Archive for December 16th, 2009

This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:

See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project

Previous article: Blogging is highly personal

BLOGTASTIC: Your attitude will show up on your blog

You’ve probably heard that “you only get one chance to create a good first impression.” It’s hard to dispute that fact in life. It is especially true on your blog.

With your blog, you are constantly on-stage before the world.

When you publish a blog, you are always creating first impressions. Your blog serves as your entry point into a worldwide networking event that runs 24-7-365. People will constantly have a chance to meet you and form impressions about you.

Your regular readers will know you, but new people may come to your blog at any time. So you need to be ready to make a great first impression with every single post. That’s a high standard to sustain.

Your readers will develop a picture of who you are—based on what you write. Your attitude, therefore, becomes critical. You can’t hide it. Your writings will in one way or the other reveal your real identity.

You want to show a positive, appealing attitude to your readers. What can you do?

Look carefully at your attitude within your writing. Do your words lift other people up and encourage them to think? Do your words show your frustration, anger, greed, or pretentiousness?

Blogging or not, you need to look at your attitude and reshape it for your own good. If you have the right attitude, it’ll show in your blog as well as every other part of your life. No mask will be necessary.

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Blogging Tip: Drop the mask

Pretending to be someone else does not work. It doesn’t work in real life, and it certainly won’t work for your blog. Wearing a mask all the time can be costly and risky.

You could pretend to be bigger than who you really are. You might gain some traffic and credibility that way. However, imagine the impact that will occur when people find out the truth.

Drop the mask. It’s really not worth it.

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Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow

Tagged as: attitude, blogging, first impression

Have you noticed in business how you react when people tell you something CAN’T be done? For me it lights my fuse and I then become driven to find the solution, almost to prove them wrong. I question the persons qualifications, their intent and any optimism that my problems are going to be solved by this individual/team/organization vaporizes.

A few years back I was the person delivering this news, time and again the customer was asking for help and because we didn’t have the skills we continually told the customer it can’t be done. Looking back it was a difficult time as this approach only added fuel to the fire and caused unnecessary conflict on projects at the time.

Customers employ staff and engage companies services primarily because they lack the skills and competence themselves. Clients are there to make requests, otherwise we would not be there servicing them, so always provide an option to move the client forward – let the client be the one to decide to quit a particular request not you telling them.

To do this I see two possible routes;

1. Let the customer know why you believe this to be risky/difficult but that you could perform a little exploratory work and then they (the customer) can make a decision.
2. Demonstrate to the customer why it is not feasible/possible etc

In both instances you have to show that you can lead the client through the process. This builds the trust in your capabilities and, generally, they will work with you to find a mutual outcome.

Another situation that I caution is “sandbagging” your risk by making something seem overly complicated. Take two situations:

1. Consultant advises client he is unsure if it is possible, will do some investigation / proof of concept then provide an estimate to complete.
2. Consultant advises client this is a major technical challenge and that it will take 40-80 hrs to attempt a resolution.

When consultant A comes back after 4 hours and advises he has a potential solution and it will take a further 4 hrs to develop, the client will work with the consultant. If consultant B comes back after 6 hrs and reports the task completed and that it is available to test – the client is left overjoyed by the result but regarding your competency and skill, it will be judged as low, and you may not get the next business request.

Clients pay to receive services, that requires knowledge, expertise and a leadership offering to facilitate realizing their requests. Can’t is not a powerful option so look to see how you can make positive possibilities for your customers, even if one possibility makes them realize this is not an option – you just should not be the one saying can’t in response to a request.

A couple of years on and I have a team that has great skills, are open and engaging with our clients and our business is thriving as a result. Best, our customers keep coming back for more.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing.

This article was contributed by Guy Ralfe, co-founder of Active Garage and co-author of the upcoming book ProjectManagementTweets. You can follow Guy on Twitter at gralfe.

Tagged as: business, Business Management, consulting, Customer Service, developing opportunities, execution, gralfe, Guy Ralfe, Leadership, technology, www.activegarage.com