Ten Ways to Improve Your Interpersonal Skills Essay Example for Free

Ten Ways to Improve Your Interpersonal Skills Essay Don’t discount the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace. How you are perceived by your manager and co-workers plays a large role in things as minor as your day-to-day happiness at the office and as major as the future of your career. No matter how hard you work or how many brilliant ideas you may have, if you can’t connect with the people who work around you, your professional life will suffer. The good news is that there are several concrete things that you can do to improve your social skills and become closer to your colleagues. All of these tools will ultimately help you succeed in today’s working world. Try these 10 helpful tips for improving your interpersonal skills: 1- Smile:-Â  Few people want to be around someone who is always down in the dumps. Do your best to be friendly and upbeat with your co workers. 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- People together:- Create an environment that encourages others to work together. Treat everyone equally, and dont play favorites. Avoid talking about others behind their backs. Follow up on other peoples 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 Co workers 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 co workers, 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- Humour 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 humour 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- Dont 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.

The Dialogue of Teenage Boys Essay -- Dialogue Conversation Essays

The Dialogue of Teenage Boys Beep! Beep! Beep! That damned alarm, the most hated of Joe’s possessions, began its insistent whining at precisely 7:15 AM on July 5th. A fist groggily snaked out from underneath the Charlie’s Angels blanket and hit the top of the clock. It stopped whining. After some very peculiar movements, the mound of blankets gave birth to a bleary-eyed seventeen-year-old boy. The inhuman apparition staggered towards the bathroom. It paused when it came upon the mirror, seemingly startled by the ghastly visage reflected in the honest glass. Joe groaned, swore, spat and returned to the place affectionately called "The Pit" by the rest of the family. He visited the bathroom an hour later, reemerging looking considerably more human than the thing previously spotted. He was wearing a smart, but casual, luminous green shirt and bright blue jeans. He looked like something from the nightmares of the Jolly Green Giant. Citrus colored and smelling like soap, Joe ambled slowly downstairs for his breakfast. Joe met up with his best friend Ross at around twelve, just outside McDonalds. As was the custom by this time, both argued over whose turn it was to pay for the food, resolved, as ever by the tossing of a coin. As they munched on their soggy Big Mac burgers, their conversation steered towards the party that night. "You goin' then?" "Aye, widnae miss it fur onythin' in the world. Anyhow, Martine's gonnae be there, mebbes I'll hae a chance wi' her this time." "Aye, Ross, and my bum's jist swallied China." "Ah thought ye were lookin' a bit heavier that usual, but ah wis too polite tae mention it." At this, the two friends collapsed in fits of laughter, not even stopping when Ross began to choke on h... ...Joe looked apologetically at Sam. She nodded, a resigned smile upon her lips. "Yeah, I know. You've got to help your friend. It's OK. I understand. I'll see you later. Give me a call sometime." With that, Joe took the dumbstruck Ross by the arm and gently led him out of the door. As they walked home, the two friends reflected upon the night's events. "Ye should have seen your face, Ross! Ye were like a wean caught stealin' a sweetie!" "Yeah," answered Ross, sadly, "But it wis a' goin' so well up tae then." "Talk tae her the morra, explain whit happened. If she's worth it, then she'll gie ye another chance." "Aye," interrupted Ross, a cheeky grin on his face, "And if she isnae, at least I got tae feel her ar-" The two friends laughed their way down the darkened, but familiar, old streets. It looked like the holidays were going to be a lot of fun.

Cultural Conflict in Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me”

In Dario Fo’s â€Å"Accidental Death of an Anarchist,† a character asks: â€Å"Where are all these poor people I keep hearing about? I go to a lot of parties, and I never meet any of them.† In his movie â€Å"Roger and Me† Michael Moore depicts the story when the general public can meet those poor people.   The film is a documentary about the effect of General Motors plant closing in Flint, Michigan, in the mid-1980s. From the critical point of view, â€Å"Roger and Me† constitutes a sardonic picture of corporate social responsibility, everlasting social and cultural conflict (once greatly emphasized by Marx) between working class and capitalists, now often covered in the image of managers and corporate specialists.   Simultaneously, the film can be perceived as unsuccessful attempt of the artist to abstract from pitiful effects of the event (plant closing) and to create unbiased actual picture. Practically, Moore’s â€Å"Roger and Me† represents documentary of satire, social revolt and prejudice. After the closing of plant Michael Moore tried to get in with Roger Smith, head of GM in Detroit, to invite him to Flint for a look at what had happened to people there. Practically, Moore never got near Smith, therefore he created a documentary, where people and some facts spoke for themselves.   The conflict between big company and workers regarding the issues of corporate social responsibility remains to be urgent and sensitive.   From the critical point of view, there is nothing wrong with attacking General Motors.   This company along with the vast majority of multinational corporations surely deserves to be attacked. Criticism, fair or unfair, whether de ­served or not, is a price people pay to live in a free society. Thus, Michael Moore had every right to make his smash-hit documentary film.   Like any advocate, surely he had the right to present only one side of a case. Simultaneously, there is a difference between fair and unfair criti ­cism, just as there is a difference between truth and factual distortion.   Fair criticism challenges the actions of a person or an organization, examines something your opponent has done, and attacks him or her for it. Even if it may hurt the person criticized, fair criticism contributes vigor and health to a free society. It helps check abuse of power, corruption and wrongdoing. Unfair criticism uses lies and distor ­tions to accuse someone of things he has not done and wouldn't do. Unfair criticism blames him for things beyond his control. Unfair criticism uses innuendo to attack him for things that can't be said outright because they are untrue. Unfair criticism employs dirty techniques of filmmaking (or other distortions) and degrades and endangers a free society, because it dam ­ages public trust in our institutions. Indi ­vidual judgment decides at what point unfairness becomes outright dishonesty. Michael Moore begins his story by saying, â€Å"Maybe I got this wrong, but I thought companies lay off people when they hit hard times. GM was the richest company in the world, and was closing factories when it was making profits in the billions†¦ GM Chairman Roger Smith appeared to have a brilliant plan: First, close 11 factories in the U.S., then open 11 in Mexico where you pay the workers 70 cents an hour. Then use the money you save by building cars in Mexico to take over other companies, and prefer ­ably high-tech firms and weapons manu ­facturers. Next, tell the union you're broke and they happily agree to give back a couple billion dollars in wage cuts.†Ã‚   The situation depicted by Moore seems to be outrageous. However, if critically examined GM could not sell Flint-made cars unless it modernized obsolete factories.   Moreover, in during that period GM’s average salary under the United Auto Workers contract was $15.36 compared to the national industry average of $9.07 (Kauffmann, 10). General Motors did build Mexican facto ­ries and employ low-cost, unskilled labor to assemble wire and cable â€Å"harnesses† for GM cars. The wire and cables in those harnesses were manufactured in the United States. To stay competitive, GM had to reduce the cost of hand-assembly of the harnesses. So, it worked out an agreement with the Mexican government to provide needed unskilled jobs in poverty-stricken areas of Mexico. The Mexican government then allowed GM to manufacture more cars for the Mexican (not the U.S.) market (Kauffmann, 11). Moore's camera shows an auto worker who had suffered a mental breakdown. â€Å"He cracked one night while working on the assembly line. He was now shooting hoops at the local mental health center.† Was Moore honest in blaming GM and Roger Smith because his friend had a mental breakdown? GM refuses to dis ­cuss whether the man had a previous record of mental instability, because, the company says, personnel records are con ­fidential. Was Moore honest in showing a gun-toting crazed man shot down in the street by police, to support his claim that GM layoffs had caused crime rates to soar in Flint? Moore failed to mention that crime has dropped 13 percent since 1986, when the major layoffs took place (Schwammenthal, 7). Instead of soaring, as Moore says, crime in Flint dropped 5 percent in the first half of last year, while violent crime across the United States increased 5 percent during the same period (Schwammenthal, 7). If assesses critically, Michael Moore technique can be characterized as untruth persuasion since he, being a talented director and experienced persuader, focused exclusively on the negative sides of the closing, hence corporate social responsibility in the context.   From the personal point of view, Moore abstracts from the core of the problem, social conflict, and speculates on â€Å"working class mentality.† Bob Eubanks of â€Å"The Newly-wed Game† is included as he ridicules Jews with a vile anti-Semitic remark. Moore himself ridicules a pretty young Miss Michigan, who, at the time of his â€Å"ambush interview† was more concerned with being chosen as Miss America than she was qualified to discuss economic conditions in Flint (White, 1). Moore ridicules a ho ­mosexual in a way that the film critic of the Chicago Tribune called â€Å"the lowest kind of gay-bashing, a crude crowd-pleasing gesture† (Schwammenthal, 7). Moore’s documentary becomes the picture full of controversies. Practically, the film could consolidate the general public and authorities over the problems in Flint, however its sardonic, nihilistic and controversial character does not offer any resolution and brings the conflict to the very top. Bibliography Kauffmann, Stanley. â€Å"Films & the Arts: Cars and Other Vehicles,† The New Republic. Washington: Jan 22, 1990. Vol. 202, Iss. 4 Joseph B. White. â€Å"Movie That Attacks GM, Roger Smith Opens in Flint, Michigan.† Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition), New York, N.Y.: Dec 21, 1989 Daniel Schwammenthal. â€Å"In the Fray: Michael's Manipulations,† The Chicago Tribune. Chicago, May 19, 1990      

Leadership Essay - 1625 Words

Running head: LEADERSHIP ESSAY Leadership Essay Sharon Golston Grand Canyon University Theories of Leadership CHL-520 P Clifford Eason December 12, 2011 Leadership Essay Thousands of definitions have been written to identify characteristics that effective leaders should possess; however it is impossible for leaders to be effective if they are unable to understand that true leaders are called by Christ, are servants to Christ, and must seek the vision of Christ. Through Christ, leaders recognize and address the needs of their followers by elevating and empowering them, and will inevitably fail if they allow themselves to simply rule and not consider the moral and ethical implication of their work (Burns, 2003). This essay will examine†¦show more content†¦Overcoming ever-changing technology and managing diverse work forces. Leaders complain that cutting-edge communication technology often takes away time needed to think and reflect on decisions. At the touch of a finger questions and answers can be sent, reports can be generated and one-on-one communication can be established virtually anywhere in the world. Perhaps what these leaders are re ally saying is that they are resisting change. Technology is here to stay and leaders have to get on board and become proficient in it’s use because many of the people that are being led are very proficient in the latest I pads, IPods, cell phones, email, Skype, and many other forms of communication. If a leader is being pounded with so many messages that the thought process is being impaired, I suggest turning off your I Pad and taking time out to speak with Jesus, lest we allow anything or anybody to separate us from hearing and understanding what Jesus intends for us to do. Taylor Cox suggests that the core of modern organizational leadership is managing diversity (Blackaby amp; Blackaby, 2001). No longer can leaders expect that their entire team will share their cultural values, worldviews, or perspectives. This problem is not specific to secular organizations but is emerging in theShow MoreRelatedLeadership Essay1476 Words   |  6 PagesLeadership is one of the main ar eas of study nowadays. A number of books, articles, and research papers are written on this discipline and we receive much information about this. Leadership is a relationship between leaders and followers, and building this relationship requires an appreciation for the personal values of those who would be willing to give their ener ¬gy and talents to accomplish shared objectives. Transformational leadership and leader-member exchange are popular theories in the leadershipRead MoreLeadership Essay1739 Words   |  7 PagesLeadership Essay Do I possess the traits and behaviors associated with leadership? If not, can I now learn how to be a leader at this stage of my life? What kind of leader am I? 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