Blog Standard - Groupe Insearch

Feb 17

Important Questions to Include in Your Interview Process

By Angelica Rains Hiring Strategies, Interviews, Training

Having the right skills in itself isn’t enough to make someone right for a job. As an employer, you will interview a lot of people who have the right skills and experiences. The best talent also has high emotional intelligence. Unfortunately, many of the generic interview questions that managers ask do not provide enough insight. The best advice about interviewing you can get is to customize the question list in a way that gauges the candidate’s emotional intelligence. Below are some questions to ask candidates.

What Failures Did You Learn from the Most?

One way to assess someone’s emotional intelligence is to see how they react to adversity. Listen closely when a candidate talks about their weaknesses and failures. Failure is the heart of success. No one is successful right away. They learn from mistakes and become better. Someone who breaks down at the first sign of failure is not going to be a good employee. Look for candidates who view failures as opportunities.

Have You Ever Noticed Someone at Work Was Struggling? What Did You Do to Help?

Ask questions that will give you an insight on how the candidate will interact with co-workers. This is just one example. You can also ask about a time they had a conflict with a colleague, among others. These types of question will tell you a lot about the candidate’s attitude and interpersonal skills. You don’t want an employee who stirs up drama and can’t be a team player. Find someone who will build people up and be a positive influence on the team.

Have You Had a Boss You Found Difficult to Work with? How Did You Deal with the Situation?

See how the candidate handles authority. The employee-employer relationship can sometimes be tense. You don’t want to hire someone who is uncooperative and resistant to authority, but you also don’t want someone who is so servile that they never speak their mind. In some cases, employees will have to work with multiple managers and will need to juggle different personalities. There is a lot of opportunity for conflict there, so you need employees who have high emotional intelligence.

It’s easy to find a candidate who checks all the right boxes on paper. But you can’t tell someone’s emotional intelligence by looking at their resume and cover letter. Find someone who will respect managers and colleagues, learn from their mistakes, and navigate conflict and disagreements gracefully.

Feb 10

How to Increase Workplace Resilience

By Angelica Rains Career Guidance, Executive Assistant, Leadership

For many people in C-level support, work is a major source of stress. Like numerous other jobs in today’s world, jobs in executive support are fast-paced and exacting. Many employees experience burnout at some point in their career. While there is little you can do to make your work environment less demanding, there are ways you can improve your ability to endure stress and resist burnout. Below are some tips to increase workplace resilience.

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a form of meditation that involves training yourself to be more aware of your emotions and state of mind in the present moment. Mindfulness tools promote workplace resilience by facilitating stress management and improving mental health. Spending a lot of time planning for future tasks or obsessing over past mistakes is mentally exhausting. By focusing on the present, you become more engaged and more resistant to negative, toxic thoughts.

Work-Life Balance

Maintaining a healthy work-life balance will also help you become more resilient in the workplace. Technology has made it harder for most people to create boundaries between their work life and home life. In the past, once you left the office you were done. Now most people continue to do work-related tasks on their computer or smartphone, such as answering work emails, after they leave for the day. While it might not be possible to keep your personal and work lives separate, it is still important to allow yourself some regular time to relax and recharge. Doing so will help decrease stress and improve productivity.

Practice Reflection

Although it usually isn’t healthy to dwell on the past, reflection is an important way to develop strong emotional intelligence. The goal should be to think about emotional reactions you have had in the past to better understand what situations provoke stress, anxiety, or other strong emotional reactions. Fostering emotional intelligence will enable you become less reactive in general, and also help you avoid certain triggers that will likely cause you stress. In addition, if you know what triggers negative emotional reactions in you, you can develop coping mechanisms that will allow you to recover more quickly in instances when triggers are unable to be avoided.

Stress has become a natural part of work for most people. You might not be able to control your workload or the pace of the work environment, but you can control how you react to stress. Practicing mindfulness techniques, nurturing a healthy work-life balance, and taking steps to improve your emotional intelligence can allow you to become more resilient to stress in the workplace.

Feb 03

4 Ways to Improve Your Email Etiquette

By Angelica Rains Career Guidance, Executive Assistant, Leadership, Training

Email etiquette can have a major impact on workplace communication. When colleagues and clients read emails you send, they make assumptions about your professionalism, trustworthiness, competence, and more. These tips to improve your email etiquette will help you maintain a solid reputation within the C-suite while improving your communication skills.

1. Avoid Being Too Personal or Casual

Even if you are friendly with the people you work with, it is important to remember you are representing your organization when you send emails. Keep your communication professional and formal. For example, avoid discussing your personal life and overusing exclamation marks and emoticons. Also avoid using too much industry jargon, slang, and of course don’t use curse words.

2. Keep Emails Brief

Few people enjoy reading long emails. In general, emails should not be longer than 3 short paragraphs. Recipients will start to lose focus after that. If you have more to say than can be contained in a brief email, it is usually better to have the conversation in-person or over the phone. It also helps to read through the email before you send it. Are there sentences that aren’t necessary? Do you wait too long to reach the main point of the message?

3. Tell Recipients Who You Are

Unless you’re emailing someone that you work with daily, it is a good idea to introduce yourself at the start of an email message. It doesn’t need to be long. Just provide a short sentence giving your name and role. We often figure that if we met someone before, they know who we are. But in the professional world, it is easy to forget a name if you meet new people regularly.

4. Proofread Emails

Grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors are some of the fastest ways to lose credibility with your recipients. We have gotten used to relying on tools like spellcheck and autocorrect. While these tools are helpful, they are imperfect. Make sure you carefully review email messages before you click send to check that they are free of errors. It might take an extra minute or two, but it is better than having to explain confusing or embarrassing typos.

The etiquette you use when you write and send emails can say a lot about who you are as a professional. It’s important for your colleagues, managers, and clients to view you as organized, credible, and well-spoken. You can improve your email etiquette by practicing writing in a professional tone, keeping messages brief and to-the-point, introducing yourself to email recipients, and proofreading all of your messages before they go out.

Jan 27

Steps You Can Take to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence

By Angelica Rains Career Guidance, Executive Assistant, Leadership, Training

Emotional intelligence is one of the most beneficial skills you can have as a professional in C-level support. Emotional intelligence improves self-awareness, allows you to communicate with clarity, and helps to control your emotions in challenging situations. In addition, emotional intelligence can improve your ability to collaborate and regulate stress. Here are some steps that you can take right now to strengthen your emotional intelligence.

Active Listening

Many people listen without fully processing what the other person is saying. You can foster emotional intelligence by listening carefully when others speak and making sure you clearly understand them before responding. Listening also involves observing nonverbal communication, such as facial expressions and gestures. Active listening can improve empathy and reduce misunderstandings in the workplace.

Self-Awareness

Emotional awareness is a critical component of emotional intelligence. One way you can improve emotional intelligence is to regularly ask yourself how you feel in a given moment. As you become more self-aware, you gain a better understanding of your strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes. Over time, you will learn what activities trigger happiness and which ones fill you with dread. You’ll also become aware of what stressors you should try to avoid. Likewise, you will gain insight into what types of people relax you and what personality types bring you down.

Attitudes and Habits

As you become more self-aware, you can start to cultivate a positive attitude as a habit. There are steps you can take to improve your mood, such as eating healthy foods, exercising regularly, and maintaining a regular sleep pattern, which in turn will help improve emotional intelligence. When you practice keeping a positive perspective, you will work better with others, maintain focus easier, and improve your overall motivation. Other activities such as meditation can also improve your daily mood.

Responding Instead of Reacting

Reacting to triggers is a habit that can cause a lot of tension and stress. It is important to monitor how you react to things like requests and constructive feedback. Instead of reacting impulsively, practice receiving information, taking a deep breath, and responding without emotion. For example, if someone gives you negative feedback, instead of becoming angry, receive their criticism with an open mind and thank the person for taking the time to help you improve.

In C-level support, improving emotional intelligence can make you a healthier, more productive professional. You can begin to foster emotional intelligence by practicing active listening, learning to self-reflect, making positivity a habit, and responding thoughtfully.