English Speaking Skills:  Top Communication Skills — Especially as a New Hire

Communication skills are critical for all.  What is crucial for a new hire is super important no matter how long you have worked at an organization.

Communication is critical for clear understanding of your responsibilities.  Ask these questions as a new hire and as your tasks and responsibilities change:

• What are your responsibilities and how is success measured?
• What are priorities?
• How to communicate project updates?
• How is performance measured?

Communication tips for when you’ve made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, and if you’re newly hired, you are likely to make several.

• Avoid the mistake of thinking that if you don’t admit a mistake, nobody notices
• Instead, USA culture loves it when you accept ownership (admit the mistake), learn, make the correction, and move forward

The best communicators ask for feedback.  How long should you wait or how lengthy an interval should you allow for learning how you are doing?

• Your company will do best if you ask for feedback at more frequent intervals than 6 months or a year

Be sure to watch our English Speech Tips videos and Accent Reduction Tip videos  for more English pronunciation and accent reduction exercise.

Check out our new advanced weekly speech tip program, our new subscription called ClearTalk Weekly, www.subscription.cleartalkmastery.com

Rerun from Dec 16, 2015

Acknowledgments and Confirmation- Format

Some tips on format:

• Use email for routine acknowledgments and confirmations. For business records, be sure to have back-up file copies of transactions.
• Personal acknowledgments and confirmations are handwritten on informal personal stationery. Email can be used for casual situations.

Rerun from Dec 21, 2015

English Speaking Skills:  Top Tips for Leadership  — Especially as a New Hire

Here are some top tips and guidelines for your leadership and coordinating your efforts with your team at work.

1. Take time to understand the company’s current goals and how things work. First, listen and learn. Then do your leadership job and move towards combining innovative ideas with what’s best and currently happening.  Thus is one of the best preventions for arrogance.
2. Build relationships from the first day and continuously thereafter. Take the time to network with your colleagues by having informal conversations to learn what others do and how it affects you. Many organizations and positions are dynamic and constantly changing.  Ask questions and stay current.
3. Does your role include leadership? Do you want to implement changes?  First be sure to:
   1. Get buy-in or agreement verbally or in writing (usually verbally) from others
   2. Understand why things are done the way they are
   3. Keep an open mind
   4. Fully understand current process and procedures before proposing changes

All that allows you to propose changes and make a good case for why changes should be made.

Be sure to watch our English Speech Tips videos and Accent Reduction Tip videos  for more English pronunciation and accent reduction exercise.

Check out our new advanced weekly speech tip program, our new subscription called ClearTalk Weekly, www.subscription.cleartalkmastery.com

Rerun from Dec 10, 2015

Acknowledgments and Confirmation- Tips on Promptness

Do write promptly.  Acknowledgments are, by their very nature, sent immediately.

One except is acknowledging expressions of sympathy.  Because of the hardships involved, responses may be sent up to six weeks later.

Or, a close relative of the bereaved may write the acknowledgment:  “Mother asked me to tell you how much she appreciated the loving letter of sympathy and the memorial you sent for Dad.  She will be in touch with you as soon as she is able to.”

Rerun from Dec 14, 2015

English Speaking Skills:  Top Tips for Figuring Out Your Work Culture

Do you notice that some people at work are confident and so very comfortable with their work and colleagues?

You have probably figured out that all work environments are not the same.  We call that culture – work culture.

Consider these tips when you start a new job … or as you are endeavoring to work even better in your present work situation:

Get to know your culture.

1. Observation is the key for getting to know your work culture. Consider looking for answers to these questions:
   1. How much should you socialize?
   2. Do coworkers prefer phone calls, emails, or face-to-face conversations?
   3. Dress shoes or sports shoes?
2. To observe everything, consider coming in 30 minutes early and staying a little late just to observe how people behave:
   1. When they get their coffee
   2. Where they take their lunches
   3. How they finish or wrap up at the end of the day

Be sure to watch our English Speech Tips videos and Accent Reduction Tip videos  for more English pronunciation and accent reduction exercise.

Check out our new advanced weekly speech tip program, our new subscription called ClearTalk Weekly, www.subscription.cleartalkmastery.com

Rerun from Dec 3, 2015