Magazin On The Secrets Of Selling

Think about the last meeting you attended at work. After the meeting, did you feel that everyone heard what you had to say and your ideas were taken seriously? Or did you leave frustrated because louder or more forceful people dominated the meeting? If so, you need to take control of the role you play in meetings. Here are 7 quick tips to get your ideas heard in your next meeting:

1) Prepare before the meeting. Know what you’re going to say. If you’re a person that gets tongue-tied in a meeting, make sure you prepare your comments in advance. Look at the agenda and plan the key points you want to cover.

2) Get on the agenda. Don’t wait until the meeting. Ask the meeting leader to put your topic on the agenda so you have a scheduled time to share your ideas.

3) Run the meeting. Talk to the meeting leader and offer to help by running the next meeting. That way you can control the conversation.

4) Offer to take notes on a flip chart. If you’re not comfortable running the meeting, you can offer to stand up and capture the ideas on a flip chart. That will make it easier for you to add to the ideas, since you’re the one recording them.

5) Interrupt other people. For many of us this is very uncomfortable. We want to be polite and wait our turn. Unfortunately, in some meetings, only the loud and pushy people get heard. Realize that sometimes, you can’t wait for a break in the conversation and interrupting is the only way to get your point across.

6) When you don’t get a response to an idea, repeat it again. In some meetings, so much is going on at the same time, you may need to say your comments again. Or you may need to rephrase then so people understand their importance.

7) Take credit for your ideas. If someone else repeats something you’ve said as their idea, don’t get upset. You can remind the group that it was your idea by thanking the other person for supporting it. You can say, “John, that ties right into what I said a few minutes about the delivery problem. As I mentioned, this is a key area we need to address. Thanks for your suggestion.”

If you really want to get heard in meetings, you need to work at it. Try new strategies and see what works best for you. At the end of every meeting, ask yourself what went well and what else you could have done. Make notes and use those ideas to prepare for the next meeting to make sure that you get heard.

This article comes with reprint rights providing no changes are made and the resource box below accompanies it.

Laura Browne is the author of a practical & easy-to-use book for women, Why Can’t You Communicate Like Me? How Smart Women Get Results At Work. To register for her Free Teleconference on How To Deal With Difficult People, go to http://www.inyourfaceink.com (This book is available at the website and at Barnes & Noble online.)

When Laura isn’t writing, she helps women be more successful through WOMEN Unlimited, a nationally recognized resource for cultivating leadership excellence, http://www.women-unlimited.com

Dogs, like humans, have differing ranges of tolerance for others. Some are friendly right away with every new dog, horse, sheep…even cat (!) they meet. Then at the other end of the scale some are lifelong hostile to even the opposite sex of their own breed. Considering dogs are territorial by nature this diversity is odd, but there you go, that’s how it is.

Naturally, animal lovers like to have more than one dog around and often several breeds or other species. Ensuring that chairs remain upright and necks unbitten can be a real challenge. Add to the mix the neighbor’s pets or random strays who wander into your dogs territory and your furniture, not to mention your sanity, can be at real risk.

To head of such future problems the answer is to start socializing your dog as early as possible. Like children, puppies are much more accepting of strangers. They haven’t yet distinguished between friend and foe and everything is a new experience to be explored rather than feared or chased.

At first as puppies there may be a period where your vet or breeder advises it unwise to meet other dogs - maybe until they get to the end of a series of immune shots. But even if this is the case you can start with other activity. Get them used to being touched, especially between the toes, in the ears and near the eyes. Apart from impact on interaction with animals, that will make vet visits and trips to the store a lot easier.

Then when it’s OK from the health angle, as soon as possible, expose the puppy to other dogs and people.

Dogs, of course, sniff everything. When they’re about to interact with another, control them until you’re confident there won’t be chasing or violence, then let them explore the other dog, cat or creature.

Start early, expose for short intervals leading to longer ones, repeat as needed. In every case, be prepared to physically and mentally control the dog.

More on this at top dog land

I got dropped off at the usual Algarve Villa Rental and proceeded to clean up the mess the kids had left for me - lovely - well actually yes - I love lulling in my villa - theres nothing quite like a bit of a relax after a long day at the beach. I originally said to the mrs “rent me a villa on the algarve” but we liked it so much we decided to buy our own algarve villa - pretty neat that we could afford it - especially seeing as the property market there is a lot lot more strong than the one here.

If you’re a dog lover, you may find that one dog isn’t enough. Even so, before you buy a 2d dog to your household, there are a several key points you should think about.

For starters, you should think about your current dog’s personality and temperament. If your darling boy or girl is a bit of a bully (shall we say assertive!) and the new dog isn’t submissive, there are going to be some big conflicts before they sort out which dog is the pack leader. This is simply naturalo pack behanvior - In a pack there is only one alpha male or female.

Sometimes though, two dogs are evenly dominant and these battles flare again and again. By the time you visit your vet for the fourth or fifth time to have their battle scars treated, you may be ruing the purchase of a second dog.

If your current dog is very submissive, you could also get problems, as the new dog may bully your first dog and make his or her life unhappy. Hopefully, you have a dog that doesn’t slant too far in either direction. When you have a submissive dog at home, never buy a puppy that refuses to let you turn it over and cradle it upside down in your arms. When a puppy lets you hold it like you would hold an infant, it is a sign that the puppy is willing to be submissive.

Next, you should consider your current dog’s size. If you have a Yorkshire Terrier, you may not want to buy a Boxer puppy. A big, rowdy puppy can hurt a small dog quite a few times before it realizes its own strength. If you currently own a big dog who has a great temperament, you may be able to add a small breed puppy to the family, but you will have to be prepared to keep a close eye on the dogs at first when they are together. More than one Standard Poodle or Saint Bernard has become the devoted protector of a tiny lap dog…..

Read the rest at best dog land