Is the lunch break nearing extinction

Is the lunch break nearing extinction Is the lunch break nearing extinction Whether it’s due to the pressures of heavier workloads or the need to prove to your boss that you’re a hard worker hour-long breaks have deviated from the office culture norm. The truth is that less than half of employees get up from their desks to take a lunch break, according to a survey conducted by Right Management, the talent and career management division of Manpower.Skipping this already diminishing 60-minute break may lead to unhealthy eating habits and can be more counter-productive than you think. This time is imperative to relieve stress, boost energy and recharge both mental and physical health. Exhaustion caused by a lack of breaks in the day can lead to “higher stress levels, poorer health and reduced productivity,” according to Douglas J. Matthews, President and COO of Right Management.Some, like Charles Gerba, PhD, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, say that the germ factor associated with eating at your desk is g rossly unhealthy. “The desk, in terms of bacteria, is 400 times more dirty than your toilet. People turn their desks into bacteria cafeterias because they eat at them, but they never clean them. The phone is the dirtiest, the desktop is next, and the mouse and the computer follow.”With these statistics, it may be time to log off your computer and find a seat in the cafeteria. For those of us that still can’t seem to find time for a lunch break, WebMD had some easy tips to improve your desk-eating habits: Watch what you eat. Bring your lunch. Walk when you can. Disinfect your desk. Use a placemat. Eat with a friend. Don’t make it a habit.

The Banjo The Engineers Instrument

The Banjo The Engineers Instrument The Banjo The Engineers Instrument Steve Martin plays one. So does Winston Marshall from the group Mumford and Sons, and even Taylor Swift, kind of (its a six-string). And yet, however much polish this recent uptick in popularity has lent the banjo, its not yet shed its reputation as a hillbilly instrument that belongs in the hands of an old-time farmer rather than a rock star. Never mind the fact that all the early bluegrass banjo players wore suits and ties on stage. (The image persists, thanks, largely, to a five-minute scene in the movie Deliverance, reviled by banjoists everywhere.) The truth is somewhere on the other end of the backward/advanced spectrum. In fact, a strikingly large percentage of bluegrass banjo players are engineers, tinkerers, mathematicians, and programmers. Noam Pikelny, whose instrumental banjo album was recently nominated for a Grammy, studied engineering at the University of Illinois. Ben Eldridge, of the once hugely popular bluegrass band Seldom Scene, develops signal-processing algorithms for the Navys underwater acoustics programs today. Tony Ellis, who played with Bill Monroe, studied engineering between musical pursuits. Lamar Grier, also a Blue Grass Boy for Monroe, went on to work for IBM for 17 years. And thats just to name the famous ones. I will say that the number of engineers I have run into playing banjo is statistically significant, says Stan Moore, an electrical and computer engineer and an accomplished banjo player for some 35 years. So what leads the engineering-minded to pick up the five-string? The answer has something to do with how the instrument is played and how the instrument is made. Bill Keith engineered what have become standard tuning pegs for the banjo. Image: Beaconbanjo.com Playing Five Strings The bluegrass banjo is not as straightforward as other instruments. With a piano, a trumpet, or even a saw and a bow, if you need to play a note of a melody, you play the note of the melody. With the banjo its not so simple. This has something to do with the fact that eliciting the traditional sound requires three fingers playing five strings with four beats to a measure. To get the ring and drive associated with the banjo, each consecutive note is played on a different string. (On other stringed instruments, like the guitar or the fiddle, its common for several consecutive notes to be played on the same string.) This means that melody notes are not always where you want them. It takes a certain kind of problem-solving to learn how to work melody notes into that string-changing ringing sound. Its sort of an engineering mindset or logical mindset. I dont know what you call it, but its the kind of stuff Im into, says Bill Keith. Keith is one of bluegrass banjos most influential players thanks to the melodic style he developed. In short, he figured out how to play melodies and scales with higher notes being played on lower stringsa counterintuitive concept to string players of any genre. He was also a Blue Grass Boy in 1963. Keith was a dissector of more than music. When he was 15 he bought his first car, a Model A Ford. I took the car completely apart, he says. The body was off the frame, the engine was out. I did all the frame restoration, the brakes, replaced the rings and the engine and did a valve job the old fashioned way. Later he acquired a 1910 single cylinder Brush. He needed help with the engine and wound up making the acquaintance of a machinist. A real antique guy. Old equipment, overhead shafting, big fat leather belts. The whole shop ran on DC using drain oil to power a Hercules diesel. Keith Banjo Tuners. Image: Beaconbanjo.com A Tinkerers Dream A lot of important stuff for the banjo happened there. After examining the planetary transmission found in a model T as well as his Brush, he thought of using a similar idea for tuning pegs. With his friend Dan Bump, he engineered a tuning peg that would allow players to bend notes lower, to a specific, predetermined pitch (listen to the first notes of Flint Hill Special and youll understand). These pegsknown as Keith tunersbecame the industry standard. They also represent a sizable portion of Keiths income. When I was trying to learn Earl Scruggs stuff I basically had to take it apart to see what he was doing. That was fairly analytical, sort of reverse engineering. I had the product and I had to figure out what it was made of. Though Keith recognized the connection between the analytical and the musical, other engineers claim that the primary attraction is the hardware itself. I chose the banjo because given the tools available to me, I could make the most parts for one, of any stringed instrument that I could think of, says one mechanical engineering graduate student. Music is what engineers hear in their heads when they finally connect the dots to some problem, says Marc Smith, a senior engineer for a defense contractor. Youll find many, many musically inclined engineers. Ive found that the more artsy they are, the more they gravitate towards guitars and keyboards. The more mechanical and hands on they are, the more theyre likely to pick the banjo. Smith grew up working underneath cars and listening to Tchaikovsky, Texas swing, WWII era swing, Country and Ragtime. He took to engineering like a baby duck to water. Hes been playing banjo since 1979 and is a master of Classic and Minstrel styles as well as bluegrass banjo. For me, the banjo represents a tinkerers dream. Endless hours may be spent on just getting all the components to hang together efficiently, says Smith. Mechanics of Music Unlike a guitar, or a celloor a piccolofor that matter, a banjo can be completely disassembled and put back together in a matter of hours. Every part of a banjo can be swapped out and tweaked. Theres a drumhead sitting on a metal tone ring resting on a wooden rim. Behind it all is a resonator to bounce the sound away from the players body. Its all held together by brackets and just waiting for adjustment and improvement. And thats ignoring the neck, the bridge, the tailpiece, and more. More patents have been granted on banjos, their parts, and pieces than almost any other single item . . . ever, says Smith. When it comes to taking a banjo apart, putting back together, the physics of the banjo sound, the angles of attack etc, I very much go into engineering mode, says Andrew Cartoun, an engineering consultant for high rise buildings in New York. Cartoun received his degree in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt, a school he picked because of its location in Nashville, TN. The engineering had more to do with the actual instrument, setup, than the act of playing music. He admits, though, that there may be subliminal problem-solving that goes on while playing. Of course, for many a banjo-playing engineer, the mechanics of the instrument, the peculiar difficulties of playing it, even the precision and intricacies of the sound, have little to do with why they picked it up in the first placeit was just the music. The banjo is a weird and joyous instrument, says Smith. It begs to be improved and yet resists improvements in every direction. It is frustrating and mind-numbing, exhilarating and relaxing. It attracts young and old, rich and poor, tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, whites, blacks, Asians, Martians . . . and engineers. Michael Abrams is an independent writer. You’ll find many, many musically inclined engineers. The more mechanical and ‘hands on’ they are, the more they’re likely to pick the banjo.Marc Smith, a senior engineer for a defense contractor

Employer Brand Audit Candidate Experience, Reviews and Ratings

Employer Brand Audit Candidate Experience, Reviews and Ratings Employer Brand Audit Candidate Experience, Reviews and Ratings The first phase of your employer brand health audit focused on how prospective job candidates experience your company website, career pages and mobile presentation. The second phase takes into account the quality and authenticity of your company’s digital relationship with current and former employees, word of mouth and overall Internet presence. People place more trust in peers than in leadership and current employees, so monitoring and influencing your company’s Internet presence will have a powerful effect on your recruiting efforts. Understanding the story that customers and employees are telling about your company can help you influence how that story moves forward with potential employees, press, vendors and community leaders. Here are three areas of employer brand health that you should factor into your next audit: Does our social presence accurately reflect our brand? The purpose of social media is to share a side of your company that you don’t share elsewhere: its personality and its unique approach to business. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It needs to present an authentic view of what your company values and how you do business. When you audit your company’s social media presence, use listening tools such as Klout, Social Mention, and TrendsMap to understand where your brand or industry fits into the global social landscape. Then take a look at your actual social media channels. Do you post with a consistent frequency? Do your customers and prospective customers engage with what you post? Are you posting about your brand or about your industry? (Keep in mind that the right mix is 80-20.) If the answer to each of these questions isn’t positive, you’ll want to invest some time in building and maintaining your social presence. How does our candidate experience measure up? Because company culture is so closely connected to human resources leadership, it can be uncomfortable to take an honest look at your current candidate experience. But honest feedback is incredibly valuable. Facilitating honest feedback can increase employee morale in the short-term and reveal unexpected insights that provide long-term returns. Use your current employees’ varied backgrounds to source honest feedback about how their current situation compares to past experiences. Create a short survey for employees to complete during the workday and submit anonymously. Ask candidates to rate different factors about the company compared with their experience at other similar companies, including the physical workplace environment, the quality of the work, customer relationships and how their interview experience measured up to actually working at the company. Do our reviews and ratings accurately reflect our company culture? Bad reviews aren’t all bad news. You can use them to benefit your brand by interpreting them as constructive criticism. Taking into account the bias that can occur among employees who were let go and company defenders, aggregating that information can reveal hidden perspectives you might otherwise not consider as you evaluate your employer brand. After reviewing your company’s current online reviews, make a plan for how to address them. If the results of your review indicate that your company culture is accurately represented online, you may simply want to continue doing what you’re doing. If the results indicate that your culture is not accurately represented, you’ll want to consider implementing a strategy to make up that difference. This may include addressing bad reviews with prospective job candidates or taking preventive measures to help employees honestly voice their opinions while employed or in exit interviews. Closely analyzing your employer brand health can be uncomfortable. However, it offers exponential potential for growth. Invest time in an employer brand health audit to identify areas for growth that can impact your recruiting efforts.

Stanford professor explains how the workplace is killing us

Stanford professor explains how the workplace is killing us Stanford professor explains how the workplace is killing us No good employer is going to outright say that they kill you, but new research finds that too many modern workplaces are grim reapers inflicting a fatal amount of stress on our bodies and minds.Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford, is ringing the alarm that job stress and poor management is killing us - accounting for up to 8% of annual health costs and leading to  120,000 excess deaths every year in the United States.In his new book, “Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance - and What We Can Do About It,” he explains how long hours, a lack of job autonomy through micromanagement, and unstable health insurance are making us sick to death.Ladders is now on SmartNews!Download the SmartNews app and add the Ladders channel to read the latest career news and advice wherever you go.He talked with Ladders about his research and what leads otherwise reasonable people to stay in toxic jobs:We don’t track it, so there’s no accountabilityPfeffer defines one of the main culprits that is making us sick as “social pollution,” or harmful workplace practices that take a  psychological and physical toll on employees. Social pollution is what happens when your employer makes you lose your work-life balance. Work always comes first.As one Salesforce marketing executive in the book put it, “You have all this shame and embarrassment because you are stressed and think it’s you. I felt like my brain literally did not work. I literally could not remember conversations ten seconds later.”When your job’s daily requirements are making you overwhelmed, you are in a socially polluted environment that is leeching away your mental energy. For social polluters to be stopped, they need to be shamed through metrics of what they are doing to employees.“At the moment, employers measure efficiency and productivity and that’s fine, but that’s all they are measuring, so that’s all, therefor e, they are paying attention to. If employers began to measure employee health, they might pay a little attention to that as well. Without measurement, it will never get on anyone’s radar screen,” Pfeffer said.Pfeffer wants employers to regain a sense of stewardship for their employees’ wellbeing. And for employers lacking this nurturing feeling, we would need to step in to create and monitor it.“We can use public admonition and social pressure to produce healthier workplaces,” Pfeffer writes in his book. “This entails having companies pay their share of the costs of ill- ­health that they create, costs that are now largely externalized and borne by society at large.” Nap pods aren’t going to cure this  Pfeffer’s book makes the argument that wellness initiatives of yoga rooms and nap pods are a band-aid solution to the larger problem of toxic stress that employers need to address.“If your employees were not exhausted, they would not need to take a nap,” he said. “A lot of this is an attempt to remediate: ‘I’m going to keep you at work all the time so I’m going to try to make that workplace a little more comfortable for you. Give you better lighting, some food.’ But the research shows pretty convincingly that prevention is much more effective than remediation.“It would be better if we gave you a job environment - including bosses, coworkers to provide social support, etc - so that you did not need that stuff.”Why reasonable people will not leave toxic jobs   Usually, we recognize that a job is bad for us when we wake up in cold sweats because of  it … when we need to take pills to get through another long day. And yet, too many of us still will not leave jobs that are clearly bad for our wellbeing. Why? Pfeffer says ego plays a large role.Ego is the voice telling you that if you were any good, you could put up with the demands and the stress. It’s the one taunting you that quitters are weak. It’s the inner voice that says you could tough it out one more quarter, one more year. Pfeffer interviewed one General Electric executive who said his bosses would ask him, “Aren’t you good enough to be a GE leader?” when he felt doubts.“I think many competent, wonderful people are very susceptible to the play on the ego. I think that’s the one I see used most frequently and successfully,” Pfeffer said. “People stay even when they know they should leave.”To escape this tunnel vision, Pfeffer says that we have to stop accepting t he unacceptable and leave toxic work situations, no matter the company prestige or how interesting the work is to do.“Be willing to admit that in choosing an employer, as in any other decision you make, it is possible to make a mistake and, once having admitted that mistake, to act to correct it,”  he cautions in his book. “Until people take responsibility for finding places where they can thrive, we can’t expect our employers to value health, either.”

Use Social Media to Win Clients and Influence the Hiring Process

Use Social Media to Win Clients and Influence the Hiring Process Use Social Media to Win Clients and Influence the Hiring Process Use Social Media to Win Clients and Influence the Hiring Process Charney, Social Media Engagement Manager What is the top driver for worker engagement, satisfaction and employee retention? Numerous studies show that an employees relationship with their immediate supervisor or manager is key, a correlation thats even more pronounced in the burgeoning ranks of the Gen Y workforce. In fact, a recent poll revealed that even in todays tight job market, fully 60% of responders would leave their companies because ofa bad boss, while 21% cite great boss and coworkersas the single most important element of their loyalty to their current employer (only 6% less than those driven primarily by employee compensation). A Shift in Recruiting Analytics Ascertaining a candidates organizational fit has traditionally fallen into the realm of pre-employment screenings and behavioral-based interviewing. But todays highly selective, employer-driven job market often favors pipeline-building and profile-based recruiting over traditional just-in-time hiring methods. Couple these trends with an increased emphasis on long-term, throughput metrics (such as quality of hire) over the more traditional, short-term analytics (such as days-to-fill and cost-per-hire.) The result puts the onus of matching the right candidate with the right manager increasingly on the recruiter. This remains one of the most subjective, and therefore complex, components of successfully placing a candidate during the search process. Your Social Media Recruiting Toolbox The good news? The methods that recruiters use to source, develop and engage with candidates and customers are only one piece of the Recruiting 3.0 tool box.Recruiting using social media also offers a competitive advantage, both in how to present a qualified candidate to a hiring manager, and in how to prepare a candidate for an interview. Both are critical components of the job recruitment process: Create a Job-Specific Blog: Successful job searches start with successful job descriptions, but creating a comprehensive, targeting job posting strategy should involve more than simply repurposing the same position over and over again. Using a free service like Googles blogger or WordPress, you can set up a basic blog for each of your searches in minutes. It doesnt have to be visually complex; just enough to create a hub for your other job posting efforts and social recruiting activities. By setting up a simple blog for each job, youll organically boost SEO to your careers site as well as other platforms, like Monster, where your job is posted. Most importantly, it provides a format where recruiters (and hiring managers) can provide perspective on a job while engaging candidates. Film your Hiring Manager: While a good job description is often an important starting point, one of the most important (but often neglected) step in the hiring process is a three-way kick off meeting with the hiring manager, recruiter and HR partner to discuss the current employment situation. This will allow you to build a profile of what a successful candidate might look like and review the anticipated challenges and opportunities for the job search. Critical to this meeting is the opportunity for both the HR Business Partner and the hiring manager to provide perspective on the hiring managers professional history, leadership style and management philosophy. Rather than simply use these notes as background material, however, streaming video technologies make it easy to record this information and possibly use it as recruitment advertising collateral during the search process. For example, at a relatively low cost, talent organizations can purchase a shared FlipCam to bring to these kick off meetings, capturing the hiring manager in their office, conference room or other meeting space where the interview is likely to take place, sending important visual clues about things like company culture and managerial style that cant be conveyed in a typical job description. First, be sure to have the hiring managers consent to do film. If everyone agrees, you can record a few quick clips of them discussing their philosophy and the job position. A few questions to get you started: 1. Describe what it takes to be successful in this role. 2. Discuss your management style and philosophy. 3. What do you look for in a candidate during an interview? 4. Whats the most interesting thing about you thats not on your resume? Once approved, you can post these videos on a company careers site, job blog or YouTube channel, along with a link to the written job posting. This content can provide great insight (and differentiation) for potential candidates while augmenting your current online employer brand presence, giving greater transparency to the companys culture. Itll also give candidates a better idea of what to expect when they come to an interview and allow them to assess how their values stack up against a potential managers.Naturally, such information is also invaluable data to screen candidates against when assessing corporate and departmental culture fit. At minimum, you can have this footage readily accessible when executing a candidate search, creating a digital record thats easily shared among recruiters or for reference on future searches.It also can come in handy to help recalibrate and refocus priorities in the event the search takes longer than expected or requires a change in approach. Source for Similarities and Connections:Creating a match between your hiring manager and prospective candidates starts with looking at your hiring managers online footprint.This can easily be done using a people search site like pipl.com or 123people.com.These sites aggregate such things as social network profiles, available videos, pictures, blogs, etc. and provide a quick glimpse into things that might not make it into a job description or the initial meeting when opening a position. Look for things like volunteer work, interests, hobbies and non-professional networks in which the hiring manager might be involved.While youre probably already searching for candidates who worked in the same companies or went to the same school as the hiring manager, these can also provide powerful ammunition in focusing your sourcing efforts on job search engines like and within social networks. A shared philanthropy or membership in the same professional organization can often help turn an applicant into a candidate and create an instant connection that often provides the foundation for a successful interview. Not to mention, a happy hiring manager. And thats what its all about.

3 Best Lessons I Learned From a Micromanager Boss - The Muse

3 Best Lessons I Learned From a Micromanager Boss - The Muse 3 Best Lessons I Learned From a Micromanager Boss One of the first managers I ever had was what many people might call a micromanager. If I was five minutes late to work, he knew. If a client copied him on an email to me, he wanted to know exactly when I planned on responding. If I didn’t complete a weekly SWOT analysis of myself to discuss with him, he wasn’t thrilled. At the time, this put him squarely in the “worst boss ever” category. And while I still don’t agree with a lot of his choices, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t learn anything from him. Here are a few things that stuck with me- and truth be told, actually make me a better employee today. 1. Sometimes, the Nitpicky Details Are Important I’ll be honest- I could probably sum up the first year of my career with something I used to say almost every day: “Meh, this is good enough.” Many times I saw things from a big-picture standpoint. And by that, I mean I’d look at the requirements of a task and try my best to get them done. If a minor thing or two got lost in the process, it didn’t bug me all that much. However my boss (on his kindest days) held me to a higher standard. Things I considered throwaway tasks suddenly became urgent, and for a long time, it drove me crazy to live under this constant pressure of “just fix this one more thing.” But a funny thing happened after I started approaching my job the way he wanted me to: People across the entire company started trusting me with bigger projects. Sure, I would’ve preferred to have a manager who wasn’t quite so hands-on, but he did get me to see the value in paying attention to the details of even the most inane, low-impact tasks. 2. I Had (and Still Have) Plenty of Room for Improvement My relationship with my manager was simple. He’d tell me what I did wrong and how to improve it- and I’d go home to a sleepless night of worrying about whether or not I’d be employed the next day. I operated under the assumption that I did nothing well at work. While that wasn’t true, I’ve learned over the last few years that as much as I tell other people to seek out constructive criticism, I’m not very good at doing so myself. And I look back on those daily critiques and wonder if the situation would’ve felt more positive if I’d simply asked, “How can I improve this?” whenever I turned in projects. No matter how good I get at anything, there should always be a few things that make my boss say, “Hey, let’s talk about how to get you to the next level.” Sure, I didn’t enjoy how often that manager came down on me for every little thing or his approach, but I’ve come to appreciate the honest feedback. And I know that I probably grew more as a professional because he constantly pushed me. 3. Your Boss Is Only Human I can’t tell you how many times I’d wake up for work and say, “Why is my boss like this? Can’t he just relax for one day and stop nagging us all about every little thing?” After I left that job, I heard through the grapevine about some of the circumstances that led my manager to treat me the way he did. And honestly, I had no idea he was under that kind of pressure when I was working for him. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a bad boss who happily wore that label. And while I believe managers- no matter how great they are- should always be trying to improve themselves, I also now acknowledge that they’re human, too. And in addition to that, they have their own bosses to meet with and goals to hit. In the case of my micromanager, his hands were tied in many ways, which led him to manage us the way he did. That doesn’t excuse the times he treated me poorly, but it is a good reminder that you shouldn’t take continuous feedback as a reflection of your abilities (or perceived lack thereof). It’s hard to work for someone who wants to know where you are and what you’re up to at all times. And if you’re at a point where you’re going home every night and stress-eating because your manager won’t ease up, I get it. But take a step back and think about why he or she is treating you this way. If you can find a silver lining or two, I have a feeling that work might be a little more bearable (at least for now).

2 snap judgments people make when they first meet you

2 snap judgments people make when they first meet you 2 snap judgments people make when they first meet you Amy Cuddy, a psychologist at the Harvard Business School, has been studying first impressions for more than a decade. She and her colleagues found that we make snap judgments about other people that answer two primary questions: Can I trust this person? Can I respect this person’s capabilities? According to Cuddy’s research, 80% to 90% of a first impression is based on these two traits. Subconsciously, you and the people you meet are asking yourselves, “Can I trust that this person has good intentions toward me?” and “Is this person capable?”Follow Ladders on Flipboard!Follow Ladders’ magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and more!We often assume that competence is the most important factor, and people have a tendency to play this up when they meet someone; however, Cuddy’s research shows that trust is the most important factor. In order for your competence to matter, people must trust you first. If there’s no trust, people actually perceive competence as a negative. As Cuddy said, “A warm, trustworthy person who is also strong elicits admiration, but only after you’ve achieved trust does your strength become a gift rather than a threat.”How to Master the Art of the First ImpressionSince it only takes seconds for someone to decide if you’re trustworthy and competent, and research shows that first impressions are very difficult to change, the pressure that comes with meeting new people is justifiably intense.If you try to project confidence but haven’t first established trust, your efforts will backfire. No one wants to end up respected but disliked. As Cuddy said, “If someone you’re trying to influence doesn’t trust you, you’re not going to get very far; in fact, you might even elicit suspicion, because you come across as manipulative.”Once you recognize the importance of trustworthiness over competence, you can take control of the first impressions you make. Here are some tips to help you make that happen the next time you meet someone new:Let the person you’re meeting speak firstLet them take the lead in the conversation, and you can always ask good questions to help this along. Taking the floor right away shows dominance, and that won’t help you build trust. Trust and warmth are created when people feel understood, and they need to be doing a lot of sharing for that to happen.Use positive body languageBecoming cognizant of your gestures, expressions, and tone of voice and making certain they’re positive will draw people to you like ants to a picnic. Using an enthusiastic tone, uncrossing your arms, maintaining eye contact, and leaning towards the speaker are all forms of positive body language, which can make all the difference.Put away your phoneIt’s impossible to build trust and monitor your phone at the same time. Nothing turns people off like a mid-conversation text message or even a quick glance at your phone. When you commit to a conversation, focus all your energy on the conversation. You will find that conversations are more enjoyable and effective when you immerse yourself in them.Make time for small talkIt might sound trivial, but research shows that starting meetings with just five minutes of small talk gets better result s. Many trust builders, such as small talk, can seem a waste of time to people who don’t understand their purpose.Practice active listeningActive listening means concentrating on what the other person is saying, rather than planning what you’re going to say next. Asking insightful questions is a great way to illustrate that you’re really paying attention. If you’re not checking for understanding or asking a probing question, you shouldn’t be talking. Not only does thinking about what you’re going to say next take your attention away from the speaker, hijacking the conversation shows that you think you have something more important to say. This means that you shouldn’t jump in with solutions to the speaker’s problems. It’s human nature to want to help people, but what a lot of us don’t realize is that when we jump in with advice or a solution, we’re shutting the other person down and destroying trust. It’s essentially a more socially acceptable way of saying, “Okay, I’ve got it. You can stop now!” The effect is the same.Do your homeworkPeople love it when you know things about them that they didn’t have to share. Not creepy stuff, but simple facts that you took the time to learn from their LinkedIn page or company website. While this may not work for chance encounters, it’s crucial when a first meeting is planned ahead of time, such as a job interview or a consultation with a potential client. Find out as much as you can about all the people you’re meeting, their company, their company’s primary challenges, and so on. This demonstrates competence and trustworthiness by highlighting your initiative and responsibility.Bringing It All TogetherIt’s the little things that make a first impression a good one, and the importance of establishing trust cannot be overstated. Now if someone would just tell this to the politicians!What do you do to convey trustworthiness to the people you meet? Please share your thoughts in the commen ts section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.This article first appeared on LinkedIn.You might also enjoy… New neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happy Strangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds 10 lessons from Benjamin Franklin’s daily schedule that will double your productivity The worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs 10 habits of mentally strong people