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Pretending to know the acronyms
| Guest post by: Howard Miller |
Article Overview: A common trap and pitfall for managers to avoid
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Free Download - Jumping to Conclusions By Howard Miller |
Pretending to know the acronyms
Are you sometimes hesitant to ask what something means because you think you should know it already?
Industries have acronyms. Corporations have even more. It's engrained in their cultures.
But do you know all the acronyms at your company? Or do you sometimes pretend you do because you don't want to appear stupid?
If you're a manager, what messages are you sending to your reports if you don't speak up when you don't understand something you think you're supposed to?
The unwritten rule becomes don't ask questions which seem simplistic. Of course, it's the simplistic which often ends up being complicated.
The odds are if you don't know what an acronym means, someone else doesn't either. Or worse, people will have different interpretations or different meanings of the same acronym.
This leads to miscommunication, missed deadlines and general frustration.
As a manager or leader, if you have (or fake) the confidence to ask what terms mean, you are helping others with understanding.
When we speak up when not familiar with something we think everyone knows:
- We find out what it means
We provide common ground and dialogue on specific terms
We are creating an environment where its okay to speak up Many times it's the basics that are confusing, resulting in wasted time. Asking questions can help change that situation.
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Article Tags: communications, manager traps to avoid
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About the Author: Howard Miller RSS for Howard's articles - Visit Howard's website Howard Miller teaches management skills to new managers, seasoned managers, entrepreneurs and executives. He is on the faculty of AMA (American Management Association) and teaches courses including Skills for New Managers, Increasing Managerial Effectiveness, and Successfully Managing People). Topics include delegation and motivation methodologies, conflict, how to deal with difficult people, understanding values and behavior, feedback and listening skills. Clients include mid-range to large companies such as the IRS, Blue Cross Blue Shield, IBM, state government, public school districts, and non profit organizations. Howard also does executive and business coaching with the Ken Blanchard organization. Howard is the author of two book; You're Full of Shift, which contains short stories which demonstrate shifting difficult situations to opportunities and The Manager Trap: 13 ½ Pitfalls to Avoid which showcases common traps and pitfalls managers fall into including using a 4 letter word beginning with F that they should avoid! Click here to visit Howard's website   What have I learned in 6 months of management Part 4 Always isnt every time Glad to Be Sad My employee seems to be sick on Fridays and Mondays The questions which lead to nowhere |
Related Forum Posts
Re: "How to Cold Call a Big Customer"
- Hello Daryl,
I liked this one. I have to cold call in my day job and if I'm honest I'm pretty good at it. But then I've been at it for many years.
Some good points. Some lame ones.
Pretending to act on the same level as a CEO can get you in a bit of deep water. But I agree with the point that you should not try to sell to the gatekkeper.
Re: What works for you?
- Mal, this really resonated with me, "I suppose that is why we all want to be independent and maybe work from home because we will get back that bit of enjoyment and independence that we once had when we were young and before all life’s pressures and responsibilities were placed upon us."
As for what works for me...I think at times, it's accepting that things aren't working. And really letting that hit me. I used to avoid feeling things like that -- there's some idea that not being "positive" all the time will make you stagnant. But I've found really feeling the good and bad day to day is so powerful. It ends up driving me so much more than just ignoring the obvious.
And then the fear of falling down isn't that big of a deal anymore, because getting up is that much easier.
So I've really found a lot of power in letting things fall apart. Then it's so much easier to just scrap it all and build something better.
Pretending things are fine or working when they aren't is extremely frustrating. Most of us lie to ourselves more than we know! Sometimes you just have to see the truth, feel how much it sucks, and then you have the power to try again.
SEO for your small business: 4 tips
- Hey all. I just wrote this entry about using SEO for your small business over at the Entrust Cash Advance blog. Let me know what you think.
These days it is common to hear a lot of new buzz-words and acronyms being thrown around when it comes to internet marketing. But among the most common (and important) terms to know and understand is SEO: Search Engine Optimization. SEO simply means optimizing your business’ website so it shows up higher in the rankings of search engines like Google and Bing. SEO involves pinpointing the keywords that your customers are using to locate businesses like yours, and optimizing your website so search engines believe it is the most relevant to those keywords. Why is it important? Because search engines are becoming the primary way that customers search for products, so it is important your website to rank highly. Here are four basic tips for small businesses for how to make their websites more competitive in the search-engine ranks:
1) Some HTML editing
While search engine optimization does require a little bit of HTML knowledge, don’t fear! The edits you can make on you website are simple and don’t require being a computer master. It is important that search engines can quickly read every page on your website to understand what it is all about. They do this by scanning each page’s Title tags, Meta tags, H1 tags, and more – but these three are the most important. Learn about how to edit these features to include keywords and terms that are the most relevant – and the most heavily searched for – in your industry.
2) Content
People who design search engines edit the algorithm used by these engines every day to ensure that only the most relevant and informative sites are being ranked highly. This is why it is important to take another look at your website’s content: is it fluff that simply talks about how great your business is over and over? Or does it provide the user with actual, useful answers to their questions? Run through your site to look for spelling and grammar errors, make sure that you are clear and concise, and be sure to throw in valuable keywords. But don’t overdo it: “keyword stuffing” is a common mistake made by many business owners. Remember that search engines are smart, and they can tell when you’re trying to fool them.
3) Internal and External Links
Linking is one of, if not the most, powerful tools behind increasing your business’ SEO success. Linking is both internal and external: internal links are links from one page to another within your site, and external links are links on other websites that point to your site. When editing internal links, be sure to select anchor text – the text that the user read and clicks on – that is relevant and features important keywords. External links are arguably the most important feature of a good SEO strategy but also one of the hardest to obtain. The most important thing to learn about external links is that, while it is tempting to try to “fool” search engines by figuring out quick ways to include your links all over the internet, this is not always useful. You need actual people and companies to decide to link to your site because the content is useful – search engines do in fact know the difference!
4) A social media presence
Social media is playing more and more of a role in how search engines decide which sites are useful. If you include important pages or updates about your company on other sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and especially if your followers re-post that update – search engines will consider your content to be valuable and relevant. Encourage your followers to re-tweet or re-post the posts you make on social media sites – it can definitely impact your business’ rankings and ultimately bring in more traffic to your website.
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