Building a successful career is no walk in the park. Competition is fierce. Pressure and stress are always lurking around, ready to make things more difficult. Tempers get frayed.

Good manners are often overlooked in this environment. It doesn’t take a career coach to know that rude people foul the nest for everyone. By the same token those who are civil and considerate in the work place have a leg up on the competition.

Here are some examples of rudeness one often encounters on the job.

Bad Telephone Manners

One of my clients for career advice declared: “One of the rudest, most irritating case of bad manners is when a co-worker stands in the doorway of my office, while I’m on the telephone, and expects me to read his lips or decipher his hand signals. Then when he walks away, I have no idea what he was trying to communicate; and I have lost the train of thought I had with the client on the line.

“For all I know, the client on the phone could have threatened to fire us or my co-worker might have been telling me the building is being evacuated.”

Another example: You are a guest in another person’s office when your host constantly interrupts your discussion to take telephone calls.

The lack of consideration is compounded when your host assures, “This will only take a minute,” and then chatters on for ten times that long, including an update on his golf score. You are left sitting, pretending you are not listening to what is being said.

What about the times you answer the telephone and your caller’s secretary says, “Please hold for Mr. Jones. He will be with you in a moment.” Five minutes later, you are still holding the line. This can be particularly annoying when the caller wants to sell you something.

No less irritating is the secretary who demands to know who you are and what you want before she will put you through to her boss

Bad manners on cell-phones are too numerous to even begin to list.

Bad-mannered Bosses

Bosses can be among the rudest and most inconsiderate people in the workplace.

For example, your boss asks you to come to his office at 9 o’clock. He wants a status report on your top-priority project. You arrive at 8:57 sharp because you don’t want to keep him waiting. His secretary informs you he is running a few minutes behind schedule.

“Just have a seat,” she days. “He will be with you shortly.”

At 9:45, she reassures you that Mr. Big is about ready. At 10:15, you are ushered in to see him.

“I only have about 15 minutes until my next meeting,” he says. “Just give me an abbreviated version of your report?” Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone agrees…at least pays lip service to the idea that effective internal communications are necessary to have a smooth-running organization. How else would management and employees understand and agree on common goals? How would members of the team be motivated to achieve their best?

Organizations spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on employee attitude surveys, newsletters, brochures, videos, audio cassettes, face-to-face meetings, and other tools of internal communications. Big bucks are invested in training managers to be better communicators.

Yet large numbers of employees at every level give internal communications poor grade despite all the investments of time, money and effort. The result is a “trust gap” between employer and employee.

Many managers have no idea that their communications efforts are not working. In a survey for Fortune magazine, 8 out of 10 chief executive officers said their corporate strategy is understood by “everyone who needs to know.” To the contrary, it was found that less than one-third of employees think management provides clear goals and directions.

Fewer than one-half of employees give a favorable rating to their employers’ efforts to let them know what is going on with their jobs, according to an Opinion Research Corporation survey.

Another study found that when top management does put out information, only about half of the employees have a positive response to what they are told.

The result of all of this is a loss of direction; a declining sense of loyalty between employer and employee; sagging morale; and loss of productivity.

There are five major reasons for a breakdown in internal communications.

1.Failure To Listen

Despite career advice to the contrary, most management efforts are made in sending messages rather than listening. This ignores the fact that communications is a two-way street.

Management sends out a blizzard of communications without ever taking the time to listen to see if the messages are being received, to say nothing of understood.

2. Sporadic Communications

Organizations cripple their ability to communicate and lose credibility with a program that is “on again-off again.” This condition usually manifests two ways. Read the rest of this entry »