It’s true. Some meetings can be tedious and time consuming. Nevertheless, meetings are a critical aspect of most every professional’s work life. Your performance and professionalism in the conference room has a direct impact on your career because it influences how colleagues and managers perceive you as a leader and team player.

If you want to ensure you are achieving top performance standards at your business meetings, consider the following Harvey Nash tips to conference room success.

Position Yourself
Don’t sit next to the boss. “You’ll look like a sycophant,” says Professor Cary Cooper, professor of behavioral psychology, Lancaster University. Instead head for the seat opposite the boss or the meeting Chair because here you can get the best eye contact.

Make Eye Contact
Eye contact is a powerful communicative force, so make it early on and consistently. Connect with everyone in the room, not just the speaker. But do remember that strong eye contact with the meeting leader and your boss is a way to give visual cues that increase your influence in the meeting room.

Tone It Down
Don’t get sucked into power politics that are too often played out in a meeting room. Talking the most is not the same thing as making the most sense or having the best ideas.  In fact, if you hog the airwaves, people will soon get used to the sound of your voice and not hear what you’re actually saying. Speak at strategic moments and offer up good, valuable ideas. It’s what the meeting, the company and your career need.

Think in Bullet Points
Use the bullet point strategy to communicate your ideas. It is a very useful way of organizing and communicating your views. Three is a good manageable number of points to make or ideas to contribute (not too many and not too few). You can even preface your comments with “I have three things to say.”  It provides a frame for your comments.

Remember to Pause
The pause is also a powerful communication tool: “It works like a verbal highlighter,” says Tina Lamb, trainer with The Impact Factory. If you want to emphasize a point or give credit, pause before you move on.

Ducking Out
Sometimes, you can’t attend a meeting or the entire meeting because of pressing work obligations. There are smart ways to handle having to miss or leave a meeting early. For example, remember that the meeting will always be important to someone so communicate early and honestly with the organizer. Let the individual and any other critical players know you have a valid excuse, such as a meeting with a client or a mission-critical deadline. Also offer to contribute some thoughts on agenda items by e-mail.

If you have to leave a meeting early, let people know in advance so they do not interpret your departure negatively. If your leaving is known beforehand by all or the key attendees, it will not be a disturbance or annoyance.

The most important meeting advice you will find is this: participate. Whether through eye contact and body language or by adding questions and ideas to the discussion, helping to make the meeting valuable for all is more than a smart career move: it’s a brilliant business strategy.

Last month’s Harvey Nash IT Briefing discussed tech skills today’s IT professionals should focus on refining, particularly Web 2.0 capabilities. This month, we take a break from tech talents and focus on the critical workplace skills all professionals must master if they want to climb high on their personal career ladders.

You can’t be good at everything; no one can. But to advance your career into senior roles and management positions, where responsibilities are greater and the rewards increase, there are certain skills you cannot and should not do without. Below are four business skills all professionals, technical or not, should develop and hone. They are capabilities that will help you stand out from a crowd of candidates, make your superiors take notice and help you better collaborate, lead and succeed in any workplace. You don’t have to be the best at any of these skills, but you do need to be a skilled writer, speaker, team player and thinker, if you want to become a highly recognized and rewarded professional.

Written Communication
The ability to clearly communicate ideas in writing is an essential business skill, especially today when written messages (e-mail, text and instant messaging) are constantly being sent, received, forwarded and copied. Unfortunately today, miscommunications in writing are all too frequent because many professionals pay less and less attention to good grammar, clarity and professionalism.

Interested in improving your written communications? Then you have many options, from taking a communications course online to attending a class at a local community college or university to possibility attending training within the workplace. It’s also important to practice by taking the time to concentrate on the messages, memos and letters you write each day. Ask your boss or mentor to critique your business writing and offer tips for improvement. Take just a bit of time to slow down, concentrate on your writing and, if needed, gain a bit of outside help. These small efforts will make a big impact on your communications capabilities.

Public Speaking
The ability to make your ideas understandable and interesting in a meeting or presentation is a valuable skill that translates into every career. It’s important to be able to speak to colleagues, clients and employees with a strong degree of comfort and a high degree of clarity. For most people, however, public speaking is a skill we have to practice and often a fear to overcome.

As a way to improve their public speaking skills, many professionals choose to take a class or join Toastmasters International, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people become more competent and comfortable in front of an audience. Within your own workplace, you may find opportunities to practice and refine your skills. For example, you can volunteer to present at a meeting or offer to participate in training sessions for new employees. If you belong to professional associations, you may also find opportunities to serve as a presenter and panelist. When you do have a chance to present, ask for feedback from your audience and peers. With just a bit of practice and critique, many professionals find that their public speaking skills and comfort levels quickly improve.

Interpersonal Skills
If you want to lead and inspire people, you have to be able to connect and work well with them. If you want your good ideas to be heard and considered, you have to be willing to share and discuss them with others. Success in the workplace depends on your ability to collaborate and support others, which is why interpersonal skills are fundamental to career advancement.

Many technology professionals feel this is an area where their deficiencies are most acute. After all, a lot of IT professionals have the opportunity to work alone to complete tasks and can get very comfortable in their solitude.For most of us, improving interpersonal skills is a matter of going back to good teamwork and professionalism basics, such as remembering to…

• Be polite
• Listen well to others
• Be appreciative of the help others provide
• Communicate clearly
• Cut back (or even eliminate) complaining
• Share the spotlight
• Be empathetic to the challenges others face
• Quickly and agreeably resolve conflicts

If you are concerned your interpersonal skills are a serious flaw that cannot be rectified by following good rules of communication, courtesy and collaboration, it’s time to get a mentor or professional coach. Find someone you trust who can help you honestly address the challenges you face when it comes to working and supporting others in the workplace.

Critical Thinking Skills
Employers today want professionals who can think on their feet, solve problems and tackle issues in innovative ways. If you prefer to deliver exactly what the client or your manager wants, without ever asking questions or offering suggestions, it may be time to develop and expand your critical thinking skills.

One of the best ways to improve your critical thinking capabilities is to go outside your comfort zone and practice. Volunteer to serve on internal business committees focused on resolving key business issues. Work with colleagues to identify and refine less effective processes or coming roadblocks. When you look around the workplace, there are numerous areas in need of critical thinking (business process improvement, strategic planning, etc.).  Practice asking questions and contributing ideas in meetings. The more you engage in the business activities around you, the more opportunities you will have to test and hone your critical thinking abilities.

The French Take on e-Pirates
French officials are working on a system that will eventually cut off the broadband connections of all people who illegally download music or films over the Internet. Operating in a “three strikes and you’re out” model, users who download illegally will be warned three times before being kicked off of the Internet. According to reports, the system for monitoring users as well as warning and banishing those who download illegally will be created by an independent panel supervised by a court official.

Google Grows & Grows

Nearly 60% of all Internet searches conducted in October 2007 by U.S.-based Internet users were accomplished over Google. These latest numbers from market research group ComScore underscore Google’s dominance in the search market. Taking second place, Yahoo was responsible for just under 23% and Microsoft dropped from over 10% in September to 9.7%.

Security that Risks Security

According to two IT security experts, Antivirus software is carrying around quite a few security risks. Thierry Zoller and Sergio Alvarez have been studying how antivirus software inspects e-mail traffice and have found reasons for concern. By checking data with more than one antivirus program, companies may be weakening their security defenses.  According to Zoller and Alvarez,  bugs in the "parser" software used to examine different file formats can easily be exploited by attackers, so increasing the use of antivirus software increases the chances that a business could be successfully attacked.

Green Hard Drives for Christmas

Western Digital has unveiled new hard drives that use up to 40% less power than competing drives. The serial ATA (SATA) drives will be sold in a new GreenPower-branded line, with 500GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities. How green are they? According to the company, they use 4 to 5 watts less than similar-size and format drives from Hitachi GST, Fujitsu, Seagate and other suppliers.

Visual Studio 2008 Has Arrived
Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 to manufacturing over Thanksgiving week. The company also made it immediately available to MSDN subscribers. The greater market has only a short wait ahead, Microsoft will formally introduce the new toolset on Feb. 27 along with the Windows Server 2008 operating system and SQL Server 2008 database.

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