audience: Failure to understand who you are communicating with will result in delivering messages that are misunderstood.
Channel...
Messages are conveyed through channels, with verbal channels including face-to-face meetings, telephone and videoconferencing; and written channels including letters, emails, memos and reports.
Different channels have different strengths and weaknesses. For example, it's not particularly effective to give a long list of directions verbally, while you'll quickly cause problems if you give someone negative feedback using email.
Decoding...
Just as successful encoding is a skill, so is successful decoding (involving, for example, taking the time to read a message carefully, or listen actively to it.) Just as confusion can arise from errors in encoding, it can also arise from decoding errors. This is particularly the case if the decoder doesn't have enough knowledge to understand the message.
Receiver...
Your message is delivered to individual members of your audience. No doubt, you have in mind the actions or reactions you hope your message will get from this audience. Keep in mind, though, that each of these individuals enters into the communication process with ideas and feelings that will undoubtedly influence their understanding of your message, and their response. To be a successful communicator, you should consider these before delivering your message, and act appropriately.
Feedback...
Your audience will provide you with feedback, as verbal and nonverbal reactions to your communicated message. Pay close attention to this feedback, as it is the only thing that can give you confidence that your audience has understood your message. If you find that there has been a misunderstanding, at least you have the opportunity to send the message a second time.
Context...
The situation in which your message is delivered is the context. This may include the surrounding environment or broader culture (corporate culture, international cultures, and so on).
Removing Barriers at All These Stages
To deliver your messages effectively, you must commit to breaking down the barriers that exist within each of these stages of the communication process.
Let’s begin with the message itself. If your message is too lengthy, disorganized, or contains errors, you can expect the message to be misunderstood and misinterpreted. Use of poor verbal and body language can also confuse the message.
Barriers in context tend to stem from senders offering too much information too fast. When in doubt here, less is oftentimes more. It is best to be mindful of the demands on other people’s time, especially in today’s ultra-busy society.
Once you understand this, you need to work to understand your audience’s culture, making sure you can converse and deliver your message to people of different backgrounds and cultures within your own organization, in your country and even abroad
The Art of Making Conversation
Social conversation is the most common of all interchanges that go on in the workplace and the community at large. It is by far the most common among societal inhabitants. It is the polite interchange between colleagues and associates in the workplace; it is the "niceties" among strangers; and it is the small talk that changes strangers into familiar beings. It is social interaction.
It forms the social weave of organizations, corporations and informal alliances. It identifies cultures and the people in them. It is our way of getting to know people, becoming comfortable with them, learning more about them. Without it, conversation would be much more rigid and cumbersome.
There is also the academic side of conversation. This is where we demonstrate our capacity for information, and our formulation of ideas and concepts. Business is built on facts and ideas; social relationships are deepened by information and concepts learned from others. Here is where we aim at our goals and choose our words very carefully to support the goals. The other person is also striving toward his or her goals. This makes conversation a competitive game; all too often, it is a game of "one-upmanship." With practice, we can turn this conversation into an exchange of ideas and information that can be used to great advantage. We must recognize it is a game of give and take, of speak and listen.
There are many magic elements that, when used properly, unlock one’s natural qualities and let those qualities shine. Because these qualities are natural and unique to us personally, they readily increase our social and business popularity. These magic elements that do all of the unlocking of popularity include a pinpoint sense of timing, a method of keeping listeners attentive, an ability to key into the climate of the conversation, and the ability to use our five senses to add sparkle to any conversation.
Surely, you have noticed how good conversationalists quickly feel at home when conversing with an individual or a group of people. They seem to subtly take command of the group, artfully blending the various personalities in the group together and keeping everyone stimulated.
They skillfully fan the flames of the conversation so they don’t die out, leaving an opportunity for them to acquire what they seek. This is a trait that is noticed and admired by much of the population and it’s the same population that does not feel they have such ability.
Surveys tell us that nearly 60 percent of all survey respondents indicate they do not feel they have the gift of gab. Once we understand what the "gift of gab" truly is, it becomes very simple for anyone to master.
We will never attain our goals or master our objectives until we learn exactly what the other person wants out of the conversation. We do that by concentrating on what we can do for them and postponing what we want them to do for us.
To do that, we must understand a little of what makes that person tick. If we think more about what our listener wants to hear and less about what we want to say, the response to our conversation will more often be what we are seeking. We will be in control of the conversation.
Human Motivators
This is far easier than it sounds, when we realize that people have certain motivators or certain needs that must be met to make them feel at ease and comfortable:
As people:
• We need to belong, to feel we are part of something bigger than ourselves.
• We need a sense of personal power over the circumstances in our lives.
• We need to be recognized for our efforts and accomplishments.
• We need to be loved, no matter the form that takes.
• We need freedom to think and choose as we wish.
• We need a sense of worth, a feeling of pride and importance.
• And we need emotional peace and security to keep our balance and maintain it.
By understanding human motivation and helping others realize these needs, you will become a powerful new person with an exciting personality and great influence. This can be handled through conversation.
Once you learn these techniques and practice them a few times, you will notice they become an instinctive part of your personality.
Conversation starters
The easiest way to get a conversation started is to encourage the other person(s) to start talking. Simply ask a question that cannot be answered yes or no, or offer a story they can listen to.
"What did you think about -----" "Let me tell you how -----" "Here is something I think is worth thinking about ------" "Have you heard about -----" and so on.
Keep in mind not to talk about yourself. Give the other person a way to get into the conversation, give them some interest in the conversation, and, most of all, keep it brief and to the point.
A particular conversational hint concerns male and female conversations based on gender alone. While these styles are not absolute, they have been proven to produce improved conversational interaction between members of the opposite gender.
Consider that men are objective by nature; they see life as objects, facts, specific goals, the bottom line. They talk in terms of the objective, physical world.
On the other hand, women tend to feel the world. They are much more subjective by nature, feeling emotions, sensing nuances, relating to emotions, and seeing and hearing things in relation to how they fit together.
In conversation with either gender, at the conclusions to your remarks ask, "What did you think about that incident?" or "How did it make you feel?" or "Tell me a little bit about how you saw it."
This should help you to know with whom you are talking. Ask questions and involve the other person — that encourages them to talk. Then, be prepared to listen.
Listening is a very important part of conversation. Therefore, we all must practice our active listening skills. Those are the skills we use when we consciously listen to the speaker, where we try to understand what he or she is saying, and when we try to understand what the speaker meant by what was said.
It must be a conscious effort because most often we resort to thinking about what we want to say, to what is important to us, and we fail to hear the other person. We are also busy anticipating the opportunity to get our "two cents" in. We often find that our mind wanders in conversations.
Active listening
Active listening helps us avoid such wanderings.
Why should we want to listen better? Listening gives the information we need to know about the other person’s motivation, needs and concerns. Like a great detective, you will learn a great deal by simply doing a good job of listening. Listen to not just the words. Listen for the meaning behind the words themselves. It is very important to you in gaining the upper hand in conversation, negotiations or management.
Here are five steps to active listening that will make a difference in your ability to listen and persuade:
1. Listen to the content. Listen to what the speaker is saying in terms of facts and ideas
2. Listen to the intent. Listen to the emotional meaning of the speaker and what he or she is saying. Use your intuition to "hear" the underlying messages.
3. Assess the speaker’s nonverbal communication. Read and interpret what the speaker is "saying" with his or her body language and other nonverbal signals.
4. Monitor your nonverbal communication and the emotional filters. Be aware of the messages you are sending with your nonverbal communication. Be aware of the emotional filters that affect your understanding of the receiver.
5. Listen to the speaker non-judgmentally and with empathy. Try to put yourself in the speaker’s shoes and understand what is shaping his or her feelings. Don’t prejudge the speaker.
Sound difficult and hard to do? Perhaps in the beginning.
Active listening means more effective communication. Putting these five steps into practice is important, and requires time and effort.
Common barriers to listening
Like emotional and mental filters, there are physical and mental distractions or barriers that impair your ability to listen effectively. These barriers are not filters. They are not part of the brain that decides what input to use. Rather, they are things that get in the way of your ability to listen in the first place. With emotional and mental filters, you listen selectively. In most cases, barriers can be controlled so that you may practice active listening.
There are three types of external barriers: physical, noise and movement All of these can be controlled, especially if you are in control of the environment.
There are also internal barriers: distraction, lack of motivation, misreading non-verbal clues, hidden agendas, standards and expectations, prejudging and emotions vs. intellect.
The Twelve Most Effective Listening Techniques
1. Eliminate as many external distractions as you can.
2. Eliminate as many internal distractions as you can.
3. Come prepared to a meeting so you can actively listen to others.
4. Take notes if you begin to daydream.
5. Do not respond only to what is implied. Respond to the total message.
6. Identify words that trigger your anger, and control your reaction. Try to understand why these words make you instantly angry.
7. Respond to a speaker non-judgmentally.
8. Do not prepare your response while someone is still talking.
9. Do not go into a communication situation with your mind already made up.
10. Understand ahead of time what your options may be regarding certain words or ideas that may be expressed. Don't pre-judge: just be prepared.
11. If you realize you are not listening, physically move forward in your seat or, if standing, move toward the speaker, if possible.
12. Do not rely on others to interpret what happened or what was said.
INTERPERSONAL SKILLS
Ten Ways to Improve Your Interpersonal Skills
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Try these 10 helpful tips for improving your interpersonal skills:
1. Smile. Few people want to be around someone who is always down in the dumps. Do your best to be friendly and upbeat with your coworkers. Maintain a positive, cheerful attitude about work and about life. Smile often. The positive energy you radiate will draw others to you.
2. Be appreciative. Find one positive thing about everyone you work with and let them hear it. Be generous with praise and kind words of encouragement. Say thank you when someone helps you. Make colleagues feel welcome when they call or stop by your office. If you let others know that they are appreciated, they’ll want to give you their best.
3. Pay attention to others. Observe what’s going on in other people’s lives. Acknowledge their happy milestones, and express concern and sympathy for difficult situations such as an illness or death. Make eye contact and address people by their first names. Ask others for their opinions.
4. Practice active listening. To actively listen is to demonstrate that you intend to hear and understand another’s point of view. It means restating, in your own words, what the other person has said. In this way, you know that you understood their meaning and they know that your responses are more than lip service. Your coworkers will appreciate knowing that you really do listen to what they have to say.
5. Bring people together. Create an environment that encourages others to work together. Treat everyone equally, and don't play favorites. Avoid talking about others behind their backs. Follow up on other people's suggestions or requests. When you make a statement or announcement, check to see that you have been understood. If folks see you as someone solid and fair, they will grow to trust you.
6. Resolve conflicts. Take a step beyond simply bringing people together, and become someone who resolves conflicts when they arise. Learn how to be an effective mediator. If coworkers bicker over personal or professional disagreements, arrange to sit down with both parties and help sort out their differences. By taking on such a leadership role, you will garner respect and admiration from those around you.
7. Communicate clearly. Pay close attention to both what you say and how you say it. A clear and effective communicator avoids misunderstandings with coworkers, collegues, and associates. Verbal eloquence projects an image of intelligence and maturity, no matter what your age. If you tend to blurt out anything that comes to mind, people won’t put much weight on your words or opinions.
8. Humor them. Don’t be afraid to be funny or clever. Most people are drawn to a person that can make them laugh. Use your sense of humor as an effective tool to lower barriers and gain people’s affection.
9. See it from their side. Empathy means being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand how they feel. Try to view situations and responses from another person’s perspective. This can be accomplished through staying in touch with your own emotions; those who are cut off from their own feelings are often unable to empathize with others.
10. Don't complain. There is nothing worse than a chronic complainer or whiner. If you simply have to vent about something, save it for your diary. If you must verbalize your grievances, vent to your personal friends and family, and keep it short. Spare those around you, or else you’ll get a bad reputation.
Decision making skills and techniques
We use our decision making skills to solve problems by selecting one course of action from several possible alternatives. Decision making skills are also a key component of time management skills.
Decision making can be hard. Almost any decision involves some conflicts or dissatisfaction. The difficult part is to pick one solution where the positive outcome can outweigh possible losses. Avoiding decisions often seems easier. Yet, making your own decisions and accepting the consequences is the only way to stay in control of your time, your success, and your life. If you want to learn more on how to make a decision, here are some decision making tips to get you started.
A significant part of decision making skills is in knowing and practicing good decision making techniques. One of the most practical decision making techniques can be summarized in those simple decision making steps:
1. Identify the purpose of your decision. What is exactly the problem to be solved? Why it should be solved?
2. Gather information. What factors does the problem involve?
3. Identify the principles to judge the alternatives. What standards and judgement criteria should the solution meet?
4. Brainstorm and list different possible choices. Generate ideas for possible solutions. See more on extending your options for your decisions on my brainstorming tips page.
5. Evaluate each choice in terms of its consequences. Use your standards and judgement criteria to determine the cons and pros of each alternative.
6. Determine the best alternative. This is much easier after you go through the above preparation steps.
7. Put the decision into action. Transform your decision into specific plan of action steps. Execute your plan.
8. Process decision information faster with mind mapping techniques
Natural organization of your decision making information in a Evaluate the outcome of your decision and action steps. What lessons can be learnt? This is an important step for further development of your decision making skills and judgement.
Final remark. In everyday life we often have to make decisions fast, without enough time to systematically go through the above action and thinking steps. In such situations the most effective decision making strategy is to keep an eye on your goals and then let your intuition suggest you the right choice.
Use a decision tree analysis to systematically arrive at your smartest choice
Decision trees are particularly useful for working through complex multistage decisions. They also give a systematic way to incorporate the uncertainty introduced by uncontrollable events.
Simplify your selection process with a decision matrix
Process your decision making situation one byte at a time to build a decision matrix. Then do a straightforward calculation to arrive at the relative overall ratings for your alternatives.
The power of intuition in decision making
Intuition can greatly enhance the effectiveness of your decision making, especially when it complements rational analysis. Get a better idea of where intuition fits best and how to use it properly.
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Time management skills and techniques
Time management skills are your abilities to recognize and solve personal time management problems. The goal of these time management lessons is to show you what you can do to improve those skills.
With good time management skills you are in control of your time and your life, of your stress and energy levels. You make progress at work. You are able to maintain balance between your work, personal, and family lives. You have enough flexibility to respond to surprises or new opportunities.
All time management skills are learnable. More than likely you will see much improvement from simply becoming aware of the essence and causes of common personal time management problems. With these time management lessons, you can see better which time management techniques are most relevant for your situation.
Just get started with them. Many of your problems gradually disappear.
If you already know how you should be managing your time, but you still don't do it, don't give up. What you may be overlooking is the psychological side of your time management skills, psychological obstacles hidden behind your personality.
Depending on your personal situation, such obstacles may be the primary reason why you procrastinate, have difficulties saying no, delegating, or making time management decisions.
The psychological component of your time management skills can also be dealt with. The time management skills information below will point at a relevant solution for your situation.
Get Organized Now!
Ideas, tips, tools and more to help you organize your home, your office and your life!
How to avoid procrastination
Ability to beat procrastination and laziness is among the most important time management skills to learn. Identify your causes of procrastination and start fighting it now.
Decision making skills and techniques guide
Good decision making skills is the foundation for life and time management skills. Information on decision making skills and techniques with links to related decision making articles and resources.
Prioritizing techniques save your time and energy
Prioritizing skills allow you to focus on what is most important. Learn to set priorities wisely, and you will achieve more and will have more of personal or family time.
What is planning and why you need to plan
Planning as an important time management technique. Planning optimizes your efforts of achieving a goal.
Action plan techniques
Learn to plan efficiently. Simple and powerful techniques to convert your goals and ideas into an effective action plan.
Effective delegation skill and techniques
Why delegation skill is important for personal time management, how to choose delegatee, how to delegate. How to train your delegation skill.
Build coping skills to withstanding life's challenges
Well-developed coping skills help you maintain control and do the best that could be done when faced with outstanding challenges.
Do you often feel foggy in your brain or struggle to maintain energy?
Then I would highly recommend learning more on this subject. While you cannot increase the number of hours in your day, you can increase the energy and mental performance you put in those hours, and the quality of life you get out of them.
Analyze and improve personal time management skills with a time log
Time log is a very effective time management learning tool. Your minimal effort and a few tips and techniques can eliminate much of wasted time and help you reach balance.
A personal digital assistant ( PDA ) outperforms other time management tools
Advantages of a portable hand held personal digital assistant, or PDA, compared to paper notes or other personal time management tools.
EFFECTIVE INTERVIEW SKILLS
Life is full of challenges. We meet many confront in our daily life. When we are at the stage of entering school/college/university, we face many hard nut cracking challenges and learn many lessons of practical life through them. After acquiring graduation/post graduation, students usually move towards their specialization or adopt a profession of their choices, according to their own interest, keeping in view the market demand. Talents and Skills are the only tools, which could lead an individual towards the door of success in this challenging time. To qualify for a professional degree or a job, one should have strong past educational background along with integrated multi dimensional skills. It’s of no use acquiring higher degree without building character, confidence, and expressive personality.
To meet the challenges of professional life, one has to be familiar with many skills to grab the attention of an interviewer, out of which Interview skills are the basic necessities to meet up the future challenges with success. Either you are applying for a job or want to qualify an entrance examination for a professional degree; you should have to be prepared in advance for an interview. It’s the only way you through which you can gain the trust of an interviewer. An interviewer always attempt to decide that why they should select you? What are the qualities, which you have and other do not have? How can you benefit their organization? If you can show your trust, your confidence, your commitment, and appropriate skills, then you could win a successful future. Interview is a form of oral communication. It’s one to one, or one to group interaction, where an applicant proves themselves as a unique person to be the part of an organization. Remember that interview is always pre-planned and structured. It’s a formal presentation between an interviewer and an interviewee. Only those pass it with flying colours, who are original and show their interest with confidence and who present themselves appealing.
There are many types of interview like Information gathering interview, appraisal interview, exit interview, hiring interview, college/ university interview, persuasive interview, counseling interview and many more. In this article, we are going to learn about College/ university entrance and Hiring interview.
Hiring/Entrance Interview is one of the best known and the most widely experienced type of interview, where an interviewer is taken by Human Resource Manager/ Educational Expertise. To reduce your chances being rejected, here are some basic professional skills, which will lead you towards the path of success in your interview.
BEFORE INTERVIEW
First of all, prepare your mind in advance, that you are going to have an interview next morning. Relax yourself and do not get nervous, tense or tired at any cost. Before going for an interview, pre-planned few things:
1. Learn about the company, organization or educational institution and do some research in advance.
2. Why should you perform an advance research?
3. Simply to develop good answers and to prove yourself unique.
4. What you have to Research?
5. You can gather information about organizational structure; type of their clients/ students; departments and its branches; past and present achievements etc. Simply search yellow pages or ask your friend or family member/relative who are familiar about organization or you can collect information through newspapers and websites. Prepare answers to typical questions. Practice your answer and never rote learn it. Here are few of the sampling questions, which you can practice in advance.
1. What do you feel about our organization?
2. What are your weaknesses?
3. Why do you want to become a part of our organization?
4. Tell me about your self and about your hobbies.
5. Who is your role model and why? If you are lucky to know the name of a person, who will interview you, then memorizes his/her name properly. Decide what to wear. Remember to Dress simply but elegantly. Dress should be well ironed without crease. Wear comfortable shoes. remember to wear basic hosiery. You can even check what management wears and dress similarly without over kill. Do not Dress casual or wear Athletic Shoes. Do not spray lots of cologne or wear lots of jewellery. Do not wear wrinkled attire or flashing tie. Prepare your file having your portfolio, educational degree copies and extra copies of your resume. Find proper address in advance, that where are you going in the morning. Last but not the least;get a good night sleep.
ON THE DAY OF INTERVIEW
Take a bath. Do not apply heavy makeup. Always carry a purse or a small handy briefcase with you. Do carry your portfolio file. Dress effectively. Do not eat anything containing garlic or onion in your breakfast. Arrive 15 minutes earlier to show your prompt and seriousness. DURING INTERVIEW Start it off winner. Offer your hand and give a firm shake, else greet them with your pleasant smile. Take a permission to sit on a chair. Show a positive confident attitude and introduce yourself. Don’t get tense. Be comfortable and face the interviewer effectively. Listen to their questions effectively and answer it genuinely. Answer every question with confidence. Have a proper eye contact towards your interviewer. Remember that the interviewer might be more than one, so keep your eye contact with every individual interviewer to make them feel unique. Whatever you want to answer, speak clearly with a normal tempo voice. Do not shout. Show your confidence level at every moment of an interview. Show your certifications or achievements only when they ask you to show. Always sit straight. It might help them to analyze your personality and your traits. Use the medium of answer, in which you feel comfortable. Remember to use good grammar and strong vocabulary with neutral accent. Always clarify your answer. Do not say Yes or No. Never complains about your past organization or employees. While giving effective answers. Do not argue and always give respect to your interviewer. Always keep neutral thinking and try to mould your answer according to your interviewer personality. Do not eat chewing gum, while answering questions. If they give you a chance to ask any query or question, only ask relevant question.
TRADITIONAL INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Few of the traditional interview questions, which an organization might ask are
1. Tell me about yourself (in two minutes).
2. Why do you feel that you will be successful in ...?
3. Why did you decide to interview with our organization?
4. Are you willing to relocate?
5. Tell me about your scholastic record.
6. Tell me about your extra-curricular activities and interests.
7. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
8. Why should we hire you?
9. Why did you choose to become a teacher, nurse,...?
10. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?
11. Why do you want to leave your current job? AFTER INTERVIEW With a pleasing smile, say thanks and ask about the next step in the process. Follow up. Call them if you do not get a call within a given time frame and don't forget to write a thank you letter to an organization for taking out their precious time for your interview. Few reasons for not getting a job. Might be you lack oral communication skills or writing skills. Your inappropriate attitude could also let you down in your interview. Lack of knowledge about the working world. Lack of confidence. Inappropriate/fake degree. Lack of experience. Lack of motivation. PRACTICE INTERVIEW SKILLS. CHIN UP AND GEAR UP FOR YOUR NEXT INTERVIEW !
Values, morals and ethics
What are the differences between values, morals and ethics? They all provide behavioral rules, after all. It may seem like splitting hairs, but the differences can be important when persuading others.
Values
Values are the rules by which we make decisions about right and wrong, should and shouldn't, good and bad. They also tell us which are more or less important, which is useful when we have to trade off meeting one value over another.
Dictionary.com defines values as:
n : beliefs of a person or social group in which they have an emotional investment (either for or against something); "he has very conservatives values"
Morals
Morals have a greater social element to values and tend to have a very broad acceptance. Morals are far more about good and bad than other values. We thus judge others more strongly on morals than values. A person can be described as immoral, yet there is no word for them not following values.
Dictionary.com defines morals as:
n : motivation based on ideas of right and wrong
Ethics
You can have professional ethics, but you seldom hear about professional morals. Ethics tend to be codified into a formal system or set of rules which are explicitly adopted by a group of people. Thus you have medical ethics. Ethics are thus internally defined and adopted, whilst morals tend to be externally imposed on other people.
If you accuse someone of being unethical, it is equivalent of calling them unprofessional and may well be taken as a significant insult and perceived more personally than if you called them immoral (which of course they may also not like).
Dictionary.com defines ethics as:
A theory or a system of moral values: “An ethic of service is at war with a craving for gain"
The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession.
Ethics of principled conviction asserts that intent is the most important factor. If you have good principles, then you will act ethically.
Ethics of responsibility challenges this, saying that you must understand the consequences of your decisions and actions and answer to these, not just your high-minded principles. The medical maxim 'do no harm', for example, is based in the outcome-oriented ethics of responsibility.
Understand the differences between the values, morals and ethics of the other person. If there is conflict between these, then they probably have it hidden from themselves and you may carefully use these as a lever.
Beware of transgressing the other person's morals, as this is particularly how they will judge you.
Talking about professional ethics puts you on a high moral platform and encourages the other person to either join you or look up to you.
Personal Goal Setting
Find Direction. Live Your Life Your Way.
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn this vision of the future into reality.
The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.
More than this, properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you'll find that your self-confidence builds fast.
Achieving More With Focus
Goal setting techniques are used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. They give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and help you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.
Starting to Set Personal Goals
Goals are set on a number of different levels: First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life, and decide what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.
We start this process with your Lifetime Goals, and work down to the things you can do today to start moving towards them.
Your Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or by a time at least, say, 10 years in the future) as setting Lifetime Goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.
To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of these categories (or in categories of your own, where these are important to you):
• Artistic:
Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what?
• Attitude:
Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.
• Career:
What level do you want to reach in your career?
• Education:
Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to achieve other goals?
• Family:
Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
• Financial:
How much do you want to earn by what stage?
• Physical:
Are there any athletic goals you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
• Pleasure:
How do you want to enjoy yourself? - you should ensure that some of your life is for you!
• Public Service:
Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Spend some time brainstorming these, and then select one goal in each category that best reflects what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals on which you can focus.
As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want (if you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants, however make sure you also remain true to yourself!)
Starting to Achieve Your Lifetime Goals
Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a 25 year plan of smaller goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Then set a 5 year plan, 1 year plan, 6 month plan, and 1 month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.
Then create a daily to-do list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.
Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
Staying on Course
Once you have decided your first set of plans, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis. Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.
Goal Setting Tips
The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective goals:
• State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively - 'Execute this technique well' is a much better goal than 'Don't make this stupid mistake.'
• Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
• Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
• Write goals down: This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
• Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward. Derive today's goals from larger ones.
• Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control. In business, these could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, for example, these reasons could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
• Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (employers, parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively you may set goals that are too high, because you may not appreciate either the obstacles in the way or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.
SMART Goals:
A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants, SMART usually stands for:
• S Specific
• M Measurable
• A Attainable
• R Relevant
• T Time-bound
For example, instead of having “to sail around the world” as a goal, it is more powerful to say “To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!
Achieving Goals
When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals. If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve!
With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:
• If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goals harder.
• If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier.
• If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
• If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.
Failure to meet goals does not matter much, as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal setting program.
Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go.
Key points:
Goal setting is an important method of:
• Deciding what is important for you to achieve in your life;
• Separating what is important from what is irrelevant, or a distraction;
• Motivating yourself; and
• Building your self-confidence, based on successful achievement of goals.
If you don't already set goals, do so, starting now. As you make this technique part of your life, you'll find your career accelerating, and you'll wonder how you did without it!
GOAL SETTING
The car is packed and you're ready to go, your first ever cross-country trip. From the White Mountains of New Hampshire to the rolling hills of San Francisco, you're going to see it all.
You put the car in gear and off you go. First stop, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
A little while into the trip you need to check the map because you've reached an intersection you're not familiar with. You panic for a moment because you realize you've forgotten your map.
But you say the heck with it because you know where you're going. You take a right, change the radio station and keep on going. Unfortunately, you never reach your destination.
Too many of us treat goal setting the same way. We dream about where we want to go, but we don't have a map to get there.
What is a map? In essence, the written word.
What is the difference between a dream and a goal? Once again, the written word.
Goal setting however is more than simply scribbling down some ideas on a piece of paper. Our goals need to be complete and focused, much like a road map, and that is the purpose behind the rest of this article.
If you follow the 7 goal setting steps I've outlined in this article you will be well on your way to becoming an expert in building the road maps to your goals.
1. Make sure the goal you are working for is something you really want, not just something that sounds good.
I remember when I started taking baseball umpiring more seriously. I began to set my sites on the NCAA Division 1 level. Why? I knew there was no way I could get onto the road to the major leagues, so the next best thing was the highest college level. Pretty cool, right. Wrong.
Sure, when I was talking to people about my umpiring goals it sounded pretty good, and many people were quite impressed. Fortunately I began to see through my own charade.
I have been involved in youth sports for a long time. I've coached, I've been the President of leagues, I've been a treasurer and I'm currently an Assistant State Commissioner for Cal Ripken Baseball. Youth sports is where I belong, it is where my heart belongs, not on some college diamond where the only thing at stake is a high draft spot.
When setting goals it is very important to remember that your goals must be consistent with your values.
2. A goal can not contradict any of your other goals.
For example, you can't buy a $750,000 house if your income goal is only $50,000 per year. This is called non-integrated thinking and will sabotage all of the hard work you put into your goals. Non-integrated thinking can also hamper your everyday thoughts as well. We should continually strive to eliminate contradictory ideas from our thinking.
3. Develop goals in the 6 areas of life:
Family and Home Financial and Career
Spiritual and Ethical Physical and Health
Social and Cultural Mental and Educational
Setting goals in each area of life will ensure a more balanced life as you begin to examine and change the fundamentals of everyday living. Setting goals in each area of life also helps in eliminating the non-integrated thinking we talked about in the 2nd step.
4. Write your goal in the positive instead of the negative.
Work for what you want, not for what you want to leave behind. Part of the reason why we write down and examine our goals is to create a set of instructions for our subconscious mind to carry out. Your subconscious mind is a very efficient tool, it can not determine right from wrong and it does not judge. It's only function is to carry out its instructions. The more positive instructions you give it, the more positive results you will get.
Thinking positively in everyday life will also help in your growth as a human being. Don't limit it to goal setting.
5. Write your goal out in complete detail.
Instead of writing "A new home," write "A 4,000 square foot contemporary with 4 bedrooms and 3 baths and a view of the mountain on 20 acres of land.
Once again we are giving the subconscious mind a detailed set of instructions to work on. The more information you give it, the more clear the final outcome becomes. The more precise the outcome, the more efficient the subconscious mind can become.
Can you close your eyes and visualize the home I described above? Walk around the house. Stand on the porch off the master bedroom and see the fog lifting off the mountain. Look down at the garden full of tomatoes, green beans and cucumbers. And off to the right is the other garden full of a mums, carnations and roses. Can you see it? So can your subconscious mind.
6. By all means, make sure your goal is high enough.
Shoot for the moon, if you miss you'll still be in the stars. Earlier I talked about my umpiring goals and how making it to the top level of college umpiring did not mix with my values. Some of you might be saying that I'm not setting my goals high enough. Not so. I still have very high goals for my umpiring career at the youth level. My ultimate goal is to be chosen to umpire a Babe Ruth World Series and to do so as a crew chief. If I never make it, everything I do to reach that goal will make me a better umpire and a better person. If I make it, but don't go as a crew chief, then I am still among the top youth umpires in the nation. Shoot for the moon!
7. This is the most important, write down your goals.
Writing down your goals creates the roadmap to your success. Although just the act of writing them down can set the process in motion, it is also extremely important to review your goals frequently. Remember, the more focused you are on your goals the more likely you are to accomplish them.
Sometimes we realize we have to revise a goal as circumstances and other goals change, much like I did with my umpiring. If you need to change a goal do not consider it a failure, consider it a victory as you had the insight to realize something was different.
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