Personal Learning Network

4 Tips for Building Strong Work Relationships

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When it comes to the professional workplace, the differences that atmosphere creates lends to automatic tensions. This is why it’s important from the beginning to build strong work relationships.

Here are four tips that you can use in order to ensure that your work relationships are solid and thriving.

Initiate Personal Conversations

In a professional working environment, most people feel as though they should not ask personal questions of their colleagues. With the correct amount of foundation and sensitivity, personal conversations can help to increase how connected co-workers feel to each other and also create a better connection between bosses and their workers.

When you begin to initiate personal conversations, the key is to remember to start small. For example, if you know that the person you’re speaking with has children, then ask how that child is doing in school or ask them about a school break that their child was on recently. This builds trust and confidence and can open the door to broader conversations in the future.

Understand the People You Work With

Different ideals in the workplace often lead to questions of differences in personality. It’s a good idea for everyone in the work environment to take a personality test and set aside a day to share their results.

Doing this process as a team will help each person see better ways of communicating with each other and what values each person places significance on in the workplace.

Learn or Practice Emotional Intelligence

Once you understand the personality types for each person, study on and learn more about emotional intelligence.

By combining emotional intelligence and the results of the personality test, you can create a thriving workplace where communication barriers are decreased and productivity, efficiency, and better workplace relationships are increased.

Seeking help from a company that focuses on professional management development can help with learning about how to implement emotional intelligence in the workplace.

Don’t Be Afraid to Try

Creating a strong working relationship can seem very scary at first. The key is to not be afraid to try. People appreciate being thought of and they appreciate communication. Don’t be afraid to try to increase your communication with your coworkers, boss, or workers. If you’re feeling trepidation about the process, communicate that. Everyone in your workplace will appreciate it.

Conclusion

These are just some of the ways that you can build better work relationships. The process won’t be fast, but it will be beneficial in the long run.

Emma is a business strategist-turned blogger. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Emma is a  passionate traveler and yoga aficionado. She is in love with coffee, interior design, books, and good vibes. 🙂 

Monetizing Your Blog For Six-Figure Returns

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Blogs can make upwards of $10,000 a month for even just solo-owners. With the right SEO, advertising, and readership, your blog can easily be monetized far beyond what you’d expect to find in a normal office job. In this article, you’ll be given some of the top tips for monetizing your blog, and living off the proceeds.

What Do You Love?

The easiest way to make money is to find a niche in something you love. Firstly, establish what you’re passionate about. This exercise will help you develop content that is both well researched, but engagingly communicated through your platform. Half of the battle in blogging is writing or recording something that consistently fascinates you, and having an established knowledge and potential network associated with your passion will make it far easier to become successful.

However, it is imperative that you do you research first to ensure that the angle you take on your subject matter hasn’t already been done commercially by someone else. Becoming a unique voice within your chosen demographic lies at the core of financial success with your blog. As long as you post consistently good content, there is no reason that you can’t become a success at what you love.

Work As An Influencer

Social media and web-based influencers are the new reality stars. If you’re an expert, specialist, or just very good at communicating information on your chosen subject matter, the chances are you’ll be asked to become an influencer for brands associated with your blog content. Some of the top influencers end up earning money from writing post, photoshoots, hosting giveaways with affiliated brands, and many go on to publish books on their work.

A great example of an influencer collaboration is the MedMen “Faces” campaign in California, 2018. The brand used existing social media influencers in the space to celebrate their brand, and they are now the leading recreational store in the country. Many of the influencers went on to reap huge financial rewards from the campaign too, thanks to the relationships with MedMen, and the rest of the industry.

Practical Tips

Becoming an influencer does begin with finding you bliss, but it ultimately hinges on your ability to act. Yes, some blogs become commercially successful because they sell ad space online, but if you’re following your passion you should be reaping the rewards. Acting on what you love means that your blog is now your business, and even though it may seem easy, it is easy to go off-brand.

As your brand grows, stay within your niche and earn through sponsored blog posts, selling related products via your site, or affiliate marketing. If you’re more of a hands-on person, many bloggers host seminars, webinars, and events. Most successful bloggers will always be offered free products, just ensure that you’re only advertising the ones you truly support. You have to do your research on everyone who contacts you, just in case they don’t totally reflect your ethics.

As we near the end of this decade, monetizing via blogging platforms is changing as an industry. The individual behind the words is becoming as important as the words themselves. Personal blogs are an incredibly easy way to boost your personal income, and can help you grow into an entrepreneur, or a specialist in your field. All you have to do is decide what exactly you’d like to write about, and whether you’re looking to make bank from behind your computer screen.

Guest Author, Jenny Holt, is a former HR executive turned freelance writer, who now spends more time with her young family and ageing, but ever eager Labrador, Rover.

 

Shifting Focus: Aptitudes instead of Attitudes

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We often talk about doing what we love, finding our passion, so that we can be happy at work and in life. What if we took into account our natural abilities or aptitudes when we made career decisions or before choosing a major in college. Would you be happier at work or could you get ahead faster if you worked in a field that capitalizes on your natural talents?

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Aptitudes are natural talents, special abilities for doing, or learning to do, certain kinds of things easily and quickly. Studies have shown that people are more productive, engaged and successful when their work life takes advantage of their strengths.

When I was in high school my parents took me for Natural Aptitude Testing to help me think about what I might want to major in while in college and to find out what fields I might naturally excel in when deciding on a career.

This is a great video about Aptitude Tests and How they can help you match your abilities with a career.

Aptitude Test May Match Natural Ability With Passionate Career Field

Career aptitude tests (CATs) are helpful in measuring a person’s natural skills and abilities. They can also help point out someone’s strengths and weaknesses,” says Elizabeth Lintelman, career services manager at Rasmussen College. “Good CATs can help users identify specific industries — not necessarily specific jobs — that would be a good fit for their interests. Well-written CATs can also provide test-takers with a deeper understanding of themselves and their talents. This allows test-takers to highlight those abilities and connect the dots to different job opportunities.”

Of course, there are those that think just the opposite. Serial Entrepreneur, James Caan, maintains that “It’s your ATTITUDE not your APTITUDE that determines your ALTITUDE.” According to Caan, it is important for people to have skills, training and experience but I have always been a huge believer in putting attitude above aptitude. You can come fully equipped for a role but without real enthusiasm the best skill-set will count for very little. You can train somebody and give them the tools but you can’t give them the right attitude.

What do you think? Will knowing more about your natural abilities help you make better career decisions? Join the conversation on Wednesday as #TChat welcomes Maggie Mistal and Laura Rolands to discuss how to find and claim your core career “genius.”

#TChat: Transformative Online Learning Communities

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What are online learning communities? Who benefits from them? Join the conversation with #TChat LIVE as we celebrate the 2 year anniversary of an organic learning community!

This celebration includes the return of #TChat Radio on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. ET, 4:30pm PT  with guests who’s lives have been impact by this community,  China Gorman (@ChinaGorman), founder and CEO of CMG Group,  Justin Mass (@jmass), learning, technology and design manager at Adobe; and Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar). The conversation continues on Wendesday at 7-8 p.m. ET, 4-5pm PT via Twitter.

You choose your medium but we would love to interact with you both days! http://bit.ly/TChat2

Understanding the impact and role of online learning communities can be tricky- let’s chat about it. Join us as we celebrate the return of #TChat Radio and discuss the impact and future of such communities!  http://bit.ly/TChat2

What can an online learning community do for me? For you? Join #TChat LIVE as we celebrate the impact of transformative online learning communities at  7pmET Wednesday 11/28. Preview & Qs: http://bit.ly/TChat2

What’s a Personal Learning Environment (PLE)?

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The term Personal Learning Environment (PLE) has different meanings depending on who is defining it and in which context it is being used. In 2009, the Educause Learning Initiative published, “7 Things You Should Know about PLEs,” as part of their ongoing series, defining Personal Learning Environments as tools, communities and services that constitute educational platforms that learners use to direct their own learning and educational goals.

Personal Learning Environments are a way that we can move from a model in which students are strictly information consumers to one where they are making important connections between content and subjects and where they are being critical thinkers. Terry Anderson wrote an article in 2006, “PLEs versus LMS: Are PLEs ready for Prime Time,” in which he identified several advantages of PLEs:

  • PLEs help learners create an identity; both public and private.
  • They connect existence outside of school with school experiences
  • They provide a way and a place for content to persist when a course has ended. Content should not disappear at the end of a course. It can be evidence of lifelong learning and an artifact in an ePortfolio.
  • They are customizable environments that can be personalized by individual learner.
  • Centers learning within the context created and sustained by the learner – not one controlled by the institution.