Most entrepreneurs working with a virtual workforce often find themselves struggling with issues of communication, work control, productivity and accountability. If you wish to make your workforce and your management over your workforce more efficient, good communication skills is a must. I say this because a lot of non-verbal aspects of communication, like hand gestures, body language and tonality, which add to how well you communicate with people, are not involved when it comes to managing people virtually.

That being said, here are some points to ponder if you wish to be efficient in working with a virtual workforce:

1.     Be clear in the definition of objectives and what you expect of them.

If your virtual workforce is unclear about your organizational objectives or do not know exactly what it is they need to perform, too much time will be spent in having to go back and forth with questions and answers instead of actually getting some work done.

This is when an excellent grasp of written communication skills comes into play, where you need to be able to explain the requirements of the job in a clear and concise manner.

2.     Keep everyone on the same page.

Whether it’s just the two of you working together or you managing an entire off-site team, keep communication lines open where you can all converse and collaborate. With office employees, you have a greater level of interaction and monitoring but with virtual employees, you need to employ other avenues, like mailing groups or file sharing sites, for which they can share and collaborate on ideas.

3.     Make them feel connected.

Working with employees virtually doesn’t mean that your off-site staff is any less important that your office employees. Ensure that they are equally connected with your organization by keeping them informed about all major decisions and reminding them of the importance of their roles in achieving your organization’s objectives.

4.     Find a single partner for multiple virtual services.

You may have virtual employees for non-core business tasks, or you may have picked only a handful of activities for them to do. It helps if you find a single partner who could provide you with a combination of professional and managed services so that you can collaborate easily and get things done the way you want through a single source instead of managing multiple providers, saving you hours of hassle and extra costs.

All things considered, it’s really in your communication skills and how you communicate what you want accomplished and how you want it done that determines how efficient your virtual workforce will be.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

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Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

First you must establish value. Your customer must be able to see the value of your product or service. The customer must need and desire your product or service and see that it is a good value. Value also works in other ways. When customers ask you questions or make comments you need to value their opinion and their thoughts.

You can see the value in gaining the trust of your customer. It is your job to make the customer see the value in what you have to offer. There is plenty of competition out there that is just waiting for you to turn off a customer. Your responsibility is to show your customer the value of your product and make them realize they how much they need it.

Your customer must have confidence in your competence to deliver what you say. Competence tells the customer that your company can do exactly what they tell you they will do. You can demonstrate competence in several ways. Show your customer that you understand their needs. If necessary you can involve other members of your team to introduce their skills and talents. Always demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about your product and that you have done all of your research. You must gain credibility in your customer’s eyes. You want them to remember you when they need your product again and you want them to tell all of their friends and family. When you show them that you are competent to give them exactly what they need and want you will have a customer for life.  No business relationship can exist without trust. Your customer has to be able to know that you will deliver what they need.

Your customer needs to see that you are confident in what you do. Confidence builds trust in you. When your customer sees your confidence they will feel that they are dealing with somebody who knows what they are doing. You don’t have to develop a close personal friendship but you do want to develop a successful business relationship. The relationship can only work if you are able to demonstrate knowledge and skill in what you do. Your customer and your co-workers will appreciate your confidence and they will depend on your knowledge and skill. It is the only way you can establish a professional business relationship that will keep you successful in the future.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

Company leaders often overlook the power of communication. They fail to keep the employees and stakeholders in the loop, undervaluing the worth of each individual and drastically affecting the efficiency and performance of the whole team.

With resistance being the default response to change, the best thing that a new leadership team can do to make the most out of a delicate situation is to create open communication to engage employees in the transition strategies during the merger and acquisition. With a good set of communication skills, both on the business and personal level, understanding human nature’s need to resist change can help leaders be successful in working with the emotional response rather than against it.

Here are a few tips on how to use communication skills to help for a smoother merger and acquisition:

1. Immediately initiate a communication plan. There’s no reason to wait for all the facts and responses to come in because by then, new leaders would have lost human momentum. Start sharing and listening as soon as possible.
2. Be open about why the step is necessary or being considered. Talk about the benefits and risks and take into consideration employee concerns.
3. Talk about the whole process of the merger and acquisition, how long it’s expected to take, how it can possibly affect jobs and what is to be expected. The more informed employees are, the more prepared they can be as the process goes along, giving them back some control they may feel they have lost.
4. Create a listening plan. When the term communication is used in relationships, business settings or policies, the idea is the same – talk. Communication is about sharing and listening. Demonstrating empathy toward stakeholder concerns through listening channels is just as important as sharing information.

The best tip for anyone dealing with a business merger and acquisition is improving on communication skills, bringing focus to honesty and openness. With the idea of change looming, opening communication lines between old leaders, new leaders and employees gives back the certainty and security that was lost just by being given the notion that a merger was taking place. By opening communication lines, the stress and chaos in the working environment during the time of huge change can be lessened and people can perform better as the process of merger and acquisition moves along.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

Here are 7 ways in which you can use your communication skills to your advantage and avoid stress at work.

1.     Stay focused.

It can be tempting to bring up past conflicts when dealing with current ones, and it could cloud the issue and make finding a mutual understanding and solution to the current issue less likely, making the whole discussion even more confusing. Stay focused on the present, your feelings and understanding one another.

2.     Listen carefully.

People think they’re listening but are actually thinking about what they’re going to say next once the person stops talking. Truly effective communication goes both ways. Listen to what everyone else is saying, without interruptions or getting defensive. Just hear what they have to say and reflect back on what you’ve heard before sharing your thoughts.

3.     Try to see their point of view.

No one is completely the same. Everyone has their own set of beliefs, principles and points of view. In a conflict, most primarily want to feel heard and understood, and end up talking about seeing things from our point of view. It’s a two-way street. If you want people to see things from your perspective, don’t be close-minded and not look at it from theirs.

4.     Respond to criticism with empathy.

When you receive criticism, it’s easy to feel that they’re wrong and get defensive. While it’s hard to hear and often colored by the other person’s emotions, it’s important to listen for the other person’s concerns and respond with empathy.

5.     Take responsibility.

Effective communication involves admitting when you’re wrong. If you share responsibility in a conflict, look for what you did wrong and admit to it. It diffuses the situation and shows your maturity, often inspiring the other party to respond in kind.

6.     Look for compromise.

Don’t try to win arguments, but instead look for solutions that would meet everybody’s needs and concerns.

7.     Take a break.

Tempers can get heated really quickly and it becomes difficult to continue a discussion when it happens. So instead of letting the situation escalate into a huge conflict, take a break from the discussion until all parties involved has cooled off.

The use of communication skills in the work place isn’t just about knowing how to deliver a good presentation in front of your bosses. It’s also about being able to have civil conversations with everyone you work with, giving you a healthy working environment. Eliminating conflict amongst co-workers eliminates the cause of stress in your working relationship, allowing you to perform better.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

It’s easy for us to say how others are bad communicators, bad listeners or bad speakers but the thing about communication is that it’s a two-way street. You can’t accuse someone of poor communication skills without you being a poor communicator as well.

I believe there are a number of aspects of communication that we need to keep in mind in order to become good communicators. Here are five of them:

1.     Be receptive to what others say.

It’s good to know what you want but don’t be so focused on that alone and end up tuning out what anyone else is trying to say. Even if people are coming across as critical, learn how to deal with their critique and be open to their suggestions.

2.     Look out for subtext.

Speaking isn’t the only part of communicating well. There are also hand gestures, body language, speed and tone of voice to consider when communicating with someone, and more often than not, these aspects also add to the weight of what’s being said. Learn to read between the lines and be observant.

3.     Give respect.

Successful communication can only take place when there’s mutual respect among the people communicating. In a team, you’re bound to work with different people who may not see things the same way as you do but there’s no need to harp on each other when you should be working. Respect that their opinions may be different from yours and allow them to communicate their ideas without interrupting or turning it right back to your idea.

4.     When in doubt, ask.

It’s easy to assume, but everyone knows how the old saying goes when you assume. Everyone you talk to is a whole new person with a different set of ideas, skills and backgrounds so don’t generalize everyone. When in doubt about anything, ask for more details. Asking at the risk of looking lost is much better than assuming and completely missing the mark.

5.     Be genuine.

Good communication is ultimately about being genuine about what you are saying. If you communicate with the best intentions, whether to give praise or critique or in presenting ideas, nothing can go wrong.

Being a good communicator is really all about being able to properly convey what you want to say, and listen and understand what others are trying to say. You may be a bad communicator now but there’s no such thing as not being able to improve on your communication skills. And by taking these aspects into consideration, you can be well on your way to becoming a better communicator.

©2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

Having good business communication skills is a must for any executive who wishes to run a successful organization but the skill all boils down to people skills.

When firing a key company player, executives often take a lot of time to weigh the pros and cons, taking into consideration what it could mean for the business. When it comes to the point that they’ve decided to let someone go, they need to make use of business communication skills in order to present the reasons as to why they’re being let go. If it’s a key position, it’s obviously not just because of personal reasons as to why they’re being fired. Executives need to be able to explain the reason of termination in a business perspective.

Now in the eyes of the rest of the company employees, having a top management employee fired can create some unrest. If someone in that position who’s worked long and hard for the company can get fired, they’ll start thinking that it can definitely happen to them as well. As their boss, you also need to be able to explain that it’s all about the business in so many words. You need to be able to figure out how much you need to share with your employees about why that key player got fired without giving them any negative notions of the person itself.

You also need to be able to explain what it means for the business to have to let go of anyone who’s giving a certain level of performance or making certain decisions as the person that just got fired, and what it could mean for those of them that still work for you. Firing top level employees, people they look up to as their mentors or superiors, could affect their own work ethic. And being able to explain just why they were let go could prevent internal stress and chaos.

As a boss, you can capitalize on your business communication skills not only to make the parting of ways with employees easier but also to handle the fallout of their departure.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

One of the great traits of a leader is the ability to keep their team focused on the mission, while still allowing everyone to excel and have fun at the same time. The ability to ask for innovation along the way without anyone getting side tracked in coming up with new ideas that they deviate from doing anything else that they become disruptive or counter-productive to the task is one of the most important leadership skills you can have.

It’s very easy to find your team in a diffused state of affairs. And it’s equally as easy to make the mistake of not giving them the proper guidance that causes team member to invent the wrong way to do something, creating inefficiencies and slowing down the project or the production rate. Good leadership skills make use of diplomacy in building the team’s strength – diplomacy being the art of letting others get your way.

When it comes to working with teams, a leader needs to realize that there is only one leader but that a confidence must be instilled in the rest of the team so that they feel comfortable in making decisions, and making the right decision for the right reasons. The idea is always to find ways on how to be more efficient and while continuous guidance is a plus in getting things done the way you want them to, it can be time consuming. Building your team’s confidence will save you time, and while they may occasionally make mistakes, they will also learn from those mistakes.

If your middle managers and employees are afraid to make a mistake because of the fear that they will end up losing their job or credibility with you, then they will stop making decisions and that will put the burden back on you and make it impossible to delegate properly. This in turn would cause you to lose focus on your own tasks, and the whole team could quickly fall into chaos.

So in managing a team and needing to keep them focused on the task at hand to ensure optimum efficiency, never forget to rely on some of the most basic of your leadership skills – offer guidance, be clear in communicating what you need to be done in the job and build their confidence as individuals and as a team.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

Having a mentor can make a huge difference in your career, and it’s worth some effort to identify and learn from them. I stress the idea of having good communication skills for a reason, as I believe it’s the number one identifier when searching for someone to fill that role.

In finding a mentor of your own, it’s safe to say that you want to work with someone whom you admire and respect. More often than not, these are the people you work with who have managed to reach success in the company without any negative connotations from the rest of the work place, meaning they have a good relationship with others. And when it comes to forging good relationships, communication is the key. As an individual, they can share and deliver ideas without having to step on anyone’s toes. As a team player, they have the ability to listen to what others have to say whether he agrees or disagrees.

Mentors are those who can provide you perspective, giving you institutional knowledge about your company, your industry and the politics involved in both. As the teacher, they need to be able to communicate the information in a manner that would not overwhelm you, whether it’s painted in a good light or not. They need to be able to share what they have learned without making you think that it’s easy to get to the top or discouraging you from doing your best.

Throughout your time working together, great communication skills come in handy for either side. As the teacher, they need to be able to give you advice and criticism that would help further your career instead of hinder it. As the student, you need to be able to listen and understand what they are sharing, as well as opening up about your own concerns.

Being able to communicate freely is something that student and teacher need to have. This is why very few people go to their immediate superior to be their mentor. You need to be able to share ideas and concerns without the immediate bias of how it would affect your working relationship.

Perhaps the most important reason of why your mentor needs to have good communication skills is because those are the skills that you need to help your career along. Throughout your career, you’ll work with different people and you need to be able to know how to talk to them, share your ideas and listen to their concerns, whether they are your co-workers, your clients or your boss. If your mentor has great communication skills, then this is a valuable trait to learn from them.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

On the positive side, hiring a family member or even just a friend gives employers a strong sense of someone’s strengths and weaknesses; and they have a loyal employee in the work force who won’t bail and find a new job at the first sign of struggle.

However, there are probably more disadvantages than advantages:

Managers that have family members working for them often have either too high an expectation or won’t hold people accountable. Either way, it can appear to others that the manager is soft or giving out special privileges because of the relationship.

Firing a family member can lead to a relationship’s demise. As the manager, the goal is to keep people who can help the company grow but as the family, egos and relationships need to be taken into consideration.

Family members tend to forget that it’s a business relationship inside the company, which can cause some embarrassing situations, as well as a manager again being perceived as someone lacking authority over that family member.

In order to gain the rewards of hiring family members or friends rather than face its disadvantages, it’s important to know the different sets of communication skills that managers and employees must have in the work environment. The manager needs to set up a structure and a set of rules on how to engage as family members in the same work place. Everyone must know how to behave towards each other, whether in talking about the business aspect or leaning towards a more personal conversation.

There should be an understanding between family members that what happens in their personal lives is separate from what happens in their professional careers. No one needs to act like the boss while sitting down at the family table and no one should act like it’s a casual sit down when it’s a business meeting. And it’s in communicating that to each other where a business relationship can improve while working together, or when a personal relationship can be mended if it comes time to part ways in work.

Many great companies have been built by having friends and family members as part of the working environment but the trick is not to show any preferential treatment and knowing which set of communication skills to use – more personal communication outside of the office and more business-minded within the office walls. Taking these things into consideration can be the difference in being able to have hiring family members be a success or failure in an organization.

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.

It’s that age old question of who’s better – men or women? Regardless of gender, each person has a different set of beliefs, principles and skills that determine what kind of leader they would be. Several Fortune 500 companies now boast of female CEOs, women run and get elected into office, but they haven’t managed to crack the glass ceiling.

Nell Merlino, president of Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, a nonprofit group that supports the growth of female-owned businesses, believes that a reason why females stumble is because others think they are too maternal and essentially not one of the leadership skills people value or like. Merlino said “Men and women manage very differently. Women want to get it right. It’s not that men are out there to get it wrong, but you can bet that when Bill Gates makes a decision, he isn’t fretting about what people will think of that decision.”

A womans’s desire in the office is to be liked on top of being respected, adding another roadblock to success in the C-Suite. A vast majority of highly qualified females don’t have political allies to propel, inspire and protect them through the perils of dealing with upper management. Most females believe that hard work alone will help them succeed in turning heads, with 77% insisting that putting in long hours, not connections, account for their advancement.

Many executives would say that one of the most important leadership skills that a lot of working females lack is not thinking big enough from the beginning. They fail to think on a global scale from the start and narrow themselves to local opportunities. By having a limited vision of themselves and their companies, females tend to shortchange themselves and don’t pursue opportunities overseas.

It’s not saying that women lack the leadership skills necessary to become successful in the C-Suite, it’s all about learning how to cope with what disadvantages they face. In fact, Merlino says “Women make for natural mentors, but they need to be better at also asking themselves how they can key into a company’s problem and what they can bring to the table. If the economy has taught us anything, it’s that it no longer is just ‘business as usual’. If it’s not going to be us women in the C-suite, then who else is going to stimulate this economy? I believe that it’s high time we develop a level of confidence, stop looking over our shoulders for approval and just go for it.”

© 2012 Incedo Group, LLC

Special Offer

Even if you have been selling for decades, you have undoubtedly been affected by the changing market. Many companies buy online now and drop-by sales calls are less welcome. So, how do you overcome objections and close more sales? Our free audio, Selling Reinvented, will give you the tools to reassert your role and turn the new sales landscape to your advantage.