2019 - AdvantEdge Training & Consulting

Building a Team Culture with Remote Employees

Because employees of a distributed workforce are in different locations, it is tougher for them to feel a part of the company and team, which is critical to their overall motivation and drive behind company initiatives. That is why it takes a concentrated effort by remote managers to build a team community and culture for their employees. Many remote employees feel left out when they hear of their office or others that have company events such as: ditch days, breakfast or lunch brought in, costume contests, in office birthday celebrations, happy hours, bring your pet or child to work day, etc. . . These social engagements help to build that community in an office, but there are things that a remote manager can do to build that culture and community, for their team, as well. Create and encourage inter-team communication – Communication amongst a distributed employee base helps to build camaraderie. This strengthens the team by fostering an environment where the team members rely on each other for help, support and ideas. This helps build trust within the team and fosters internal team partnerships to make it stronger and more productive. Partner remote employees for projects – Find reasons to partner employees on the team, especially those that do not always work together, for projects. This can include mentoring, developing best practices, or preparing topics to present to the rest of the team on a conference call. Create virtual water coolers – All of that time-consuming small talk that happens at the “water cooler” in office environments has an important purpose that is missed in distributed teams – it builds the team camaraderie and culture. A remote manager can find ways to create virtual environment to foster this “small talk.” Plan a small amount of “open time” at the beginning or end of team conference calls for small talk. User ice breakers, openers, and getting to know you exercises and games during team gatherings, calls, interactions, etc. . . This can also include a virtual bulletin board to post “getting to know you” related info about team members. Find opportunities to celebrate together virtually by sending out team congratulatory emails, or on conference calls. One company sent out Starbucks gift cards for their next team call so everyone could have “breakfast together” on the call. Re-live the past – Find opportunities to re-live shining moments from the team’s past. This brings back positive memories of the group and will help to renew that feeling again. This can be highlighting accomplishments made by the entire team, or even one employee. Even funny things that happened to team members when they were last together. Think of the memories that strengthen the bond with your group of personal friends. Talking about these always bring back those happy feelings of belonging to something good. One item to avoid that can be a common pitfall of new managers in building a team: avoid pitting the team against another in comments and remarks, such as “our team is better than theirs,” or “this is the best team in the company.” This alienates other co-workers and the company. Although competitiveness can be a strong motivator, competitiveness such as this within the company can have potential negative effects in the future. What if a member of one of those other teams now becomes a member of yours, or vice versa? It will make it that much harder to assimilate them into the new team that they are an “outsider” of. Managers should tell a team how fantastic they are, but not at the demise or lacking of another.

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PowerPoint

Engaging PowerPoint Presentations – Art of Expansion

PowerPoint Presentations that Keep Them Listening Have you sometimes noticed that your audience is not fully engaged with your presentation? Maybe they pay attention for a minute or two, but then they redirect their attention to their phone. Do you notice that fellow employees would prefer talking to each other or taking a nap, instead of following your presentation? How do you make sure you are giving engaging PowerPoint presentations? One thing to check is your presentation layout. PowerPoint slides are meant to be a placeholder, not a read-a-long. It is very easy to fall into the trap of giving your audience all the relevant information on the slide, leaving no reason to listen to your spoken words. If they know what you are going to say, before you say it, then it is the have no reason to pay attention; they already have gotten everything you have to offer. If you want a presentation that does not put people to sleep, it is important to learn the art of expansion. When people are not sure what is going to be said, but have an idea of the subject matter, they are more likely to pay attention. Less is more, when it comes to PowerPoint. The art of expansion is being able to take a word or phrase and expand on the idea for two to ten minutes. For example, if you take the word ball, you can probably think of a story from your childhood that involved a ball, and spend 5 minutes talking about the experience. You could probably make up a story, or use a story from something you witnessed, and no one would be the wiser. It is no different for work-related information, except that you do not want to make stuff up to get your point across. For example, take the slide below, and notice there are only three words listed. The presenter, of well-prepared, will be ale to discuss each of the topics listed on the slide, giving the presentation substance. This technique allows the audience to understand the general ideas of this portion of the presentation, but demands that they continue to pay attention to get the full picture. Of course, not everyone can remember two to ten minutes of details on each main concept of their presentation. Such notes can be saved in Presenter’s Mode of PowerPoint, keeping the presenter on track, and not putting their audience to sleep. Learn all the ways to keep your audience riveted to your PowerPoint presentations, with a class from AdvantEdge Training & Consulting.

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Effectively Manage Remote Employees

Quickly disappearing are the days of companies where all employees are based in one office. In our globally shrinking competitive landscape, drivers for this change include: speed to service, less travel cost with clients being spread out, and improved customer service. This creates challenges in company expectations of remote employees, and in effectively managing a remote workforce. Managing remote employees can prove rewarding, liberating and fulfilling . . . or you can feel like an empty nest parent whose kids don’t stay in touch. You can’t manage a team of remotely dispersed employees with all of the same techniques, which used in the past, for supervising a group based in the same office. There are some specific skills and techniques you need to use as a manager to make sure you have a strong team that doesn’t feel disconnected by the miles. Get the right skills to manage remote employees MCT’s online Remote Employee Management course teaches you the techniques you can employee to make sure you have a strong team, including: Keeping Remote Employees on Track – Remote employees are more apt to stray off course, by focusing on what they think is important, rather than what you think is important. Its not that they are being malicious; they can just become easily disconnected with the overall objectives of the team and company when they are teleworking. In this module, you will learn how to keep them on the right path, by setting clear visions and expectations, so there is no confusion about how they can be a successful part of the team. Increase and Don’t Delay Communication – With a virtual team, how can you make sure that they are getting the information they need without information overload? How do you insure that you are using the correct communication tools? What is the appropriate way to communicate with a virtual team? In this module, we will cover the different communication tools and channels to use, how to make your meetings run efficiently, and how to ensure you are engaged in accurate communication with your team, ensuring that they are getting the info they need to work just as if all in one office. Building Team Strength and Developing Trust – If not managed correctly, remote and teleworking teams are really not teams. Instead they become a bunch of individuals working alone in silos that happen to report to the same manager. However, that doesn’t have to be the case. If managed correctly, remote teams can be strong, closer, and work better together than those based in the same office. In this module you will learn how to create dynamic and interactive teams that have a closely woven team community, and strong trust, with mutual respect. You will also learn how you can insure that your communication with them is clear and credible. Creating Accountability – One of the biggest company fears about a teleworking teams is that they will not be working when you can’t see them. Unfortunately, this fear can lead to a micro-management style that gets you the opposite results of what you want. So how can you hold your team accountable without becoming an micro-manager? This module shows you how to empower your employees to manage themselves and how to create an accountability tracking system so YOU don’t have to be that system. Coaching Remote Employees – How can you effectively coach and develop your team of virtual employees when they are not based in the same office with you? Motivating Remote Employees – A team of dispersed working employees need a self-charged motivation technique. How do you keep them excited and engaged in their work and with the team? This module will show you techniques to create that self-charged motivation. Also you will learn how to get your team as excited about work as they are about playing. Take the online course, or have us come to your location for a private group training for your management team.

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Management

Management 101 – The Basics

Have you recently stepped into a Management role, or are you planning to in the near future? Management is both a very rewarding and challenging job all, if it is done right. You must be a leader, coach, and motivator for your team. Ultimately, you work for your employees. You are the person who removes obstacles for them, helps them succeed, you are their representative to the company, ensure they get needed company information, get them needed training and feedback, lead them by example, show them how to reach the vision through defining expectations and goals. Basically, your job is to help them reach the finish line. Whew! And all of this has to happen while doing other job tasks for your company. So how do you know if you are doing all of that successfully? Here are the 6 keys to successfully managing a team of employees: Lay a Clear Foundation – No one wants to do a bad job. But employees often fail because they have a misunderstanding of what doing a good job looks like. It is important as a manager to lay very clear groundwork for what is expected of employees to be successful. This will help keep your team on track toward the same purpose and results. Create Accountability Systems – If you don’t create an accountability system for your employees, then YOU will have to be that system, meaning you will always have to micro-manage all of their tasks to see if they are completing them. Instead, create an accountability system where they report their progress to you, therefore holding themselves accountable and managing themselves at task level. This will give them the responsibility of meeting their goals, with less headache for you, and generate a more collaborative and engaged work environment. Engage in Active Listening and Empathy – You have to care about your employees as individuals and you have to let them know you do, if you want to have a high level of respect and trust within your team. Two important ways to do this are to engage in active listening when interacting with them, as well as demonstrating empathy. It is also important to find ways to foster this practice among team members as well. Pro-Active, Candid, and Ongoing Coaching – Good coaches coach before, during, and after the game. So make sure you are always finding opportunities to coach your employees, on good as well as not so good behaviors. The moment we stop developing our employees (even our best of the bunch) is the moment we are telling them we don’t care about them. Develop a Team Culture – Team cohesion and strength doesn’t just happen on its own. It takes some fostering on your part, as a manager. You need to find opportunities for your team members to work together on projects, as well as to learn who each of their team mates are as individuals outside of what they just do as a work role. Ask Questions – Too often as managers, we can fall into the “fix-it” role, where we are always in problem solving mode. Although it is true that we need to be there for our teams to help solve issues, we can be better at it if we learn to stop and ask questions first, before we jump in. If we jump in to solve issues right away, we become part of the chaos. Instead, it’s important to always be in analysis mode first, and gather as much information as possible before we offer solutions or opinions. Better yet, guide your employees down the path of solving issues themselves, by engaging them in discussions around solutions, by asking questions rather than providing answers. Want to learn how to incorporate each of these keys into your management style? AETC’s Management 101 class will give you all these tools and more to get you on your way to having a productive and engaged team of employees.

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Management, Professional Development

Developing your Organization’s Training Program

Anyone who has tried it knows that employee development and training is not as easy as just bringing in an SME to ramble on and on about what they know. There are quite a few hurdles to get over just to get something on the schedule, not to mention to ensure a quality learning experience.You may work with training providers (or in-house instructors) regularly, or on an as-needed basis; or, possibly, you have not had to work through what your organization’s training needs are yet. In any case, here are a few things to consider when planning an employee-training event: Subject Matter Experts are NOT the same as professional instructors. Would you want to learn piano from Beethoven? While it is obvious that an instructor needs to know their course, they also need to understand and practice adult learning principles, or none of that lovely content will be retained after class lets out. A good instructor can simultaneously wrangle the distracted student (cell phones?), the heckler, the know-it-all, and the daydreamer, all while keeping the class interesting and on pace.Look for a training provider that has true, professional instructors who understand adult learning theories, and have experience actually teaching. Course content matters. There are plenty of books out there that offer insight into the topic you are interested in. Many read like instructions for assembling furniture. Some try to cover every single bit of minutia related to the topic, while others are too vague to be useful. The best content does several things at once. It brings the student into the topic and keeps them engaged. It changes pace and delivery, keeping people interested and active. It covers material that is important to the student, their role and function, and their personal life. It is information dense, while not requiring a PhD to understand.Ask potential training providers about their courses. Where do they get their content? How often is it updated? How long have they been using it? Can it be tailored to fit your specific situation, needs, and goals? The best providers will develop courses in-house (Instructional design). Logistics. With most training companies offering self-paced, on-line classes, there are a wealth of show times to be had. But what if you want good, old fashioned in-person instruction? Where do you go? How do you know if it is what you need? Will it be a conference room at the hotel by the airport, or an actual classroom? In addition, what comes with the class?A solid training company will offer live, in-person, hands-on instruction, not as a special arrangement this one time, but as their default method to be able to teach on-site. Logistics are very different for one or two people than they are for a larger group; so look for policies that take different scenarios into account, and not a one-size-fits-all philosophy. Support. All right, you have planned your party. So, will anyone show up? The biggest fear training planners (OD, HR, and managers) have is going through the work to schedule training, and then no one shows. Also, what happens after class? Will your folks be left alone in the cold?If you really want to be assured that your training provider understands ALL facets of employee development, ask them if they help drive attendance to your classes. How do they help pack a room once the training is scheduled? Then, after training, is there any additional support? What can they do to help people use what they just learned? If they do not offer these support services, why not?At the end of the day, there is more to it than just sitting someone in front of a monitor to watch a video. Look for effective instructors, meaningful course content and class materials, and expect support throughout the training, and beyond. Most important of all, there is no training quite as effective as live, in-person, hands-on training. Need more help developing an effective training program for your organization? AdvantEdge Training & Consulting has the expertise you need. Contact our sales office for more information, including private group training, at (303) 900-8963, or [email protected].

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Project

Scroll to a Task in Project

Project can be used for small projects, large projects, and connected projects (two or more Project files). Regardless of the size, it can be annoying to try to find the exact position of a task in the task views. You know what task you are looking for, since you see it in the Task Name column. When you start scrolling to it, though, it seems to take forever to actually reach. Since Project does not have a Name Box like Excel, how do we get where we are going quickly? We get there by using the Scroll to Task command. Check out how easy this command is to use: For our example, we are going to use the Ghantt Chart view in a template Project file. This particular file has 93 tasks. As you can see below, none of the bottom tasks are showing in the Ghantt Chart area. To use the Scroll to Task command, you must select the task you want by clicking the number of the task in the numbering column. Click the Task tab of the ribbon, and find the Scroll to Task command on the far right of the ribbon, in the Editing group. Click the command, and Project will take you instantly to the task in the Ghantt side of the view. This will get where you want to be, very fast – No more searching or manually scrolling to find your place. For more Project tips and tricks, check out AdvantEdge Training & Consulting’s Project Basic and Project Advanced classes.

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Excel

Adding Data Labels to Charts/Graphs in Excel

After adding a chart or graph to your Excel workbook, some items may need labeling, in order for management to see details about the data. This is different than a Legend, as that can be added differently to the chart or graph. There are three ways to add or change Data Labels in Excel, and Data Labels can be added to individual data pieces or to the whole chart or graph. We are going to use a Pie Chart for our examples, but the same process can be used for any chart, graph, or PivotChart. With your chart or graph created, you will need to click the chart or graph once, so that it is selected and Excel knows where to add the labels. Once this is done, follow these steps to add the Data Labels: First Method – In the Design tab of the Chart Tools contextual tab, go to the Chart Layouts group on the far left side of the ribbon, and click Add Chart Element. In the drop-down menu, hover on Data Labels. This will cause a second drop-down menu to appear. Choose Outside End for now and note how it adds labels to the end of each pie portion. Second Method – Right-clicking on the Pie Chart itself will open a menu (shown below), where you can hover on the Add Data Labels arrow to get options. The options are the same as in the first option. Once you click on the option, it will add the labels. The default position is Inside End, but this can be changed once the labels populate. Third Method – Click the plus symbol in the top-right corner of the Chart Area. When the menu appears, click the pop out arrow and the options for the Data Labels will be listed. Select the option you want, and the labels will appear on your chart or graph. Labels can be added to just one section of your chart or graph as well. This is what it looks like with only one piece of the pie labeled: Labels can be extremely helpful in making your point during a presentation, and there are options for the different pieces of information that a label can display. For more on charts and graphs, AdvantEdge Training offers live Excel Pivot Tables and Charts class every quarter. We also have other Excel classes running year-round.

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SharePoint

SharePoint Permission Best Practices

User experience goes a long way with whether someone likes using a new software or hates it. With SharePoint becoming the normal document management system for many industries, it’s important to follow best practices during implementation, ensuring that the everyday user is not frustrated with the new system. Successful setup for permissions is one of the most important pieces to implementing SharePoint as your new document management system. Ignoring best practices for permissions can actually mean a system that is hated by many. Worse, it can potentially lead to a legal nightmare, if industry regulations are are not taken into consideration during the development process of SharePoint. A well planned out and smooth user experience usually leads to a well-liked and routinely used system. AdvantEdge Training & Consulting offers multiple levels of SharePoint training, to help fit your needs.

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Outlook

Mailbox Shortcuts in Outlook

Most people love shortcuts, and use them regularly for just about anything.. In Outlook, a user can create shortcuts to go to various mailboxes or folders within a mailbox, with just a few easy steps. Follow the steps below to create mailbox shortcuts in Outlook, to find your most used mailboxes, or other items, quickly: At the bottom of your folder pane, usually on the left side, click the … to see other options available to you. Select “Shortcuts.” Once the new pane options populate, right-click on “Shortcuts: and select “New Shortcut.” A dialog box will appear, allowing you to select where you want the shortcut to take you. You are limited to items within, or linked to, Outlook. This includes items that might be linked to in SharePoint, iManage, or other data management systems, as long as these show up in your Outlook menus. Once you have selected the item for the shortcut, click “OK;” your shortcut will appear in the Shortcuts folder pane. Learn to use Outlook to better manage your work day, with a training class from AdvantEdge Training & Consulting.

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Excel

Evaluating Formulas in Excel

If you build formulas with the help of the Function Library, a dialog box pops up, and helps you fill in the different areas with the correct information, then evaluates your formula as you move through the setup process. If you like to write your formulas without that help of the Function Library, then what can you do to audit your formulas? Luckily, there is an “Evaluate Formula” command to help with that. This is especially helpful if you are tweaking an Excel workbook that is being used regularly, and you want to make sure it is giving you the correct results. Use the steps below to learn how to use this helpful tool: In the Formulas tab, within the Formula Auditing group, there is a command that helps you evaluate formulas you have written. Example formula: =IF(A5>0,”True”,B5) To evaluate a formula, ensure you have that cell selected, then click the Evaluate Formula command. A new window will pop-up and allow you to walk through the formula Each time you click the “Evaluate” button at the bottom of the dialog box, the wizard evaluates the next step of the formula. Once the evaluation steps are complete, the “Evaluate” button will change to “Restart” and the answer to the formula will appear. Functions and formulas are an important and powerful part of Excel that help you work more efficiently by automating your workload. Start exploring what Excel can do for you, with a company group or online live training course from AdvantEdge Training & Consulting!

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(303) 900-8963

Building a Team Culture with Remote Employees

Engaging PowerPoint Presentations – Art of Expansion

Effectively Manage Remote Employees

Management 101 – The Basics

Developing your Organization’s Training Program

Scroll to a Task in Project

Adding Data Labels to Charts/Graphs in Excel

SharePoint Permission Best Practices

Mailbox Shortcuts in Outlook

Evaluating Formulas in Excel

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