The 5 Percent Tasks Only Leaders Can Do

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Tips for Personality Development for Newbies: A Personal Approach - The Yellow Spot - Top corporate training company

As human beings, we all possess unique personality that defines us and makes us who we are. However, our personality is not a fixed entity and can be developed and enhanced with the right mindset and effort. In today's competitive world, having an attractive and impactful personality is not only a personal need but a great professional need for organizational development. It is an essential skill that can help you succeed in your personal and professional life.

If you are a newbie and looking to develop your personality, here are some tips that can help you:

Believe in Yourself: The first and foremost step towards personality development is to believe in yourself. Believe that you have the potential to achieve your goals and develop an attractive personality. A positive attitude and confidence in oneself can do wonders for one's personality.

Be Self-Aware: It is essential to know yourself to develop your personality. Be aware of your strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes. It will help you identify the areas where you need to improve and work on them.

Practice Good Communication Skills: Good communication skills are essential for a great personality. Practice speaking clearly, confidently, and effectively. Listen actively, be empathetic, and respect others' opinions. It will help you build strong relationships with people.

Develop Social Skills: Develop social skills such as networking, making new friends, and maintaining existing relationships. It will help you improve your social life and build a strong support system.

Cultivate Positive Habits: Cultivate positive habits such as reading, exercising, meditating, and practising gratitude. These habits will help you develop a positive attitude and a healthy lifestyle.

Dress to Impress: Dressing well can make a huge difference in one's personality. Wear clothes that fit well, are comfortable, and make you feel confident. Dress appropriately for different occasions.

Stay Updated: Stay updated with the latest trends and knowledge in your field of work. Attend seminars, conferences, and workshops to learn new skills and gain knowledge. It will help you develop your expertise and stay relevant.

Take Personality Development Training: Personality development training can help you transform your personality altogether. It can provide you with guidance, tips, and tools to develop an attractive and influential personality.

Learn from Role Models: Learn from successful people and their personalities. Observe their behaviour, attitude, and communication skills. Try to emulate their positive qualities and incorporate them into your personality.

Be Patient and Consistent: Developing a great personality takes time, patience, and consistent effort. Don't expect instant results, but keep working on yourself regularly. Make it a habit, and soon it will become a part of your personality.

In conclusion, personality development is an ongoing process that requires patience, dedication, and consistent efforts. By following these tips and developing a personal approach, you can develop an attractive and impactful personality that can help you succeed in your personal and professional life. Remember, your personality is not just about your physical appearance, but also about the way you interact and behave with others. So, be confident, believe in yourself, and work on developing a great personality!



Blog by: https://theyellowspot.com

Images used in the blog are downloaded from Freepik
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Great Ideas For Starting A Conversation

Many of us face challenges when it comes to starting a conversation with someone, especially introverts. It becomes super difficult to start talking about anything when you are not much of a talker. And unfortunately, a lot of communication skills training programs miss out on this aspect.

When you attend a business meeting or meet someone for work, it is considered rude to jump directly to the point. Creating an environment where people feel comfortable through what we commonly call ‘small talk’ is extremely important. We are humans at the end of the day, not robots, right?

Also, the most important reason behind small talk is building rapport with the person. Rapport building is extremely essential in business and non-business encounters and is a great way to build and expand your network. And our communication skills play a very important role in building rapport with people around us.

There are some communication skills trainings that help you in learning how to start a conversation. In fact, you might be able to figure out what to say by simply typing ‘how to start a conversation’ in Google search and will get multiple options. But the real ‘how’ is different from the ‘what,’ which we often mistake as the ‘how’! As apart from just ‘what’ you say, which pertains to the words we use, there are other aspects too like ‘how’ you say it, which could be the tone, body language, etc., which are equally important. And that’s what a good communication skills training will actually teach you.

So, today we are going to talk more about the ‘how’. We are going to discuss certain do’s and dont’s of starting a conversation. This list will give you some good ideas on ‘how to start a conversation’.

·         Observe the person. Anything you observe that is unique, interesting or something related to the person can become your opening sentence. 

·         Look for something that could be of common interest between you and the other person.

·         Compliment the person. Compliments are a great way of starting conversations because everyone likes being complimented and can be a great conversation starter. It also creates a warm environment and makes the person more open towards you and what you have to say. Just don’t go over the top with anything. And be careful while complementing introverts, some may get a little uncomfortable with the attention they are receiving!

·         If you have a good sense of humour, then you can crack a good joke. But be careful. Your joke should not be offensive or controversial. It should be light and must consider the other person interest.

·         In fact, never start with anything negative or controversial. Topics like politics, religion, gender, etc. are a big no for conversation starters or even during the conversation. People are not open to such topics and may be opinionated. And you could land up in an argument rather than a conversation!

·         A personal request, please don’t start with the weather. It’s become such a cliché and everyone knows where your trying to head with it!

These are just a few points that can help you open a conversation. There are many more such pointers. And a proper communication skills training is the platform where you can get and practice them.

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS TO MAINTAIN A GOOD WORK ENVIRONMENT

We get a lot of enquires for conducting communication skills training for teams who specifically interact with customers or external stakeholders. After all, we all want the people representing our company to be great at communication while interacting with those outside the organisation. But what about communication within the organisation?

Most of the communication that takes place happens with those inside the organisation. It’s with our subordinates, managers, top leaders, peers and people from different teams and departments who all form a part of our ‘internal customers.’ And communicating with our internal customers effectively is equally important.

A major focus of most communication skills training is to help us communicate effectively with our own team members and with those from different teams. And this does not include only verbal communication. It also includes non-verbal communication such as written communication as well as body language and voice. These are parts of communication that we typically tend to overlook but are extremely important and can make a big difference.

For creating a healthy workplace, it is important to have a culture that promotes open communication across the organisation. One that encourages new ideas, fosters creativity, encourages people, reduces unwanted conflict and misunderstanding and increases trust among people. A communication skills training helps in doing all of these.

The best part about a communication skills training programme is that it is helpful in a person’s professional and personal life. We all interact with people at our home and in our society and really could do with having smoother communication with them!

It also helps you in being assertive and managing difficult situations smoothly, something that many of us need, right? And if we can learn these, we would not just have a great environment at our workplace but also every other place we operate in. And for that, communication skills training is the way to go!

Why business etiquette is important

I’m currently busy preparing for a business etiquette training. It’s for the manufacturing unit of a large Indian brand. And guess who the audience is? A set of engineers. Yes, my favourite. Being one myself, I do relate to them the best.

                                                    

I’m sure you must be curious as to what topics I’m going to cover in this business etiquette training. Well, it’s going to be a mixed bag. A little bit of face to face etiquette, meeting, telephone and email etiquette.

So, what is business etiquette and why is business etiquette training so important?

Well, business etiquette it simply our mannerisms in a business scenario. The way we present ourselves in our communication with various people we interact with like customers, colleagues, superiors, subordinates, vendors, suppliers, etc. The way we talk when meeting people, shaking hands, greeting, introducing ourselves, being polite; to how we talk while on the phone, opening and closing a call, putting it on hold, etc. It also covers how we start and end emails, how to write in clear and concise words what we mean, etc.; to how to behave while attending a meeting.

How does it help?

1. It firstly helps us improve our interpersonal relationships skills by treating everyone with respect. Whether it be a customer, vendor, supplier, subordinate or superior; who doesn’t want to be treated with respect and feel like an equal. We all do. And following business etiquette is an excellent way to ensure that.

2. Business etiquette training provides us with guidelines while communicating. And many of us would be at a complete loss if we had to communicate without them! It provides a direction and gives us a set of dos and don’ts that can help us in not only starting a conversation well but also completing it in a polite and courteous manner. Just imagine what it would be like to not know what to do when you go to meet a prospective client for the first time!

3. Professionalism is another area that business etiquette training really works on. Don’t you feel great when you receive a call from a vendor who never forgets to greet you and also conveys his message in a well-articulated manner! Truly, business etiquette is what really helps you create a great impression on people.

And what happens when professionalism and interpersonal relationships improve? We become more successful as individuals. And it becomes easier to achieve our desired goals and success faster.

And you know the best part? Not only does it affect us, it also rubs off on those around us. We actually start becoming a role model and people start following our ways. This not only improves them, but also takes the organisation to the next level and gives customers a whole new experience.

Yup, one training, multi-fold advantages!

Top 3 qualities of an excellent supervisor

We attended a meeting with a client last week. He was complaining that his supervisors were not up to the mark. It was a very typical complaint that we seem to be hearing more and more. The client representative was getting frustrated with the casual attitude of his supervisors and wanted them to attend a supervisory skills training to fix the same.

Now these were millennial supervisors that we were talking about. As time goes by, more and more millennials are entering into the workspace. They are getting promoted and taking up supervisory and managerial roles. However, their perspective towards life and ways of working are a little different. And this can get difficult for their co-workers to understand and manage.

I am therefore going to tell you the top three qualities that a supervisor needs to have. These are qualities that all supervisors need to have although am writing keeping the millennials more in mind!

So here goes…

1.       Ownership and Accountability – This is of prime importance for supervisors and one of the points that we ensure that we start every supervisory skills training session with. Every supervisor needs to ensure that he takes up his tasks wholly, which means being completely responsible for them. They really can’t afford to be lax as that puts a bad impression on their juniors who start displaying the same behaviour!

A supervisor needs to own the task that he has on hand and ensure that it gets completed in the best possible way. He also needs to own the mistakes and failures that happen during the completion of the same rather than blaming those below him for it.

2.       Good Communication – Being able to say what we need to, is necessary. If we lack the communication skills to do that; it will lead to a lot of confusion, conflict and rework. This is turn affects quality and the time taken to complete a task. And we are all well aware of how that affects customer satisfaction and the profitability of our organisation.

Therefore, communication skills form a very important part of every supervisory skills training and a skill that every supervisory really needs to work on. After all, a supervisor is no longer an individual contributor. He has moved up the chain and now has to get work done from others. He therefore needs to ensure that his communication is in place to get the same done smoothly.

3.       Emotional Intelligence – This is an area that many of us would prefer keeping our hands out of! However, its also one that needs to be looked into to get many of the other areas in place. Many supervisory skills trainings do not focus on this aspect. However, if you ask me, its one that they really can’t afford to leave out!

Supervisors are subject to many difficult situations on a daily basis. Having to handle their workers, bosses, clients and in some cases difficult working environmental conditions apart from personal problems. These can affect the emotional well being of the person and cause him to react to situations rather than respond to them. This affects not only those around him, but also his own inner landscape. It becomes difficult for him to handle his emotions and handling others becomes almost impossible! That’s why being able to manage one’s emotions is very important. It helps in keeping a calm demeanour and makes it easier to handle any situation that comes along during the day.

Do write in and tell us what other qualities you think a supervisor should have. We would love to hear it. And you never know, we might just include it in our next supervisory skills training!

Know how your organisational culture affects productivity

Every organisation has its own culture. And this culture is very well reflected in the way its people work and interact with each other within the organisation as well as outside the organisation. Some Organisational culture workshops aim at understanding the pulse of the current culture of the organisation and looking at what can be done to enhance the same. Others, on the other hand, may be simply a sharing of the culture the top management wants its people to follow.

An organisation’s culture is mainly driven by its top management. It’s basically a top-down approach. The way the top management of the organisation operates and treats its people, gets pretty much replicated by the rest of the organisation. Hence, the top management forms a major stakeholder in every organisational culture workshop.

The culture of an organisation is very important. It is what gives rise to a particular environment in the organisation, which in turn directly affects their productivity.

Culture is based on the vision, mission and values that the organisation lives by. These truly drive the organisation and run like blood through its veins. They tell people how the organisation wants them to behave and in what direction they need to head to be successful. It therefore fosters the communication within the organisation and also the way people are treated. And we all know how engagement and productivity changes when we feel valued in our organisations!

Hence, an organisation’s culture is not something that can be taken lightly. And if it’s not something you have been giving too much importance to, it’s time to think again. First find out what the current organisational culture is. You can do it through a survey that all your employees fill or through an organisational culture workshop which has activities that help you sense the same. Then bring your top management team together and ask them to brainstorm and come to a conclusion as to what they would want it to be.  Now you can run organisation wide organisational culture workshops which actually tell employees how the culture needs to be. To make it easy for them this can be shown in the form of observable behaviours that they can display. And can be done very effectively through various games and activities which simulate the work environment and tell people how they need to behave in various situations.  Thus organisational culture workshops can set the context very well and aid the top management in building a culture where their people are prospering and taking the organisation to a new level.

Organisational culture workshops are not as common as other workshops like Communication Skills, Managerial Skills, Personality Development, etc. However, they are crucial. They require the leaders of the organisation to have very high awareness levels and an acceptance that the current culture may not be the best and may need a change. After all, only when the leaders are open to change, can change be driven through the rest of the organisation. And it’s the leaders who need to walk that change. And organisational culture workshops can aid largely in that.

BENEFITS OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN WORKPLACE

Communication skills training is a common training program that anyone can go through irrespective of their level, age, experience, department, etc. This is one skill that needs continual enhancement, though sometimes some people do get offended when asked to attend a communication skills training! They feel, being in the position that they are, they are by default exceptional at their communication skills. There are good at it, no doubt. But remember there’s no limit to learning. And certainly, no harm in enhancing a skill further.

It’s very important to have good communication and good team bonding in a workplace.  It makes things easier and a lot smoother. In fact, an organisation that encourages open communication has less unnecessary conflicts. People are ready to listen to each other’s opinions and a lot of sharing happens. They also give each other constructive feedback and are open to receiving it too. This helps in improving them, others and the organisation on the whole.

Talking about open communication, organisations where people can openly share ideas and thoughts have very high levels of creativity too. This in turn improves employee engagement and retention levels. When people have the liberty to share their ideas, they feel heard. This gives them a creative boost which helps them come up with more such ideas. And that’s when you have an organisation full of people who are running high on creativity, productivity and will stick around for a long time!

Another benefit of good communication skills is teams performing better. When communication is good, team members come together to create strong cohesive units. This is not just helpful within the team, but also greatly improves cross functional collaboration. Being able to communicate effectively opens more channels to ask for help and provide help more often.

Effective communication skills also help in being able to speak assertively to our seniors, colleagues and subordinates. This is challenging for some people. But can be helped by communication skills training.

In short, communication skills enable you for better asking, speaking, listening and understanding. And believe you and me, its these basics that matter a great deal while trying to get any job done! And how do you enhance these? By attending a good communication skills training. It will help you work on these aspects. And if you are already good at them, it will help you in brushing them up further.

So if you are ever given a chance to attend a communication skills training, go for it. Irrespective of what your communication level is, go for it. It will only make you better. And people rarely get a chance to better themselves.

Improve work place safety with right induction training

I was reviewing the induction training of a client the other day. We were going to deliver only the soft skills and behavioural part of their induction training, but they wanted us to review the entire training and see if it needed any improvements. And guess what I found. The part on process training was incomplete. It did not lay much focus on workplace safety.

Workplace safety training is extremely important for organisations that have environments that could be unsafe for their staff. However, the question is, how many of us actually ensure that we cover safety training in the induction training itself in the required depth?

While there are some organisations that definitely give a lot of importance to it in the induction training, some actually do it after a few months or even after some kind of tragedy occurs! My question is, why do we wait for something to go wrong. Why can’t we tell our employees exactly what needs to be done before they touch the floor?

Apart from the timing of such sessions, I also believe that such induction trainings need to create the right environment for learning. For example, consider a session which is simply a download of information. Do you really think it can have the impact that it needs to have? Do you really think employees are going to absorb completely what has been taught and remember it when the time comes for application?

Induction trainings need to be made more experiential in nature. They should be able to simulate the unsafe environment and make employees get an experience of why safety training is so important. It should be interactive and make employees come up with the actions that they need to take to ensure safety rather than the trainer feeding them with ready-made information. This increases their buy-in levels, seriousness as well as retention levels.

Precaution is a top priority. And if understood clearly as to why it’s needed, will definitely reduce or even prevent future disasters. And how best to do it? With experiential, interactive corporate trainings that covers all the required aspects in the correct way and detail.

So, I urge all of you to relook at your induction trainings. Are you covering all that needs to be covered? Are you using the right methodologies? After attending the session, are your employees going to be fully equipped to set foot on the floor safely?

3 major differences in the impact of Slang Communication & Business Communication

I’m sure you all know what slang communication is, right? I may still have had to explain it a few years back. But with the advent of so many means of communication, I’m sure everyone understands it even if they are unfamiliar with the term. And believe me, it’s one reason why organisations are having to conduct more and more communication skills trainings for their employees!

In case you are unfamiliar with the term, let me give you an example to make it clear. For example, consider the term ‘FOMO.’ Have any of you heard it before? I happened to hear it for the first time in a session that I was conducting a few months back. And only I know how I was looked at with wide eyes when I said I had never heard of it! I was very sternly told by my participants that it meant ‘Fear of Missing Out!’ It seems that’s what the youngsters use nowadays to explain their incessant need of following the pack, or else they feel left out!

So, what do you think could be the differences in the impact that slang communication has versus business communication back at the workplace? And with the advent of Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. why are more companies opting for communication skills trainings?

As you may have concluded from my example, slang communication is the communication used typically by a group of people. In my case, the entire younger generation, as I was told! So, what do you think are some of the dangers of using slangs over business communication?

·         Not understanding it – And that’s exactly what happened with me! I could not understand what the term meant until the group using is took the effort to explain it to me. And this is something that commonly happens especially when we travel. Local people use local terms that are beyond our understanding. And this causes huge gaps in understanding. Gaps that large, that even communication skills trainings can’t repair! And some terms can even cause misunderstandings. For example, the term ‘trainers.’ To a person from the learning and development sphere, it means someone who gives training to others. On the other hand, for some youngsters, it means sports shoes!

·         Wasting Time – Yup, this one’s pretty understandable too. If you use such terms that others don’t understand or may be confused with the meaning of, you’re going to waste your as well as their time in re-explaining what you mean. Now don’t you think its better to use a commonly used term in the first place!

·         Groupism – Now this is one I realised when I was in the training room that day. Not knowing the term, when everybody else was aware of it, actually made me feel like an outsider to the group. In fact, my self esteem took a hit and I for a minute actually felt like I must be really dumb to not know the word!

The solution to all these issues…Simply sticking to business communication at the workplace. I know we tend to use slangs all the time at home and especially with our friends. But let’s make an effort to be more aware of the words we use to ensure that it makes communication easy for us and the people around us.

And if you’re having difficulty with that, you can attend a communication skills training. It will help you get aware of what you speak and replace those words with more commonly understandable terms. We are so used to using some slang terms that we don’t realise we are using them. And getting aware of it, is the first step to changing the habit.