Communication Is Key, Part 1

The writing experts at Grammarly.com have an article that breaks down the four types of communication that happen at a business: “upward, downward, lateral, and external.” These directions indicate who’s talking with whom, and what their interpersonal relationships are with one another. Think about this in terms of a business…
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Stop Wasting Your Time

When you’re in a position of leadership at your company, your time is precious. There aren’t enough hours in a day for you to handle everything yourself, and you can’t afford to shorten the day further with poor productivity. Dayshift supervisor, store manager, or business owner—or something in-between—it doesn’t matter.…
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How to Manage Your Boss

Managing your own boss sounds oxymoronic, at first. We often think about management as being a downstream action, with someone above managing you, and you managing those further down the chain. As it turns out, the most effective leaders do both: they take the responsibility of making sure tasks get…
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How to Challenge Authority Respectfully

Unless you’re the business owner, president, or chief executive of your company, you always have someone higher up to answer to. After all, employees by definition are employed by someone else. And regardless of the kind of job you’re working, you’ve almost certainly experienced moments when you’ve disagreed with managerial…
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Setting Expectations for Your Employees

Every business has goals of some kind, even beyond the basic need to make enough money to keep the lights on this month. Usually, a business hopes to grow, to bolster its reputation, and to genuinely satisfy everyone involved day-in and day-out. These kinds of goals are often broken into…
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What Does a Leader Really Do?

When we think about the importance of designing a great customer experience, it’s easy to get hyper-focused on the frontline staff. This makes sense because these employees are the ones with whom the customers will be interacting the most, whether they are the servers at restaurants, cashiers at retail stores,…
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How Does Age Affect What Customers Value?

Age plays a large factor in influencing customer expectations for a great experience. The level of employee helpfulness, friendliness, empathy, knowledgeability, as well as the ease of shipping/delivery and returns all matter to each age group, but there are certainly stark differences on how much each of these matters to…
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How Job Satisfaction Can Combat the Labor Shortage

There’s a labor crisis that, as Forbes reports, may be here to stay. Many are quick to point the finger at the broad availability of unemployment benefits since the start of the pandemic as the problem’s culprit, but it’s a problem that well predates COVID–19. “Comparing Labor Department data on…
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Be the Change Your Workplace Needs

Most people don’t like the idea of being tested, and fewer still like the idea of being subjected to pop quizzes—especially when they’re being conducted without your knowledge. It should be no wonder that many retail and service employees are wary of mystery shops, which are a lot like secret…
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