What to Do When You Put Your Foot in Your Mouth at Work

What to Do When You Put Your Foot in Your Mouth at WorkWhat to Do When You Put Your Foot in Your Mouth at WorkWouldnt it be great if you could take back something you said as soon as you realized it offended someone? Imagine if you had something like the delete button on a computer keyboard but instead of erasing words you just typed, you could erase words you said. Unfortunately there isnt such a tool. When you put your foot in your mouth and offend someone, for example a coworker, there is nothing you can do to make your words disappear. Most of us realize the importance of maintaining good workplace relationships and dont say things with the intention of offending our coworkers. Usually we simply dont realize the effect our words will have until its too late.Sometimes we speak without taking the time to think carefully about what we are about to say because we are busy thinking about or doing other things. Often, though, we do think about what we are going to say but dont think th at it will be offensive. It happens to everyone and it has probably happened to you. Maybe you said something in jest that a coworker didnt think was funny, brought up a topic that was inappropriate for the workplace or criticized his work too harshly. Only when you see the ausprgung on his face, do you realize youve insulted him. As much as you want to take back your words, you cant. What can you do? You have a couple of options. You can ignore what happened and hope your colleague will forgive and forget. That might work, but more likely you will continue to wonder if things are truly back to normal with your relationship. The other option- and the best way to move forward- is to deal with it immediately or as soon as you know theres a problem. Here are things you can do that will, hopefully, repair the problem or at least keep it from getting worse. Say Youre Sorry Apologize the moment you realize what happened. Even if all you can manage to do is utter Im sorry that is much bett er than letting the words that offended your coworker hang in the air. The longer you wait, the worse things could get. Your coworker might think you dont care that she was offended. The most important thing is that you let her know you do, regardless of whether you agree that she should have been.Dont Be Defensive You may not understand why your coworker has taken umbrage at what you said. For example, you may have told him a joke that was well received by other people, yet your office mates face turned red when he heard it. Should the fact that other people didnt react the saatkorn way somehow negate his reaction? No, it shouldnt. What matters is only that he was offended and that is what you must apologize for. All you need to say is Im sorry for telling a joke that offended you. Let It Go After you offer your apology, move on. There is no need to dwell on what happened. Doing that will only continue to remind your coworker of your offense, and there is no reason you would want t o do that. Everyone makes mistakes so stop beating yourself up over it.Give Your Offended Coworker Time Your colleague may not be able to forgive you immediately and you must respect that. She will accept your apology whenever shes ready and theres nothing you can do about it. After taking the appropriate measures, hopefully, you are able to repair your relationship with your colleague. Then its time to move on and get back to work.

Off the Grid in the Upper Peninsula

Off the Grid in the Upper Peninsula Off the Grid in the Upper Peninsula Photovoltaic prices are plummeting and battery prices are falling just as hard. Right now, anyone capable of covering the initial outlay can slap a solar array on their roof, power their home, and stand to make a little scratch to boot.But that scratch is dependent on net metering laws that allow individuals to sell their excess electricity to the utility company. These laws were put in place when the percentage of environmentally minded customers likely to have solar was negligible. Now its not just a few people, a couple of greensnow everybody that cares about money is saying maybe Ill put some panels up on my roof. That really scares some utilities, says Joshua Pearce, a professor of Materials Science and Engineering as well as Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan Tech.It scares them so much, that many utilities are trying to change net metering legislation, a move that would seriously squash the at tractiveness of adding solar to a home.What they dont realize, argues Pearce in his recent paper, Emerging Economic Viability of Grid Defection in a Northern Climate Using Solar Hybrid Systems, is that the price drop for solar, batteries, and natural gas has been so steep that their costumers now have the option of going off the grid entirely.Prof. Joshua Pearce holding low-cost laminated photovoltaic panels. Image Michigan TechTo prove his point, he and his colleagues narrowed their focus to a single, un-sunny locale. Rather than cherrypicking a perfect place in Arizona or California, we said lets take the worst case in America Michigan, explains Pearce. Right now Im looking out my window. Its June, its cold and cloudy and terrible. And we get snow eight months of the year. Its a very, very challenging location to be considering moving off the grid. If we can make it work here, then basically everywhere else, at least in the continental U.S., is fair game.They did make it work ther e. The researchers, who included a photovoltaic expert (Pearce), a battery expert, a demographer, and computer scientists, showed that by using a combination of a photovoltaic ordnungsprinzip with a battery system and a cogeneration system, households making more than $30,000 could conceivably profit by unhitching from the grid.For northern climes as miserable as those in the Upper Peninsula, the cogeneration unit is key. These refrigerator-sized appliances sit next to a furnace and turn natural gas to electricity. Instead sending excess heat up a smokestack, its used to heat the home. As a result, household-sized cogeneration units can reach efficiencies of 85 percent, far superior to even the fruchtwein efficient centralized power plant.The economic viability of the hybrid off-the-gird system they used means that utilities trying to punish solar adopters through legislation will be shooting themselves in the foot. If youre a utility company with a set customer base and then all of a sudden 10 percent of your customers leave to go off the grid and make their own little micro-grids in their own houses and businesses, then your cost for distribution may stay exactly the same, but now you dont get any revenue from the energy that they would have bought, explains Pearce. So those costs go up, which means even more of your customers are going to want to jump ship, and it just continues and continues. They have all kinds of funny names for it. The death spiral is the most common one.But a morbid vortex is not a fait accompli. Some forward-thinking utilities are embracing the inevitable, providing loans to customers wanting to adopt solar, renting roofs from others. In essence, theyve changed their model to one of distributed generation. Such companies are still in the minority though. The majority are still ignoring things, says Pearce. Of course, even if a family could go off the grid, theyd mostly likely want to stay connected anyway, just in case theres a month of snowstorms and the gas lines go down. So utilities willing to distribute energy regardless of its source are far more likely to have a role in the micro-grid-powered future.Our strong recommendation is that you avoid the death spiral, says Pearce. Rather than push your customers away, find a way to integrate distributive generation in the grid now.Michael Abrams is an independent writer.Learn about the latest trends in energy solutions at ASMEs Power Energy Conference and Exhibition. For Further DiscussionIts a very, very challenging location to be considering moving off the grid. If we can make it work here, then basically everywhere else, at least in the continental US, is fair game.Prof. Joshua Pearce, Michigan Tech

This is why failure doesnt actually exist and how to look at it

This is why failure doesnt actually exist and how to look at itThis is why failure doesnt actually exist and how to look at itWe tend to think of failure and achievement in separate terms.Achievement means you were right.You were correct. You tischset an expectation and then you met it.Failure means you were wrong.You missed the mark. You set an expectation and you didnt measure up.When we approach our work with this separate mindset, we inevitably set ourselves up for failure.Heres whyThe key to growth is to set goals outside of your comfort zone.In order to continue growing as a person with your respective craft, you have to set unreasonable goals.Thats the point.You have to aim outside of your comfort zone and push yourself to stretch for things that you cannot yet do.If you know what youre doing, you arent trying hard enough.However, in order to actually set goals far outside your comfort zone, you have to understand and be ok with the fact that you will fail.You wont get there t he first, or second, or third time.You will fall short.You will make mistakes and it wont be a straight shot to the end.However, failing to meet the expectations you set for yourself when aiming outside your comfort zone actually moves you much closer towards your goals than if you were to achieve something easily within reach.Thus Achievement, in this sense, is actually detrimental. Failure is the real win.In every failure there is a lesson.The aufgabe so many people run into, and the reason why so few are able to reinvent themselves over long periods of time, is because they fear failure.It is much easier to set a reasonable goal, achieve it, and then have everyone around you clap and cheer and pat you on the back, than to set an unreasonable goal, not reach it, but learn so much more in the process.This goes back to the dilemma between the appearance of success versus deep inner knowledge.Many would rather set smaller goals and appear to be more successful, than to set bigger goa ls, appear to have failed, but acquire an endless amount of working knowledge beneath the surface.If you landsee your journey in terms of achievement and failure, youve already failed.You are already disconnected from the process itself.You are far more concerned with appearing successful than actually having working knowledge of your craft in ways only attainable through messy failure.The truly successful, the innovators, the creative geniuses, the legends all share this in common.They do not care about appearing successful or as having failed. They only care about knowledge of their craft, and they are willing to go to whatever length to get it.You cant discover anything new without failing.You cant explore different ways of doing things without failing.You cant forge a name of your own without going off the beaten path, getting lost, and then coming back and sharing what youve found.Failure does not exist.It only exists to those who are more concerned with appearing successful.Th is article originally appeared on Inc Magazine

Why you should bring your true, messy self to work everyday

Why you should bring your true, messy self to work everyday Why you should bring your true, messy self to work everyday For decades, a buttoned-up, reserved “work face” was the professional norm. You didn’t talk about your life outside work, and as far as your boss was concerned, you didn’t have one.Jerry Colonna,  the cofounder and CEO of Reboot, an executive coaching and leadership development firm, recently summarized it on the On Being podcast as a mindset of, “You leave the personal at the door” - you don’t bring it into the workplace. That got promulgated across multiple generations with people saying, ‘Well, don’t bring your feelings into work.’Recently, that way of working fell out of fashion, with the “whole self” movement â€" the idea of bringing your entire (sometimes messy, sometimes overbearing) self to work every day. Being yourself at work, Colonna said,  â€œIt’s that we create an environment in which people have the freedom and the invitation to be fully themselves and to actually find the experience of being at work a means to becoming a more full human bein g and an adult - the art of growing up.”Follow Ladders on Flipboard!Follow Ladders’ magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and more!Being your authentic self at work was the subject of a recent study from several universities â€" Rice, Xavier, Texas AM, the University of Memphis, Portland State University, and the University of California, Berkeley.The results? Bringing your entire self to work is healthier and more productive.After analyzing 65 previous studies on the results of employees revealing an oft-stigmatized trait, such as sexual orientation, mental illness, or pregnancy, researchers said their findings overwhelmingly indicate that those who are open regarding these non-visible traits are more productive at work and happier in life.Unfortunately, the same doesn’t hold with more visible traits such as gender, race, or physical disabilities, researchers found.“Identities that are immediately observable operate differ ently than those that are concealable,” said Eden King, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of psychology at Rice,  in a release. “The same kinds of difficult decisions about whether or not to disclose the identity â€" not to mention the questions of to whom, how, when, and where to disclose the identities â€" are probably less central to their psychological experiences.”Still, according to this study, you’ll probably find that people at work appreciate gaining new information about you â€" and may tell you something about themselves in return.

Powerful Associate Engineer Resume Sample - For Free

Powerful Associate Engineer Resume Sample - For Free Powerful Associate Engineer Resume Sample - For Free Create this Resume Micheal Henderson 3879 Beechwood Drive Pittsburgh, PA 15212 (111)-936-7800 m.henderson@sampleresume.netObjective:To be able to work and grow professionally as Associate Engineer in a stable organization where I could use my professional experience in troubleshooting electronic equipments. My endeavor and dedication in the job will be helpful in achieving the companys goals and objectives. Skills: Skilled in utilizing diagnostic and other testing devices Skilled in troubleshooting Electronic Equipments Power Point, EWB 5.0 and Internet Knowledgeable in Switch boards and computer operating systems Strong familiarity with Radio Communication devices, Radio transmitters and Receivers systems Professional Experience: Field Associate Engineer, July 2007 PresentClark Construction Group, LLC, Bethesda, MD Responsibilities: Proposed practical solutions in solving technical deficiencies. Maintained and troubleshot Radio Communication devices, Radio transmitters and Recei vers systems. Tested devices before actual installation. Ensured longevity and dependability on systems by performing regular upgrades. Communicated with project leaders of 7 departments in the installation of connectivity systems.Associate Engineer, May 2004 June 2007Clark Construction Group, LLC, Bethesda, MD Responsibilities: Provided technical services to field engineers and in-house IT team. Supervised the installation of energy system equipments in Westwind Power Plant. Initiated team simulations to familiarize workers on the different systems and processes. Assisted field engineers in determining faulty wires and connections. Evaluated tools and devices and proposed replacements as necessary.EducationB.S. in Electrical Engineering, 2000Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TNCertifications and Affiliations: Certification in Software Application Certificate in computer Hardware managementCustomize Resume

How to Follow Up on the Status of a Job Application

How to Follow Up on the Status of a Job Application How to Follow Up on the Status of a Job Application After you have submitted an application for a job, you will understandably be eager to find out where you stand. However, its important to realize that the  hiring process  can take some time and you may not hear back right away. Unfortunately, its also possible that you may never get a response, not even a boilerplate note to let you know that you arent hired (or wont be called in for an interview).   Often, companies receive hundreds (or even thousands) of applications, and simply do not have the time to follow-up. Others may not have a system in place for handling rejections.   Here is some advice on when and how to follow up on the status of a job application. Before You Follow  Up There are a few things  to do before you follow up.  First, check the job listing, as well as any emails or other contacts you’ve had with the hiring manager or employer. See if any of that correspondence includes information on when you can expect to hear back from the company. If they give you a date, be sure to wait until after that date to follow up.   Even before submitting the job application, you can plan a time to follow up on your cover letter. For example, you might include at the end of the  cover letter  that you will call the company’s office in a week to follow up. However, if the job listing specifically says that applicants should not call or email, then do not include this in your cover letter, and do not follow up. How to Long to Wait to Follow Up It is usually best to wait a week or two before making an inquiry. Its important to give the employer enough time to review job applications and to get ready to schedule interviews. If you follow up any sooner, you might come across as pushy or impatient to the employer. Follow Up Email or LinkedIn If you have an email address for a contact, then you might send an  email to follow up message  reaffirming your strong interest in the  job and mentioning that you would welcome the opportunity to meet for an interview. Review an example of a follow-up letter you can tailor to fit your circumstances. A  LinkedIn message  is another option for following up, especially if you do not have an email address for the employer or hiring manager, but you have their name. If you know someone employed at the company, reach out to let him or her know you applied for a role - potentially, your connection can reach out to the hiring manager and nudge your application along.   Phone Call  Follow Up  If you have a phone number for the hiring manager, you can call. Mention a few key reasons why you are so interested and point out why the job is a  great fit. Learn what to say when you call. In-Person Follow Up  It is also acceptable to stop by an employer in person  when you have previously dropped off an application in person. You can mention that you are following up on your application and wondering if they might consider granting you an interview. You should be ready to briefly mention the basis for your interest and why you would be qualified. Make sure that you give off  positive energy, are dressed appropriately, and engage any employees or employers in a warm and friendly manner. Never, ever reach out to a company in person if your application was submitted through an online portal, email, or sent in through snail mail.   Tips for Following Up Always be polite and professional in your actions. Whether you are communicating via email, on the phone, or in person, make sure you speak (or write) clearly and professionally. If you are writing, be sure to thoroughly edit your message. If you are speaking to someone, be warm and friendly. Again, these messages and conversations are still your attempt to make a strong first impression. Restate your interest in the position but do so briefly. Quickly and concisely restate why you think you would be a good fit for the job. This will help your application stand out even more. If the company is not ready to make decisions or interview people, ask when they plan to begin  interview process  or when they plan to make hiring decisions, so you will know when to follow up again. Keep your message, phone conversation, or in-person visit brief. You want to make a strong impression, but you also do not want to overstay your welcome. When  to Give Up Following up on an application in the right way can draw attention to your candidacy and make it more likely that you wont be overlooked. However, it is important not to pester an employer since you might alienate staff. In general, dont contact an employer more than three times, and leave a couple of weeks in between messages, unless the employer has suggested otherwise. If you do not hear back after several follow up attempts, move on, and turn your focus to other job applications.   1:19 Watch Now: Some Tricks for Staying Positive During the Job Search

Employment Interview

Employment Interview Employment Interview One of the most common interviews out there is the employment interview. This is the type of interview that most people will face when they are seeking new employment. This can be a very stressful type of interview as you want to be sure you give yourself every opportunity to get the job by making a good impression on the interviewer.You want to memorize your answers so that you can give them with confidence and without stumbling for what to say but you also want to answer naturally and not come off sounded scripted. You dont need to remember your answers word for word but you want to have a general idea of how youre going to answer so that you feel prepared and confident when you go into the interview.The best way to do this is to have an idea of what questions will be asked at the employment interview so that you can think about how you would answer beforehand instead of being put on the spot. Its hard to be sure exactly what will be asked at the employment interview since many com panies are changing and mixing up the types of interviews they do. For example, they ask traditional, behavioral and mixed interview questions.However, there are still some basic questions that nearly always get asked and when you familiarize yourself with these, you can go into your employment interview with confidence. For example, you may be asked questions about your last job such as: Why did you leave your last job? What did you like about your last job? What did you dislike about your last job? What would your former boss say about you?Or you may be asked questions about the position you are applying for such as: Why do you want to work for us? Do you know anyone who works for us? What do you feel qualifies you for this position? How much do you expect to make?You might also be asked questions about yourself such as: How would you describe yourself? What are your long and short range employment goals? What are some of your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Do you work well with others? What type of people do you work well the most with? What type of people do you not work well with?All of these questions serve to give the interviewer an idea of what type of employee you would be. Sometimes its not the answer to the question that is so important as much as it is how you respond to it. You may be asked to describe difficult situations you have faced in the past, what you did during them and what the outcome was all as a way of seeing what kind of person you are and what kind of worker you might be.When you go into the employment interview prepared, you can exude the type of confidence any employer would be looking for to hire you. This gives you the best opportunity for success with your interview.Customize ResumeMore Sample Job Interview Articles:After The InterviewEmployment Interview