By Eleanor Shakiba COMMUNICATION 0 Comments

Assert your boundaries

Difficult people invade your boundaries play psychological games. In doing so, they use predictable verbal attack patterns. Learn to respond to verbal attacks calmly and assertively, by using 3 critical rules of verbal self-defense by watching this video.

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By Eleanor Shakiba COMMUNICATION 0 Comments

Psychological games. Spot them to stop them

You thought you were going to a simple catch-up meeting with your boss; instead you ended up feeling like a naughty child. Although the meeting started well, halfway through your boss became aggressive and critical. You’re still not even sure what the main problem was. However, you definitely know you’re in the bad books. This scene is typical of what happens during psychological game playing at work.

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By Eleanor Shakiba COMMUNICATION 0 Comments

Beware the boundary invaders

Boundaries keep you safe

Have you ever felt uneasy, anxious, or just plain at the end of a conversation with a difficult person? Chances are you were dealing with a boundary invader. This is someone who invades your psychological space in a way that makes you feel violated or uncomfortable. 

 

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By Eleanor Shakiba Impact tips 0 Comments

5 reasons breaking my arm was worth the pain

Resilience turns pain into learning

I’m not a big fan of tourist buses, so I decided to take the local bus to Portofino. This proved to be a bad decision. The bus was overcrowded, and I was squashed into the space next to the door. My arm was trapped when the door opened resulting in a fractured elbow and risk. In some ways, my visit to the Italian hospital was even more traumatic than the accident itself. In the long months of recovery and rehab though, I learned some valuable lessons in resilience. I’ve always been fascinated by the psychology of resilience. After all, resilience is what allows us to bounce back after traumatic or negative experiences. My accident certainly gave me an opportunity to test my practical application of what I’ve learned through all my years of studying this field. Five unexpected lessons emerged from my mishap.

 

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By Eleanor Shakiba COMMUNICATION 0 Comments

Everyone’s an expert these days

Have you noticed how popular the word “expert” is becoming on social media profiles? My quick search of LinkedIn has just yielded a result of 885,170 results for people using the word expert in their profiles. Many of them fail to explain exactly what their expertise is. For example, among the top 20 people who appeared in my search, six use the format “Expert at (company name)” as their profile headline. Four use the format “(very broad topic) expert”, for example, “digital expert”. This haphazard use of the term is rendering the label expert meaningless and that poses a problem. If you are genuinely an expert in your field, wanting to showcase your technical or professional mastery, you need to overcome this problem. I recommend that you begin to behave like an expert, rather than simply relying on labelling yourself as one.

 

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By Eleanor Shakiba Impact tips 0 Comments

Glass-ceiling-proof your career

It’s an all-too-familiar tale. Serena makes rapid progress in the early days of her career, then for no apparent reason, her momentum stalls. Despite her desire to continue developing, she is unable to access a more senior role. In everyday language, we call this hitting the glass ceiling. What exactly does this term mean? Is it still relevant to professionals in today’s business world? And if so, what can we do when we hit the glass ceiling?

 

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By Eleanor Shakiba Impact tips 0 Comments

Transform your skills into talents

Given a choice between a talented job candidate and a skilled job seeker, most recruiters would select the person with talent. Why? Because talent implies a higher level of accomplishment and mastery. A talented staff member is someone with extra flair or ability. Imagine an organisation which only employs talented people. If that’s the sort of business you want experience in, you need to learn how to transform skills into talents. 

 

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By Eleanor Shakiba Impact tips 0 Comments

When no one takes you seriously, do this

It’s a gripe I often hear in my Women in Leadership program. “My team doesn’t take me seriously.” “My boss doesn’t take me seriously.” “My colleagues don’t take me seriously.” Often this issue is expressed as a criticism of the other party. However, it’s usually a sign that the speaker needs to work on boosting her credibility. That, of course, is advice that’s usually offered with little thought given to how precisely it can be implemented. After all, credibility is an abstract concept. But to build it, a leader needs to take concrete action. 

Doing this becomes easier when you understand the three basic components of credibility. Most dictionary definitions of credibility will mention trustworthiness and believability. To this list, I think we should add congruence, or the ability to be perceived as walking your talk. Let’s explore these three components of credibility, seeking methods of building each one.  

 

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By Eleanor Shakiba COMMUNICATION 0 Comments

Beyond keywords – write to impress humans, not computers

Type ‘keywords’ LinkedIn into Google. What do you see? Your first page of search results will include three types of article. Firstly, keyword and search engine optimisation advice. Secondly, a list of verbs to include in your profile. Thirdly, a list of words not to include in your LinkedIn profile. While this advice will help candidates get their profiles through automated candidate–screening processes, it won’t help them make a great impression. This is because the principles that make for good search engine optimisation are the opposite of principles of influential language use.  

 

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By Eleanor Shakiba Impact tips 0 Comments

How recruiters view LinkedIn photos

Once a job candidate’s LinkedIn profile is clicked on by a recruiter, what happens next? It’s a critical question for both job seekers and recruiters. Thanks to the fields of applied psychology and eye tracking technology, interesting answers are emerging. This article explores what we now know about how recruiters view and make sense of profile pictures on LinkedIn. Let’s start with what eye tracking technology has revealed. A study conducted in 2012 demonstrated that recruiters spend 19% of their time looking at the head shot when viewing LinkedIn profiles. While that sounds like a reasonable amount of time, in practical terms, it translates to approximately one second per profile page. This means job seekers need to take the old saying “First impressions count” very seriously indeed. And so do recruiters. After all, first impressions are usually created at an unconscious level and therefore, can trigger unconscious biases.

 

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