© Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
www.ForWomenEntrepreneurs.com

• Do you balk when someone is in your face?
• Do you freeze when someone is aggressive with you?
• Do you think of a comeback hours too late?
• Do you live in fear of seeing or interacting or working with that person again?

If the answer is “Yes!” then you don’t know what to do that is effective and productive when faced with conflict. GOOD NEWS! The skills to manage and accommodate conflict are learned. That’s where you got the ones you have AND you can get better, more effective ones easily.

We have not come far from the reptiles when it comes to being faced with anger, conflict or confrontation. Our reptilian brain only knows how to fight, flee or freeze.  Apparently, conflict management wasn’t an option in the days of the dinosaurs!

With systematically developed communication and conflict management skills, you can feel much more competence, comfortable and confident every day. You know you can handle it, and that feels good.

Recently I was consulting to a company who had employee problems ruining their productivity and profitability. Morale was down the drain. Trust was almost non-existent. People simply showed up and went through the motions most days. On other days, it was all out war…in the most underhanded, undermining ways as well as loudly, rudely and viciously. What an incentive to take sick days!

No company can afford this. In fact, Dan Dana’s research shows that up to 42% of an employees time is spent engaging in or trying to resolve conflict. And, I add, without skills they can’t resolve anything!

So, the client had called me when he was dangling from the last threads of his tether.

“Help! If something doesn’t happen, we’re going to go bankrupt. They are difficult to work with. Their animosity for each other spreads to their attitude with customers. They demonstrate little respect for each other, and, I know they are just holding themselves back from being insubordinate with me.  What can you do?”

I said:  “Take a deep breath!”

And, then we began to unpack the issues, history and probably steps to solution.

The simple truth is: WE TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO TREAT US!  If we once let them treat us badly, we’ve begun to set a pattern…and, often, set it in stone. This CEO had not developed a conscious culture for his company, had not communicated the ways in which employees would interact in order to stay employed, and had no mechanism for agreement. So, not only did folks have no skills, they had no direction.

Corporate culture must be defined. Yes, it takes time away from the day-to-day, but it is essential. Without defining corporate culture, anything goes.  If don’t know the agreements–and the consequences of stepping outside of them–there is stress. The problem is that without those agreements, no one knows where the boundaries are.

COMPANIES HAVE THE TEACH EMPLOYEES HOW TO TREAT EACH OTHER AT WORK!  They do that by pr0-actively addressing this in their corporate culture documents and discussing it fully–and enforcing it–with their teams.

What’s going on in your neck of the woods?

I wish you well.
Rhoberta

Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
Consultant. Counselor. Coach. Catalyst.
www.Rhoberta.com
www.ForWomenEntrepreneurs.com
www.WorkplacePeopleSkills.com

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©  Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
www.ForWomenEntrepreneurs.com

You know that people like to joke that women talk so much. Sure, sometimes we do.  And, there are other times when just a very few words will communicate everything.  I had such an experience at the Newark airport the other night.

My flight was delayed by an hour, so, I was amusing myself watching people. The gate I was sitting near was actually three very closely grouped gates and one had just completed boarding a flight to Geneva. About three minutes after the doors shut, one of those “airport golf cart limos” pulled up with a very well-dressed middle-aged couple aboard.  They rushed to the agent, explained  how their previous flight had been late and were told, in fairly typical airport-ese,

“Too late for Geneva.  The doors are closed. Sorry.“

A few words were exchanged about next flights, airline policies and overnight accommodation, all in two minutes. The couple turned to walk away. The woman looked at me, smiled and lifted her shoulders and upturned hands, smiled, gesturing,

“So be it. What can you do?”

The husband walked immediately to the window to scan the plane. Quickly he determined that the agent needed prodding. He came back to his wife, indicating his return to the agent. She looked at me, rolled her eyes and seemed resigned.  The only words came from me,

“Well, he has to try. He’s a guy and they fix things. That’s what they do.”

She nodded her assent, smiled, folded her hands calmly and turned to watch her husband’s interactions. Soon, she walked towards him as the agent seemed to have been convinced to pick up the telephone. In one minute, they were on their way to the gate as the door flew open.

The woman turned to me with a smile and a look that said everything she could about men, airlines and possibilities. I gave her a thumbs up. She waved as though we’d known each other forever, and understood each other completely…which, in fact, we did.  Off she went to Geneva.  Almost wordless conversation that conveyed an entire screenplay!

It was memorable!

To Your Success!
Rhoberta

P.S.  You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter. Look for ‘RhobertaShaler’

Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
Consultant. Counselor. Coach. Catalyst.
….leading you to the life & livelihood you long for

Founder, www.ForWomenEntrepreneurs.com and Sow Peace, www.SowPeace.com
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© Rhoberta Shaler, PhD

You spend your hard-earned money for a website. You know you need one. And, you may not speak “web designer-ese”. In fact, why would you? It’s one more thing to add to your “to do” list and one more way to put off getting what you need to market effectively and make money.

You decide to proceed and begin interviewing a few folks who were–hopefully–highly-recommended.  Now, here’s a few questions to ask the person recommending the designer:

• Have you seen this person’s work?
• Did you navigate around the website they created?
• Was it intuitive and direct?
• Did you think it had a good look and feel?
• What were the drawbacks you noticed?
• Were you asked to fill-in anything in order to get to where you wanted to go?
• Do you know if the website draws traffic and makes money?

Hard-nosed question must be asked before you embark on a relationship with a designer, or even enter into conversations about creating that relationship.  Now, here are some questions to ask the designer directly:

• Are you more of a graphic designer, or a creator of viable websites that draw traffic?
• Would you choose beauty over functionality?
• Do you understand marketing?
• Do you understand web-based marketing?
• How familiar are you with these terms:  squeeze page, SEO, RSS feeds, content management systems?
• Can you optimize the site?
• Will you make an effort to capture my business graphically?

These questions are all very important. A graphic designer can make a beautiful design that you’ll love, but, that will sit there like a painted-egg. The only people who will visit are your mother and the folks to whom you gave a direct link.  Of course, there is the remarkable exception: when a graphic designer understands SEO or works in partnership with someone who does.  Ideal!

Some butt-ugly websites draw big traffic!  That’s the truth. I’ve seen them. So, it’s not always about the beauty, but that doesn’t hurt, either.  It’s about the navigation, the behind-the-scenes keywords, tags, etc. AND the copy on each page.

You will be responsible for writing the copy. Are you good at it?  Do you understand about keywords and all? At a minimum, unless you have very deep pockets to pay expert copywriters, you will want to learn how to write copy that pulls traffic. Teaching my clients what this entails is an important part of their marketing plans. Before I understood all this–and I’ve been at it for twelve years now, I thought I did a pretty good job.  In the beginning it was all about “pretty” and very little “good job!”  Beauty is only skin deep until it is met with an equally beautiful “inside.”  That’s true of websites just as it is true of people.

If you’re ready for a website, or have one behaving like an egg, a very cost-effective and efficient approach is to hire a coach like me who can take you systematically through your business and marketing plans to insure your website is working well for you.  It may seems like an expense. And, it is, but, it is far less expensive than pouring money into a “painted egg.”  You cannot afford that.  In the case of your website, it is very true that “Pretty is as pretty does.”

To Your Success!
Rhoberta
Consultant. Counselor. Coach. Catalyst.
…leading you to the life & livelihood you long for
http://ForWomenEntrepreneurs.com

P.S.  I’d love you to add me as your friend on Twitter & Facebook…Join my FaceBook group–you guessed it–it’s called “For Women Entrepreneurs.”

Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
Psychologist. Consultant. Coach.
…leading you to the life & livelihood you long for
www.ForWomenEntrepreneurs.com

Escondido, CA

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