Communication is made up of more than just the words we use. It is maintaining eye contact with the person you are talking to or your hand movements as you speak.
Nonverbal cues such as tone of voice, gestures, and posture all play their part.
Let us discuss on how we define what body language is, and how we can interpret it to understand and communicate with people more effectively.
Body language is the unspoken element of communication that reveals our true feelings and emotions.
Statistics say only 7% of a message is conveyed through words. The other 93% comes from body language.
It is taken from Mehrabian’s Communication Model.
It states that body language is more important than tone of voice & choice of words when communicating true feelings.
Body language is the range of nonverbal signals that you use to communicate your feelings and intentions. These include your posture, facial expressions, and hand gestures.
Your ability to understand and interpret body language can help you to pick up on unspoken issues or negative feelings in others.
You can also use body language in a positive way to add strength to your verbal messages.
If you are meeting someone for the first ever time & you want to make a good impression, Body Language is the Key.
Here are some Ideas:
Have an open posture.
Be relaxed, but do not slouch! Sit or stand upright and place your hands by your sides.
Avoid standing with your hands on your hips, as this can communicate aggression or a desire to dominate.
Use a firm handshake.
But do not get carried away! You do not want it to become awkward, aggressive, or painful for the other person.
Maintain good eye contact.
Try to hold the other person’s gaze for a few seconds at a time. This will show them that you are sincere and engaged.
But avoid turning it into a staring contest!
Avoid touching your face.
If you do while answering questions, it can be seen as a sign of dishonesty.
While this isn’t always the case, you should still avoid fiddling with your hair or scratching your nose, so that you convey trustworthiness.
These tips are a good general guide for interpreting body language. Reflect on how you use your body language – and avoid making assumptions!
Interpreting body language should be a complement to talking and listening attentively, not a replacement for it.
Got an outline of What body Language is & why is it mandatory for everyone to learn it?
Sounds great! Now to inculcate the ability to read and portray the right Body Language skills, Intellisoft is offering a one day course that is perfectly designed to teach a Positive, Professional and Self-Assured Attitude.
This course even covers how to read Body Language, Body Language Mistakes, Nonverbal Communication & Facial Expressions.
Why wait? Join Intellisoft’s practical training now!
P.S. 50% of all employees will need Re-skilling by 2025, Soft skills like reading & understanding body language, Time Management Skills, Critical thinking and Problem-solving are the top key skills employers believe will grow in prominence in the next five years.
Large companies can use the corporate databases hosted on expensive servers, and then get multiple database administrators, server administrators to manage the servers.
Startups, small businesses, SME companies cannot afford these luxuries.
For simple to complex,single user or multiuser database applications, most solopreneurs, and SME companies rely on Microsoft Access. It is well suited, proven and highly relevant even in 2021.
We have several reasons to say that Microsoft Access is still a truly relevant Database system even in this year, in fact many more years to come.
Microsoft Access is Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software-development tools to build Forms, Queries and Reports.
This is ideal for getting started in building a Customer Database, Accounting System, Warranty Tracking System, Order & Inventory Tracking etc. easily.
Microsoft Access stores all database tables, queries, forms, reports, macros, and modules in the Access Jet database as a single file.
Developed by: Microsoft Corporation
Latest version: 16.0
Advantages of Microsoft Access
Only one installation needed (RDBMS and design implement in one simple package)
Easy to install
Easy to integrate
Cost wise, it is way much lower. It is possibly already included in your Microsoft license.
Now, coming back to the question, Access applications are still in use longer than 20 years and people are building newer, mission critical applications using Microsoft Access.
Microsoft Access is still a viable tool for personal or small workgroup applications. The small business is not going to spent thousands on a software project that will take a year or more to develop.
Access has always been denigrated by mainline IT people almost from the beginning because it gives people control, which takes that control away from the IT department.
It has multiple uses and is used worldwide. The Danish government uses an Access app for contact tracing of COVID cases.
And in Singapore, Access is truly relevant and used every day by thousands of companies and individuals.
So yes, if you need to develop a database for personal use or within a workgroup, it is still highly relevant.
Want to go beyond the common use of Excel and Explore its Extremely Useful but Lesser-Known Features of Microsoft Excel?
Microsoft Excel’s extensive features can help you to increases productivity and also saves time. Become proficient in Data Management & Business Analytics – Turn Data into Insights, Develop better tables & charts.
Lesser Known Features of Microsoft Excel
Conditional Formatting:
Apply formatting to cells automatically depending on the value of the cell. It is also a powerful feature, given that conditions can be based on any Excel formula. Conditional Formatting works by letting you set rules for how cells can be customized.
Conditional formatting makes it easy to highlight required cells or ranges of cells, emphasizing unusual values. In addition to that, it is used to visualize & analyze data in Excel by using data bars, color scales, and icon sets. Overall, it helps you to identify important data faster.
Learn Lesser Known Shortcuts of Excel at Intellisoft Singapore
Advanced Filters:
This Advanced command works differently from the Filter command in several ways. It displays the Advanced Filter dialogue box instead of the Auto Filter menu. You can filter the data in place, or to a different location. You can also specify that you want to see unique items only.
All the duplicates are removed from the filtered list, with Advanced filter. The Data tab contains all the features of Advanced Filters. The advantage of using advanced filter is that you can see the filtered criteria in Excel cells. You can also easily add new filters by typing the values directly in the cells. Thus, it is absolute must learn feature.
Learn Advanced Filter for more Productivity at Intellisoft Singapore
Database Functions:
Database functions is a Seldom used Gem in Microsoft Excel. With this, you can not only perform basic calculations but also use complex criteria, that allow you to perform the calculation for a specified subset of the records in your database.
These functions treat the entire set as a Database, just like a SQL Database.
Learn the Database Function at Intellisoft Singapore
Consolidating Multiple Worksheet:
If you receive information in multiple sheets or workbooks that you want to summarize, the Consolidate command can help you pull data together onto one sheet. It allows you to combine information from multiple workbooks when you need them one place.
The Excel consolidate function lets you select data from its various locations and creates a table to summarize the information for you, automatically, painlessly.
Learn Consolidate Function at Intellisoft Singapore
Preventing others from Changing Master Data:
This feature allows you to prevent other users from accidentally or deliberately changing, moving, or deleting data in a worksheet. You can lock the cells on your Excel worksheet & then protect the sheet with a password.
With worksheet protection, you can make only certain parts of the sheet editable and users will not be able to modify data in any other region in the sheet.
You can lock the structure of your workbook by specifying a password.
Locking the workbook structure prevents other users from adding, moving, deleting, hiding, and renaming worksheets.
Suffering from Monday Morning Blues? Ever thought of a way of Managing Emails better ?
One of the key reason for these blues is the deluge of emails you will receive as soon as you open your Outlook Inbox. And then throughout the day, you will keep going to meetings & discussions… Every time you are back at your computer, the email overload keeps on increasing, giving you a nausea feeling of not being able to Manage Emails.
Outlook Mastery Training in Singapore
Suddenly your most important client calls. Have you taken action on the email they sent last week? You frantically search for the email, but can’t find it. Yes… you remembered to work on it when you received it, but then that email got lost in the jungle of never ending incoming email. Searching through thousands of email wastes more time.
Email has now become a burden for most people, and you are not alone. Most people feel frustrated, anxious, and are clueless as to where to start, or what is the solution to managing Emails in a Better way.
Actually, most of us spend an unusual amount of time using Microsoft Outlook. It has become a part of our daily lives.
Microsoft Outlook is used for Managing Emails & Tracking several Items:
Meetings
Calendar
Tasks
Notes
Project Tracking
Surveys & Quick Polls,
Journal
Learn to Stay in Track With Microsoft Outlook: One day Workshop at Intellisoft Singapore Systems
And many people even share their calendars with their secretaries and colleagues, creating more management challenges.
To trace the root cause of the problem, most people are never taught how to organize things in their school or college days. Plus, a large population grew up before email became the mainstay of our work life. So we have just picked up email along the way, without knowing how to use it effectively or how to organize it correctly.
So What is the Better Solution For Managing Emails Effectively?
Fortunately, the answers are pretty easy, and we have been practicing them for several years. The solution is a combination of some best practices, some guiding principles, and some tips, tricks and shortcuts found within Microsoft Outlook or Gmail.
We also teach these basic Principles, Tips, Tricks and Secrets of Managing Emails Microsoft Outlook in a short, 1 day Outlook Mastery Training Seminar.
One common Solution, based on the principle of Single Processing is the one that brings you the most bang for the buck. What is Single Processing of emails? Let’s find out.
Email Mastery Principle #1: Single Processing of Emails For Better Management
Microsoft Outlook Training Singapore
Many people have the habit of scanning their emails first thing, reading them selectively, and then moving on to other, more interesting emails. Then they keep going back and forth between the important ones, and miss the others.
And as new emails come, the ones that you wanted to work on keep moving down, and out of sight. Once they are below the fold, we tend to forget them, until the boss or client calls to remind us.
The solution is to touch each email only once. And when you touch it, you decide what you want to do with it. We follow the 4D rule for easier processing.
What are the 4D – Do it, Delete it, Defer it & Delegate it. Let’s understand each one in more detail.
Do it:
If the email takes less than a couple minutes to do it, just do it. Postponing it, and then searching and fining it to do it later will simply take more time. It is faster to simply do it, just now. This simple principle alone will save you a huge amount of time. We call it the 2-Minute-Rule.
Delete it:
If the email is not useful, it is just some spam, or an FYI email, that you can dispose of after reading, then just delete it. Do not become a hoarder. Don’t keep each and every email you get. Most email may fall in this category.
What’s the fear in deleting it? If you can find the information from a colleague or easily find it in the shared drive or the Internet, then this email will simply take more space and more band width. Just get rid of it right away. That’s one less email to deal with in your email box.
Defer it:
If the email will require you to do some research, some more background work, and you don’t have the time to do it now, you can simply defer it to a later date and time. But don’t leave it here. Plan a time to do it.
Microsoft Outlook Training at Intellisoft
Then move the email to your calendar, and fix up a time. You can also create a Task in Outlook, and set a reminder at the date/time you’ll do it, so that Outlook will remind you to do it, and it actually happens.
If this email is part of a larger project, perhaps you can file it with other project related items – in a dedicated folder, or simply attach the relevant category to it. By doing this, you will be able to find it easily later on, in a single place.
Delegate it:
If you are not the right person to do it, you can delegate it to someone else – perhaps your secretary or a colleague who is more knowledgeable. If you do not have a large team, and do not have a secretary, you may not have this luxury. Do not worry.
Many simple tasks can be outsources to freelancers, or virtual assistants. If it is possible to delegate or outsource it, then do it immediately. And set a reminder for yourself, and for the delegate, so that both are aware of the delegation, and the due date/time.
These are simple tips and guides, and will help you immensely. And if you want to learn how to apply each of these techniques specifically to Microsoft Outlook, we invite you to attend our 1 Day Outlook Mastery Seminar in Singapore.
Want More Principles, Tips, Tricks & Shortcuts to Make Life Easier By Managing Emails With Microsoft Outlook?
Our 1 Day Outlook Mastery MasterClass is choke full of tips and tricks.
We cover the Best Practices for Managing Emails, Meetings, Tasks, Categories, Email Filing, a Good Folder System to file emails, Searching For Emails, and Getting Things Done to achieve more quickly in your life.
SkillsFuture Ready Training on Outlook Mastery
Eligible Singaporeans can use SkillsFuture for this course.And foreigners can attend these courses at our super low course fees too.
Most people learn the hard skills in college, and be a good engineer, architect, doctor, or a specialist based on the skills learnt in the academia. This is fine, and it helps in the initial years. However, as time goes by, you use less and less of these specialist, hard skills, and you need more of other soft skills. This is because as time goes by, you rise in your career, and have bigger and larger responsibilities. You will also have bigger teams to manage, and bigger amounts will be at stake.
This is the time you realize that the hard skills you learnt are not always of great use. What you really need is expertise, mastery and experience in using the soft skills – which is what really matters. Most of all, you have to realize that as you rise higher, you do less and less work, and you need to get other people to do more and more of the work. How do you push others to do the work? What skills are needed to do this?
These skills are generally not taught in school, as we focus to learn the hard skills. However, if you want to accelerate your career, move far, higher, faster, then you need to master these at a great speed. The thing with soft skills is that it improves with experience. But you must practice them. You can’t learn communication by reading a book on communication… just like you can’t be an expert swimmer just by reading the Advanced Manual of Swimming. You need to get into the water, learn to navigate your way, try, make mistakes, and learn from them. It is OK to make mistakes. The important thing is to learn from them, so that you don’t repeat them, and use this experience to get better and better.
Learning soft skills is like learning an art. It takes time, patience, determination, and perseverance. You can do it. Only thing is to become aware about it, take note of your current skills, and the areas where you need to improve. Then work out a plan, and practice to improve your skills in each area.
Today, there are several courses available to improve your soft skills – there are numerous Communication Skills courses, there are several Time Management courses, Stress Management Courses. Most of these courses are short, 1-2 days, and they are good because they tend to teach you a few techniques, a few ways to improve your communication. You will not become an expert in a day or two, but it will be a great start.
Any improvement can only be seen when you first become aware of the short coming, and measure where you are, and where you want to go. Once you know where you are, and what your plan is, then from then onwards, it is easier to take some steps, measure your progress, and see how small steps are shaping up your future, helping you grow, nurture your nature, and improve your skills, improve your life.
It is worthwhile to live a meaningful life, and life rich of experiences, of abundance, of contribution. Do not waste your time. Make the most of this opportunity. Do good, learn, help others grow by applying the principles of self mastery, and self growth. Once you improve, you improve the people around you.
Improve your soft skills. Invest in your future. You do not have to spend a fortune. There are several courses available for free on YouTube, Articles abound on the Internet, and there is a plethora of applications on the mobile phones that can be used to learn new things, grow your knowledge, and grow yourself.
Written by Vinai Prakash,
Master Trainer at Intellisoft
We do not work just to get paid, just to finish the 9-5 routine.
We want to make a difference, a contribution, a celebration of life, of living. Therefore, work matters!
But are you doing your best today?
Are you excelling at work?
If not, why not. WHY?
W H Y ?
What are you waiting for?
Today, we are not fighting war with the communists. We may not be working on THE project of a lifetime – The Taj Mahal, The Rocket to Moon, The Scaling of South Pole, or The Everest. So therefore, should we do just a mediocre job… just a job to get by?
Or should we make any job, any crummy job as THE PROJECT of my Life… and really excel at it.
Why Not? Do you need anyone’s permission to do an excellent job? And will you do an excellent job, an Wow job only when someone’s life or job is at stake?
Decide today to do Your Best. Excel at anything. Make it the Project of your lifetime. Do such a wonderful job that people will talk about this work ten years from now. Man… those were the days… We worked on THE project of my life. It was such fun, such camaraderie, such great teamwork, such coordination, so much precision, and we pulled it against all odds. Those were the days!!!
Do not think of any job as just a job. Make it a WOW project. THE project of your life. Even if it is a small, simple job. Do with with dedication, do it with perfection. You will enjoy it more. You will be happy. You are not doing it to show off to anyone.But you are doing it to Show it your YOURSELF. You will feel job satisfaction. You will feel that
you are making a difference.
And you will be surprised. Others will see it. Notice it. They have no choice. A good quality work gets noticed pretty quickly. Because it is a rarity today. People are so used to seeing the mediocre job, the average job, that when you do an Excellent job, everyone notices… Automatically. You do not have to announce it.
And even if no one notices, or no one shows that they have noticed…. it is bound to happen. With it come its own rewards. More recognition, more power, more money, more satisfaction, and more success. You will know it first.
I take pride in my work. I find ways to add more value… provide more value. Find ways to give you new tips, tricks, new ways to add value to your work. When I coach, I try to give practical tips, not just theory, so that you can benefit from it immediately. Learn new skills – hard technical skills like Advanced Excel Techniques, or Soft Skills like Communication Skills… Train yourself, and your staff. There are several benefits of training. Invest in your knowledge, and spread the word.
Make it a point from today onwards. Find ways to transform your work… every day work, into a project that matters. Because Work Matters. Your Life Matters. What You Do matters, and You Matter Too!
– By Vinai Prakash, Founder & Principal Trainer at Intellisoft Singapore
P.S. – Write your comments. Tell me what you think. Does it ring a bell somewhere? Or you simply do not agree with this philosophy. What ever you feel, post a comment, and I’ll be happy to see what you feel, and where you come from. Thanks.
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