10 Habits that Bosses Love

by Margaret Steen, for Yahoo! HotJobs

Every boss wants employees who do their jobs well. But even among highly competent employees, there are distinctions. Here are 10 tips for making sure you’re on the boss’s A-list:

1. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Especially at the beginning of your relationship — that is, when either you or the boss is new to the job — err on the side of giving your boss too much information and asking too many questions.

“There’s no such thing as a dumb question,” says Marianne Adoradio, a Silicon Valley recruiter and career counselor. “Look at it as information gathering.”

Don’t keep up the constant stream of communication unless your boss likes it, though. It’s best to ask directly whether you’re giving the boss enough information or too much.

2. Acknowledge what the boss says. Bosses appreciate “responsive listening,” says John Farner, principal of Russell Employee Management Consulting. When your boss asks you to do something or suggests ways for you to improve your work, let her know you heard.

3. Collaborate. When your boss has a new idea, respond to it in a constructive way instead of throwing up roadblocks.

“Be willing to brainstorm ways to get something done,” says Michael Beasley, principal of Career-Crossings and a leadership and career development coach.

4. Build relationships. You’ll make your boss look good if you establish a good rapport with your department’s customers, whether they’re inside the company or outside. Bring back what you learn — about ways to offer better customer service, for example — to your boss. This is also helpful for your own career development.

“Everybody wins in the long run,” Adoradio says.

5. Understand how you fit in. Is your boss detail-oriented, or someone who keeps his head in the clouds?

“The boss’s personality is just incredibly important,” says Norm Meshriy, a career counselor and principal of Career Insights.

Equally important is understanding what your boss wants in an employee. It may be, for example, that a boss who is detail-oriented will expect his employees to be as well. But a boss who has no time for details may actually appreciate an employee who does.

6. Learn the boss’s pet peeves. If your manager has said repeatedly that she hates being interrupted first thing in the morning, don’t run to her office to give her a project update when you first get in.

7. Anticipate the boss’s needs. Once you have worked with your boss for a while, you should be able to guess what information he will want before approving your purchase order, for example.

If you provide it ahead of time, “that’s a gold star,” Farner adds.

8. Think one level up. You still need to do your own job, of course. But when managers consider who deserves a promotion, they look for people who understand the issues that their bosses face.

9. Open yourself to new ways of doing things. When your boss comes to you with a new idea, don’t simply dismiss it. If you don’t think it will work, offer to discuss it further in “a mature, responsible, adult-like way,” Beasley says.

10. Be engaged in your work. Arguing with your boss over every request is not a good strategy, but neither is simply shrugging your shoulders and agreeing with everything your boss says. “The manager would like to see an engaged individual,” Beasley says. That means both showing enthusiasm for your work and speaking up when you see room for improvement.

Angrez :/

The perfect dress a perfect wedding makes but an Australian photographer is advising brides to destroy their prized gowns for nuptial pictures to remember.

Seeking to stand out from the hundreds of studios vying for a slice of the lucrative wedding business, Sydney-based Adam Cavanagh snaps stylish, fashion-magazine-like shots of brides in dresses that have been soaked, splattered with paint or muddied.

While several studios in the United States and other parts of the world offer “trash-the-dress” photographs, Cavanagh says the popularity of the service is just gaining ground in Australia. “In the US, there’s a photo of a bride on fire, well not really on fire, but it looked a bit Joan of Arc, it was the shock value,” Cavanagh said.

Cavanagh said he wanted to give Australian brides an opportunity to be creative and daring in what many couples consider to be the most lasting, and often expensive, memento of their wedding.

Packages, ranging in price from $2,800 to $5,300, include pictures shot in scenic locations such as waterfalls, windswept beaches at sunset, building facades and wooden boardwalks.

But to ensure brides look beautiful on the big day, with their dress intact, the ‘trashing’ photographs are taken after the couple have returned from their honeymoon.

“The extreme trashers are very rare,” Cavanagh said. “Usually it’s just getting wet, where you can still recover the dress, or getting in the sand or mud, making it look more like a model shoot than a bridal photo.” reuters

Dinosaur eel points to body armour of the future

An extraordinary fish that inhabits muddy pools in West Africa and whose lineage can be traced back 96 million years could be the model for light, bomb-proof body armour for the soldiers of the future.

So say Pentagon-backed scientists who have pored over the scales of Polypterus senegalus, also called the Senegal bichir or the dinosaur eel. Long and skinny and of ancient heritage, the 40-centimetre (16-inch) predator has multiple layers of scales that first dissipate the energy of a

strike, then protect against any penetration to the soft tissues below and finally limit any damage to the shield to the immediate area surrounding the assault.

Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used nano-scale measurements to look at several scales that were harmlessly removed from a living fish. They found the scales — about 500 millionths of a metre thick — have four layers. The tiny shield was then put to the test, in a simulation of a biting attack.

The team believe the scales’ protection is remarkably effective because of the different composite materials, the geometry and thickness of each of these layers. The overlapping junctions between the layers themselves also play an important role.

The design is “fascinating, complex and multiscale,” say the scientists. “Such fundamental knowledge holds great potential for the development of improved biologically-inspired structural materials,” said Christine Ortiz, an MIT associate professor in materials science and engineering.

“Many of the design principles we describe — durable interfaces and energy-dissipating mechanisms, for instance — may be translatable to human armour systems.” The study appears on Sunday in a specialist journal, Nature Materials. afp

Name your twins: Benson and Hedges

A Judge in New Zealand made a young girl a ward of court so that she could change the name she hated – Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.

Judge Rob Murfitt said that the name embarrassed the nine-year-old and could expose her to teasing.

He attacked a trend of giving children bizarre names, citing several examples.

Officials had blocked Sex Fruit, Keenan Got Lucy and Yeah Detroit, he said, but Number 16 Bus Shelter, Violence and Midnight Chardonnay had been allowed.

One mother wanted to name her child O.crnia using text language, but was later persuaded to use Oceania, he said.

‘Social handicap’

The ruling, in the city of New Plymouth on the North Island, was handed down in February but only made public now.

UNUSUAL NAMES Allowed: Violence; Number 16 Bus Shelter; Midnight Chardonnay; Benson and Hedges (twins) Blocked: Yeah Detroit; Stallion; Twisty Poi; Keenan Got Lucy; Sex Fruit; Fat Boy; Cinderella Beauty Blossom; Fish and Chips (twins)

The name issue emerged during a custody hearing for the young girl – who had refused to tell her friends her name and went simply by “K”.

“The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment which this child’s parents have shown in choosing this name,” Judge Murfitt wrote.

“It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily.”

Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii’s name has now been changed and the custody case resolved, court officials said.

New Zealand does not allow names that would cause offence or that are longer than 100 characters, Registrar-General Brian Clarke said.

Officials often tried to talk parents out of particularly unusual choices that could embarrass their offspring, the Associated Press news agency quoted him as saying.

Cost Cutting: New Ways

پیاز اور جوتے

ایک بادشاہ نے اپنے ایک وزیر کو اس کی کسی سنگین غلطی پر سزا دینا چاہی اور کہا کہ یا تم 100 کچے پیاز ایک ہی نشست میں کھا لو اور یا پھر دربار میں سرعام 100 جوتے کھا لو۔

وزیر نے سوچا کہ سب کے سامنے 100 جوتے کھانے سے تو بہت بے عزتی ہو گی اس لئے 100 پیاز کھا لیتا ہوں۔

جب اسے پیاز کھانے کو مہیا کئے گئے تو چند پیاز کھانے کے بعد اس کی حالت بگڑنے لگی۔

اب وہ بولا مجھ سے مزید پیاز نہیں کھائے جاتے، آپ مجھے جوتے لگا لو۔

دو چار جوتے پڑے تو ہوش ٹھکانے آگئے، اب وہ بولا کہ مجھے جوتے مت مارو، میں پیاز کھاؤں گا۔

کرتے کرتے کرتے۔۔۔ وہ جوتے بھی کھاتا گیا اور پیاز بھی۔ آخر پر جب 100 پیاز کا عدد پورا ہوا تو وہ 100 جوتے بھی کھا چکا تھا۔

Random Quotes

“Adam and Eve had an ideal marriage. He didn’t have to hear about all the men she could have married, and she didn’t have to hear about the way his mother cooked.”

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” – Oscar Wilde

“Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an achievement in a bachelor, and second nature in a married woman.” – Helen Rowland

“Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?” – Clarence Darrow

“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” – Oscar Wilde

“There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you’re busy interrupting.” – Mark Twain

“Honeymoon: A short period of doting between dating and debating.” – Ray Bandy

“Why does a woman work ten years to change a man’s habits and then complain that he’s not the man she married?” – Barbara Streisand

“Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side.” – Zig Ziglar

“If it weren’t for marriage, men and women would have to fight with total strangers.” – Unknown

“Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.” – Stephen B. Leacock

10 Ways To Murder Creativity

1. Always pretend to know more than everybody around you.

2. Get employees to fill in time sheets.

3. Run daily checks on progress of everyone’s work.

4. Ensure that highly qualified people do mundane work for long periods.

5. Put barriers up between departments.

6. Don’t speak personally to employees, except when announcing increased targets, shortened deadlines and tightened cost restraints.

7. Ask for a 200-page document to justify every new idea.

8. Call lots of meetings.

9. Place the biggest emphasis on the budget.

10. Buy lots of computers.