Career Tools

Good business practice demands good relationships - with customers, suppliers, team members, and bosses. And good relationships usually means breaking bread together. So, are you up to speed on how to have a business meal? Or even worse, HOST the meal yourself?

You are? GOOD! Then you already know when to start talking business, and whether it’s different at breakfast, lunch and dinner. You know how much alcohol to drink, and how many glasses of wine there are in a bottle. And the ideal way to pay for a meal, or what to do when the check comes. If you know all THAT, then we bet you also know where to seat your guests, and yourself, whether there are 2 or three of you. And, of course, what to order, and what NOT to order. Soup, you say? NO.

And if you’re not sure… that’s why there’s a Manager Tools podcast covering all that and more.

Today we cover the 2nd part of our series on Preparing For Your Review. After you’ve listened to the podcast, I think you’ll agree that if you follow this simple process you will be in a position to not only get the best possible review possible this year, you will also have all the information you need to improve your performance (and your next review!) over the coming year.

And, as a reminder, you’ll find a number of documents to assist you in this process in the Tools section under Preparing for Your Review Documents.

Today’s show is the third and final part of our series on resigning. If you have to resign, distinguish yourself my resigning professionally. With the completion of this series, you now know how!

We spent a lot of time at the end of last year talking about how to write someone else’s review.

What should you do to prepare for your own?

Think of it this way. Suppose you had three folks working for you, and one of the three spent a couple of hours over the previous months preparing for their time with you. They had reviewed the entire year, prepared better information for you for their review, and had taken their time writing their self-evaluation, including specific data to support their points.

Wouldn’t that be impressive? If there were a close call to be made, might it go in your direction?

In this cast, we walk you through everything YOU need to do to prepare for YOUR review with YOUR boss.

And if you think it’s too early, think again – the timeline is THREE MONTHS!

And, by the way, during the show we promised a couple of things. You’ll find all of these in the Manager Tools website under Tools section under Preparing for Your Review Documents.

Folks, no note-taking required … we’ve done all the work for you. As we discussed on the discussion boards, these are examples of what you’ll get with our premium membership program … which will be announced shortly!

Note: So everyone can get a look at the documents associated with this podcast, we’re making this month’s member-only cast available to ALL listeners. Enjoy!

Today, we follow-up with part 2 of our 3-part series on Resigning. Usually not a lot of fun contemplating, and certainly no more fun executing. However, IF you have to do it, there IS a professional way to resign. You CAN leave your job and feel good about HOW you did it, AND leave a great impression on the way out. Now, how often does that happen in your workplace today?

Today’s show is an interesting one … At least once in your career, and perhaps as many as five times, you’re going to have to resign from a position. And this is another one of those tasks or responsibilities that no one talks about, no one knows how to do, and therefore many do it poorly.

It’s not hard to do well, and in this series of casts, we make it a simple step by step process. If you’re thinking that you already know how, consider that we recommend you need SIX WEEKS to do it well.

Today we cover the second in our 2-part series on mentoring. As a reminder, our 7 simple guidelines for mentoring are:

Also, June 26th represents the 1-year Anniversary of Manager Tools. We previously discussed having a special second part of today’s podcast where we would discuss our thoughts about this last year, as well as discuss our plans for the coming year. Unfortunately, the “discussion” was an hour long! So, rather than bundle it with this podcast and create an incredibly large download, we will release an additional podcast in the next day or two with that discussion. Look for it in your podcast player of choice shortly!

Every week, we get questions about people’s resumes on the discussion boards. Our resume casts are some of the most wanted of all our work. It’s pretty obvious that more and more folks are tuned into their own careers, and how to manage them. That’s a good thing, as we’ve said before, because no one else is managing it for you. And, because so few people manage their careers at all, it only takes a little to get a competitive advantage.

We thought we’d address a career management topic that also leverages our recent cast about building your network. We want to discuss the basics of Mentoring.

There’s a lot of different aspects of mentoring. In fact, we have a future show scheduled on how to use mentoring as part of an organizational talent management and development and succession planning program. Believe us, we’re not big fans of corporate plans..but there is a way to do it that is easy and very powerful. Stay tuned for that cast.

This week (and next), though, it’s just the basics. After we talk some big picture stuff, we’ll give you some basic guidelines. In our traditional manner, we’ll cover 7 simple guidelines: