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Editorial Features

Getting the Networking Know How

By Georgie Dutton, Editor of EUMA UK e-zine Impetus

Networking is not dissimilar to a blind date: you arrive apprehensively hoping the other person will be friendly, conversation won't falter, and that you will appear interesting and likeable with both parties wanting to meet again.....' .....

Winter Studies

By Sally Longson

Learning something new boosts your brain power and it can be great fun, too. There are hundreds of courses available; Sally Longson has some ideas on choosing a course, and tips on successful studying..' .....

Just for the Record - Perfect Minute-Writing

by Paul Pennant, Managing Director, PDP Associates

It's your boss on the phone: 'I'd like you to sit in on this budget meeting next week; could be useful - oh, and by the way - could you knock up an agenda and take the minutes? I'll need an actions summary out to everyone before the end of the day as well. Thanks.' .....

Managing Time

By Sally Longson

If you feel that there's never enough time in the day, how can you make sure that you're making the most of the 24 hours you have? .....

Looking after your Temporary Staff

By Sally Longson

For many of us, summer means holidays. If a temp will be taking your place while you sit in the sun in the Costas, it's worth considering how you can boost their experience.....

Getting the Networking Know How

by Georgie Dutton, Editor of EUMA UK e-zine Impetus

Networking is not dissimilar to a blind date: you arrive apprehensively hoping the other person will be friendly, conversation won't falter, and that you will appear interesting and likeable with both parties wanting to meet again. The good news is that networking isn't as tricky as dating and by following a few simple tips and being yourself; you can become an effective and consummate networker.

Basically, networking is about "meeting with people, building rapport [and] sharing ideas," says Maureen Fearon, a life coach and trainer with AMF Consultancies (www.amfconsultancies.com). It's not about working the room collecting business cards. Rather, it's about making a personal connection, says Sue Tonks from the company Kintish (www.kintish.co.uk). "There are 3 pillars on which all business rests - know, like and trust. These are vital ingredients for longstanding business relations...People buy other people before they buy a service or product."

Women are natural networkers without often realising it; from talking with other mums at the school gates to chatting to the cashier at the checkout. Lack of confidence together with a reticence to actively seek networking opportunities can make attending such events appear daunting. Yet, networking can increase your social circle, boost self-confidence and even enhance your career prospects.

Traditionally, men have been more successful networkers - from boardroom to club house, but with the proliferation of female networking groups, there are now greater opportunities available for women to gain valuable contacts, increase skills and knowledge whilst networking with their peers. This is of particular benefit for those returning to the workplace following a career break, who can sometimes find themselves left behind in the promotion stakes or seen as out of touch with new developments.

Likewise, for new entrants or those looking to re-train, gaining a foothold in some industries can be notoriously difficult. In such cases, attending networking events are essential - not least to learn about forthcoming (and often unadvertised) vacancies. Nevertheless, making the most of networking opportunities requires moving out of your comfort zone. By not networking, you effectively reduce your chances of making some useful contacts. And if people don't know about you, they can't help you.

  • Arriving on your own can be intimidating even for the most socially confident, so a quick visit to the ladies beforehand can help gather your thoughts and composure says Sue.
  • When you walk into a room, pause and smile whilst looking around. Look for someone on their own and ask permission to join them.
  • If you arrive with a colleague or friend, don't stand with them all night talking in a corner - mingle.
  • o get the most out of the experience, think about what you will say when asked who you are, and what you do. But don't try and work the room or treat it as a sales activity says Maureen. "Relax; enjoy getting to know someone and building rapport. Don't expect it all in your first meeting - it takes time. Practice how you tell people what your business does and be clear on what you would like from networkers".
  • Always extend your hand when introducing yourself and state your name, says Sue using the 'pause and effect' technique. Say your first name, pause, then say your full name but more slowly. And don't forget to use eye contact and smile!
  • Careful when shaking hands - bone-crushing or limp handshakes are a definite no-no.
  • When the other person says their name, listen, repeat it and use it! Name badges are best placed on the right hand side so that other people can read them easily advises Sue
  • Focus on the other person rather than worrying about how you come across. The best networkers ask open questions, show interest and listen.
  • Wear clothes that you like, look good in and above all are comfortable. Ensure you have crisp clean business cards at the ready says Sue - saves searching at the bottom of your handbag.
  • Watch the body language when approaching groups warns Sue. Open group formations make it easier to join a new group whereas if 2 people are deep in conversation best stay clear.
  • If a new person joins your group, take the initiative and make the introductions, advises Sue. This makes the new person feel welcome and part of the group whilst you gain brownie points for having remembered everyone's name.
  • Taking your leave doesn't mean dumping the other person on their own. Better to join up with another group and leave once the person has integrated into the new group.
  • Networking in a predominately male environment requires a slightly different set of skills. Men are more active networkers, says Maureen and have more useful contacts. "But you have to remember that men are different to women. Women will come up with and offer ideas on how to help ... you have to spell it out to a guy - men respond better to direct questions ... and they do like to help. So plan what you are going to say to them", advises Maureen.
  • Networking doesn't stop once the event is over - following up contacts is crucial. Keep in regular contact by phone or email, and if you have promised to send them information, do so immediately after the event.

Like everything else, practice makes perfect and the more you network, the greater enjoyment and satisfaction you will gain - and who knows, it just might change your life!

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Winter Studies

by Sally Longson

The winter can be a great time to get the brain cells weaving, especially at the start of another year after you've dusted all the effects of the Christmas party season away. You know what they say about your brain cells: use them or lose them!

There are a huge range of courses around now, on-line, on the phone, via correspondence, at evening class and day colleges, universities and private training colleges. Nor do you have to spend 10 weeks going to evening class once a week - many courses are just one-day weekend affairs, to give you an introduction to the subject.

These taster sessions can be refreshingly different after a week at work; run your eye through any blurb produced by your local college, for example, and you'll see details on classes in floristry, counseling, cookery, animal care, history, aromatherapy - they can all help give you a new interest (and possibly even a new career!) From attending a taster, you may find yourself signing up to take a longer course (not necessarily with the same training provider) or doing some reading and learning on your own around the subject, snug in your own home in the depths of winter.

Of course, you could make a choice for a more professional qualification, such as human resource management, marketing, an IT course, a distance learning MBA or similar. Courses of this ilk are likely to be longer, and may involve day release or a residential element, plus potentially work related projects.

So here are a few questions to consider when you're wondering what to do with your time next year and learning something is an option.

  • What do you want from a course? Promotion? A new set of friends? New skills? Some fun? Do you want to do something for relaxation, or a course to boost your career prospects?
  • How deep do you want to delve into a subject? Do you want a taster followed by a 10 week introduction, or a course which will give you a deeper, richer bank of knowledge?
  • How do you best learn? Do you learn best by doing and experiencing or watching others and then reflecting on what you have learnt? Do you like to learn by understanding underlying reasons, and ideals, or are you more of a "have a go" sort? Which learning providers best meet your preferred method of learning?
  • Are you looking for a course which will involve a degree of activity, such as salsa dancing, self-protection, tap, diving or Finding the Courage to Sing?
  • Like everything else, practice makes perfect and the more you network, the greater enjoyment and satisfaction you will gain - and who knows, it just might change your life!

You can find a huge database of courses on offer at www.hotcourses.com and http://www.learndirectadvice.net/findacourse/. Many colleges offer open days and have offices where you can seek advice.

Motivation and organisation are vital to success. So long as your reasons for doing the course resonate well with you, then you will find it easier to study after a day at work.

Six hot tips to successful study are:

  1. Plan your learning. Get deadlines and exam dates early on in your course. If meeting deadlines could be difficult, let your tutors know.
  2. On the day you have your night classes, stick to plans to leave on time. Remind yourself why this learning is important to you.
  3. Set yourself up with a study area which works well for you. Get organised with what you'll need.
  4. Make friends with other students; help each other out. Use the facilities available, such as libraries, computers and access to extra help and support.
  5. Find a pattern of studying which works for you. This may mean doing a little every day, or working through blocks two or three nights a week. Can your commute become a learning experience instead of a daily grind?
  6. Believe in your ability to succeed. Tap into your PA skills; put them to good use with your studies: time and organisational management, communication skills, networking capabilities, IT skills and the ability to get things done.

Whether you are taking a course for sheer love and interest, or for your next career move, enjoy what you're doing and rise to the challenges your learning presents you. You'll boost your CV, have something interesting to do after work, and your efforts will raise your self-esteem, re-charge your batteries and power up those brain cells.

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Just for the Record - Perfect Minute-Writing

by Paul Pennant, Managing Director, PDP Associates

Nightmare on Lime Street
It's your boss on the phone: 'I'd like you to sit in on this budget meeting next week; could be useful - oh, and by the way - could you knock up an agenda and take the minutes? I'll need an actions summary out to everyone before the end of the day as well. Thanks.'

You put down the phone with a sinking heart. Yet another meeting - on a subject you thought was done and dusted. And now you've got to come up with an agenda that doesn't put everyone off by looking like 'The ten most boring things to do before you die'. Then you've got to sit through the meeting, which will be full of blah-blah about stuff you don't really understand and couldn't care less about - but still look really perky and interested.

To round things off, you've also got to produce meaningful minutes and get them out to all concerned the same day. The last one of these meetings went on until 5 o'clock and you were still trying to make sense of the minutes and type them up at 6, then you were late home, really exhausted, and found your partner in bed with someone else - you know, like that scene in Sliding Doors? Ok, I made that last bit up, but it felt like that kind of day, didn't it?

Sound horribly familiar? I know it does, because it's happened to me (including the last bit - oh alright, not really, but I got you going, didn't I) and I want to tell you there is a better way. I can't always help you enjoy meetings more, because the content is out of my hands, but it is possible to get a lot more out of them. It's also possible to manage meetings, even if you're not actually running them, so they don't drag on longer than necessary. Finally, it is possible to get out of the office sooner than expected, with your immaculate, crystal-clear minutes winging their way across the email system to all and sundry. Thanks to you, there will be no doubt in anyone's mind who's got to take what follow-up action and by when. Result: boss delighted. Your career: still right on course for the stratosphere.

Keep it Simple, Keep it Real
Despite Galbraith's assertion that "Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything", they do have a genuine purpose: bringing people together to make decisions and agree future actions. So, how do you take the fear and loathing out of managing meetings and taking minutes? Most people who come on our minute-writing courses are petrified at the thought of having to take minutes, but it doesn't have to be like that: simplicity is the key. Much of the time, it's fair to say that logging the decisions taken or actions to be followed up is enough and that's pretty straightforward. If it takes two hours to agree on a new coffee machine, there is no need to document the entire discussion! If an organisation feels it needs a verbatim record of a meeting, then perhaps it should be videoed!

On the other hand, if the subject was something sensitive, like staff reductions, then more detail would be appropriate. In the same spirit of keeping things simple, there is usually no need to name names in minutes, which after all are about collective responsibility and decision-making.

There's a New Kid in Town
Believe it or not, after the person chairing the meeting, the minute taker is the most important person present, by virtue of the importance of their role in recording what was discussed and decided accurately. If you are taking the minutes, then you have a right to speak out, in order to clarify a point you may not have heard clearly; it's in your own interests to do so. The days of the minute taker being a silent stenographer, at the mercy of a domineering chairman, should be long gone. And if they're still that way in your organisation, then you might need professional help!

To preserve anonymity - and emphasise the collective responsibility of the meeting - minutes should be written up in what is known grammatically as the passive voice, so rather than 'Ms Smith agreed to make funds available' it should be 'It was agreed that funds should be made available'.

Strange but true: troublemakers in meetings tend to sit opposite the chairman (male or female). These are confrontational types, so mark them and be ready to disarm them. If you have a good relationship with the person chairing the meeting, it will pay you dividends. Properly trained - by you - the meeting chairman will halt proceedings at your request and itemise key points to be recorded - remember: you're not a stenographer or a mind-reader, and if you're a PA, then you're not just a secretary, either!

Be Sure to Finish Your Homework

When you're putting things in place for the meeting: agenda, venue, refreshments, AV and so on, make sure you also block out some time to get the minutes written up afterwards. It might sound odd, but if you can find a place away from your desk, where you can use a PC without distraction, you'll find you can whip through the minutes and be out the door more or less on time for a change. By and large, companies get the minutes they deserve and if they don't support you when you're carrying out this important task, then they deserve the minutes they get!

No Hidden Agendas
Let's get explicit: most meeting agendas are woefully light on detail and the resulting meetings can be vague and wander off-track. Let attendees know exactly what's going to be covered and they will come better prepared and the meeting will be clearer, more productive - and shorter! If there's going to be a lot of technical jargon involved, why not get an expert colleague to help you make a short list of keywords, with their spellings and potted explanations, in advance of the meeting? The same goes for acronyms: the CEO of Xircom, manufacturer of PCMCIA cards for laptop computers, liked to joke that PCMCIA didn't really stand for Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, but 'People Can't Memorise Complex Industrial Acronyms'. How right he was!

Work the room: check the room layout before the meeting starts. You don't need to be a feng shui consultant, but making some simple changes to the layout of the room can help meetings go with a swing.

Sharper Minutes for a Sharper You
Effective minute writing is critical to every PA - and indeed anyone who works in an office. The economy of style and directness of thought that minute-writing dictates, applies equally well to all kinds of writing work, so ensuring your minute-writing skills are honed and polished will always stand you in good stead - and make you look good, too. With greater confidence in your abilities, you will change from being a passive observer and recorder of meetings, to an active and valued participant. And who knows, you might even start enjoying them?

About the author:

Paul Pennant has been a highly-successful PA and Office Manager and is now Managing Director of PDP Associates. With a post-graduate degree in business studies, few if any trainers are better qualified to deliver and lead training workshops for today's PAs.

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Managing Timing

By Sally Longson

There's a lot said about the importance of managing time well. Good time management helps you feel more productive, makes the workflow easier and gets you out of the office at the right time to switch off in the evenings. It boosts your energy and your will. It frees your mind up to do a better job and to increase your ability to focus and get the results you want.

Time easily gets cluttered up, and it's amazing how much time even a short distractions can take up if we're not aware of it, partly because we may have to spend a few minutes dragging our minds and thought processes back to what we were doing before.

The key to managing time successfully is two-fold:

Firstly, raise awareness of what you are allowing to waste your time through anything you're tolerating or any distractions.

You may think indignantly, "well, nothing!" - but we all fall into bad and sloppy habits occasionally, so look carefully at the working habits you have created. Take a typical day and look at the way you handle time, from the moment you get into the office to the time you leave. List everything you're tolerating or allowing yourself to be distracted by such as chatting colleagues and unorganized filing.

You could be creating the circumstances which lead to tolerations and distractions affecting your day, such as emailing friends (which can lead to a barrage of further emails), looking to see if something else in your inbox has come in, and failing to organize your in-box to make it more manageable. Whatever is going on, track down where your time could be spent with greater focus and concentration.

Secondly, work out ways to do something about those tolerations in a way which leaves you and any potential people involved in a win-win situation. How can you change your behaviour? For example, if you know that you get home at night and find yourself thinking a lot about work, then ask yourself: am I being paid for all the extra hours I'm doing? Thinking about work is working! Refresh! Take a break and do something different.

Firstly, are you tolerating the office outside of the working day? The more work slides over into your private life, the less effective you'll be in it. Your brain needs a break. Ask yourself honestly whether you life outside the office is full of work related stuff because your life outside work doesn't grab you, or have anything in it for you really to look forward to and feel refreshed by.

  1. Give yourself and your mindset a distinct start and finish to the working day. Turn your computer off completely at night, and start it up when you come in. You can always find something else to do while waiting those few short minutes for it to start up.
  2. Switch off any mode of contact with the office while you're out of it. The more you are in touch with your office out of hours, the less productive you will be in it. Limit the number of hours you spend at work in your mind and you'll be more productive. You can overflow your working day into personal time, but you won't necessarily achieve any more for it.
  3. Put your own boundary on contact with friends and family during the working day. You may all have got into habits of contacting each other far too often during working hours. Keep friends and family for out of office hours, unless it's a real emergency.

Most importantly, be clear about what you would do with your spare time, firstly in work - how would you use those extra hours? For example, craft and arty hobbies allow us all to use our creative instincts, and this can be very energizing. It's amazing how soon you lose yourself in time when you're being creative, and time spent on something you enjoy will boost your focus when it's time to go into work.

Pinpoint activities you could enjoy and could do for just a short time - such as drawing or poetry writing. Before you know it, your intended few minutes will have flowed into a half hour or more, and you'll feel refreshed, alive, excited and ready for the next thing in life!

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Looking after your Temporary Staff

By Sally Longson

There are lots of small but meaningful touches you can make to enhance your company's reputation amongst the band of temporary PAs who fill in while everyone is on holiday.

Many companies tend to put the focus on the temp's performance and how they fit in; but a little thought into showing that you appreciate the temp's efforts and a few human touches can make a big difference to the way a temp sees your organisation. Your company may run an induction programme for temporary staff, but there are still things you can do to make sure yours is on the temp's "most wanted assignment again" list?

Four musts before you head out on holiday are:

  • Let reception and relevant security personnel know the temp is coming so that the necessary security items are ready when he or she arrives at the office.

    It's very frustrating for temps to appear at an office and find that nobody knows anything about them, when they're itching to get to work and hit the ground running. Also, it makes the company look disorganised and doesn't say a lot for your forward thinking.

  • Allocate a buddy to meet and greet them - someone they can turn to if they have questions and who can show them the essential basics such as the loo, coffee making facilities and fire drill when they arrive.
  • If they haven't already met your replacement, tell your department and boss who will take your place, so that they aren't astounded to see a stranger sitting at your desk on Monday morning.
  • Leave your desk tidy before you race out of the door en route to two weeks' basking in the Caribbean. Don't leave your work station looking as though a hurricane has swept through it, even if looks like that normally.

Clearly, temps need to be pro-active, adept at taking the initiative and finding things out, asking questions when they don't know. A professional temp isn't a mind-reader, though, and there are steps you can take to heighten their wish to be effective from hour one.

Before you leave, think through the time the temp will with your team. Ask yourself questions such as:
  1. What essential information will they need and what will they need to have access to?
  2. What do they need to know about your role and the organisation?
  3. What is important for them to know about your team, its dynamics, and the preferred way of working?
  4. What problems could they find coming in cold to a new position?
  5. What tasks will they need to do and what will they need to get those done fast?
  6. Who help are they most likely to need (IT support, your corporate travel company, for example) and have they got knowledge of how to access them?
  7. Should you leave your contact information? Talk it through with your team, but remember, you deserve a break. If the office is going to call you daily, you may as well have stayed there.

f it's going to be a quiet time, are there any other projects they could do which you have not had time to do? However mundane these may be, most temps would rather be doing something than spending hours trying to look busy. It's exhausting doing nothing or little.

Include temps in on social activities, and get to know them as people - they could reveal hidden talents and skills your company needs.

At the end of the experience, ask your boss to recognise their efforts and to thank them. And if things have gone well, why not book them for other holidays in advance? When they come back, they'll know how the company works, what your role involves, who's who and where things are, which means they'll hit the ground running faster. Time saved, money saved and stress reduced all round.

Plus temps can be great promoters of your company, and could - potentially lead to new recruits. If they have a rotten time and vow never to go back, who knows what they will be telling their friends and relatives about your organisation.

Treat your temp as you would wish to be treated yourself, as a human being rather than a professional walking robot, and, so long as the temp does well, there could be win-wins all round!

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