Soft skills

How to Better Communicate Work Status to Your Boss – 4 Tips

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boss communication

Effective communication with your boss is essential to your career success.  One of the things your boss will always want is proactive communication of your work status & progress.  It will show that you are on top of your work and you respect him enough to keep him informed.

This not always easy.   Below is a situation a Soft Skills Gym member faced.  What would you do if you were him?  Share your comments below.  He agreed to let me share it in case his situation and my advice can  help you learn how to better communicate work status with your boss. ...  read more

How to Be 10% Happier at Work?

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how to be happy at work

This article on how to be 10% happier at work is inspired by reading a blog post Penelope Trunk wrote on How to Love the Job You Have – Focus on One Good Thing.    It was a touching personal story and it sparked an epiphany in my mind – we often spend too much time focusing our thoughts and speech on what we don’t like about our jobs vs. what we do like. ...  read more

3 Soft Skills We Can Learn from Madison Bumgarner

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Madison Bumgarner

On Oct 29, 2014, against all odds, the San Francisco Giants narrowly won Game 7 of the World Series against the Kansas City Royal by the score of 3 to 2.  I learned everything about baseball from my husband who is a diehard Giants fan.   Since meeting him 10 years ago, I have had much more appreciation for this game – all the strategy involved with the lineup, the pitching, and the catcher. ...  read more

How to Deal with Stereotypes at Work – 4 Tips

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A friend shared this Youtube video with me and I literally cried.  It talks about one stereotype that we all know about and how it affects us.  It’s amazing how stereotypes are so common in our society. Sometimes people use it intentionally in their communication to put down other people out of insecurity and other times people use stereotypes in their conversations and don’t even realize it. ...  read more

Are You a “Pleaser Achiever”?

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pleaser achiever

A month ago, my boss mentioned that everyone on our team is a “Pleaser Achiever”?   I have been meaning to write about it ever since.  So what is a “Pleaser Achiever”, you may ask?  Well, let’s start with a simple quiz

  • When someone comes to you for help at work and your boss tells you you can say no, do you still try to help them?
  • When your manager gives you feedback on where you could improve, do you think about it extensively?
  • If you have a bad meeting with your boss, does it affect you the whole week?
  • If you have conflicts or disagreement with anyone at work, do you think about it at night?
  • Are you quick to apologize?

If you say yes to most or all the questions above, then you are a “Pleaser Achiever.”  Here are the common traits ...  read more