Posts Tagged: communication

4 Email Productivity Tools That Actually Work

How many hours a day do you spend dealing with your email? It’s probably more than you think. Although email is a useful tool for getting business done, it can also be a huge time suck when you’re wading through confusing team threads or sorting through newsletters you don’t remember subscribing to. Fortunately, some veryRead… Read more »

Improving In-Person Communication In The Digital Age

How many ways do you interact with your coworkers during the day? Email, instant messenger, phone calls, texts, passive aggressive notes in the kitchen – chances are you use most of these every day. (Though hopefully not the passive aggressive notes!) Technology has gives us more and more tools to communicate with our coworkers without speakingRead… Read more »

5 Steps to Be a Stellar Team Player

Teamwork and building effective partnerships are par for the course in almost every work environment. As we are continuously challenged to do more with less learning how to effectively manage our partnerships and be a stellar team player are essential to our success. How do we make the most of every partnership to ensure successRead… Read more »

How to Save Yourself from Office Negativity

I love many things about my job. The agency has a meaningful and worthwhile mission that I believe in. I share a mutual respect with my supervisor. I enjoy real friendships with a few of my coworkers and professionally appreciate many more. There are perks to my job: I can work from home sometimes, I’mRead… Read more »

Top Takeaways From Some of the Best Fed Facebook Pages

Federal agency and department presence on social media varies widely—some have multiple accounts on various platforms while others have just a page or two that is updated infrequently. I wanted to find out what makes some sites more useful than others, so I set out to look at as many federal social media pages asRead… Read more »

Why It’s Hard To Interview Agency Employees For Publication

Awhile back, Steve Crescenzo came up with the idea of the “C.R.A.P. Awards” to designate worthless employee communication that says nothing, means nothing, and interests no one. (This article is worth a read.) A couple of problems:   #1: Getting approval Social media is simple and reductive. Subject matter experts think in complex terms and prefer toRead… Read more »

What’s Your Game?

Troy Mathis knows how to talk. And he speaks in a way that makes you want to listen. His session -Make It Matter: Personal Professional Branding, at the Next Generation of Government Training Summit was high-energy, engaging, and inspiring. After listening to his presentation and going through the steps, I’ve come away with the realizationRead… Read more »

Memos, Meetings, and Memes: Communicate ALL THE WAYS

When was the last time you savored every word in a five paragraph-long email? Or managed to endure an hour-long meeting without zoning out at least three times? Just because your answers were “never” to both of those questions doesn’t mean you have an abnormally poor attention span; it means that there is a disconnectRead… Read more »

Communicating Complexities Clearly

The American public often gets sidetracked from important issues. Reality TV and celebrity news distract us from important government discussions and policy problems-like science. Yawn. Science? There’s only so much Bill Nye the Science Guy I can watch. Sheril Kirshenbaum, director of  The Energy Poll at the University of Texas, reminded us why we should careRead… Read more »