Supervisor Snacks

That was long before it was politically incorrect to use the word Dumb. And it is a statement full of old-fashioned wisdom. It pays to understand what our weaknesses are; because by knowing, we can compensate for them. We also need to understand that as our lives evolve; what we’re “dumb” at changes.  When we are young and first entering the work force, what we’re dumb at may simply be a lack of experience. We haven’t “been there, done that” yet and what we expect may clash with reality. Working is generally a little tougher than school and the responsibilities are greater. You have been learning for the past 12 to 16 years of your life however, and continuing to learn on the job should not be a difficult transition. As we get a little older, we expect a lot of ourselves and yet we are insecure. We have a need to show how much we know and really hate to admit what we don’t know. We don’t want to look “dumb”. This is a time in our lives when we need to practice saying, "I’m not...

  Email is two-way communication – usually.   It is often an invitation, or a request, or even a compliment, but all these things deserve an answer. If a friend stopped you in the hallway at work and said, “You are just the person I wanted to see; Will you look up the agenda for the conference and sent it to Pete?”  Would you stand there and say nothing?  Would you simply walk away without acknowledging the request?  Of course, not; you would most likely say you’d be glad to do it.  AND you would probably even let them know when you had completed the task.  Too often that doesn’t happen when we are sending emails.  We see the request, we might even stop what we’re doing to comply, but it often happens that we are busy, or we are distracted by the next email that comes in, and we go on about our day, never acknowledging that we GOT the message, or that we did as we were asked. This phenomenon happens all the time.  It doesn’t matter if the...