Faced with stress, is it even possible to stay calm, cool, and collected? To take it all in stride, function effectively, not lose sleep, and still handle problems successfully?

“Complaints, complaints, complaints; that’s all I get around here!” It’s a common cry of managers in laboratories. Yet, accepted wisely, employees’ complaints can be useful tools a lab manager could use to improve and upgrade his work unit and keep his employees happy.

I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. - Robert McCloskey Engaging in a discussion is a two-way process. Even if the other person is just listening, what you say and what they hear need to be in sync. How can you ensure that you are communicating clearly?

Before you hold your next meeting, be sure you and the others at the meeting know why it’s being held. Meetings can drag on and feel like a waste of time if the goals are not clear to all in attendance. David Allen, founder and President of a management consulting, coaching, and training company (www.davidco.com), offers these five reasons for holding a meeting.

Productivity guru Gina Trapani says "Do the Most Important Thing First".  She calls this “running a morning dash.” When she sits down to work in the morning, before she checks any email, she spends an hour on the most important thing on her to-do list.

The Dale Carnegie blog offers practical advice on ways to build and maintain effective communication with your team/staff. These tips, taken from the blog post “10 Ways to Stay on Track as an Effective Team,” can put your team on the right track and help you stay there. 1. Encourage frequent, open communication 2. Take time to create team cohesion. 3. Give honest, regular feedback 4. Build cooperation 5. Function democratically

When asked about the most important factor in manufacturing, many employees put people ahead of production. It is important that our priorities are right on this one. The most important factor in our cleanrooms is the end product and ensuring that the end product is safe and of the highest quality possible consistently and reproducibly for the end user. Breaches in cleanroom protocol must not be allowed to result in an unsafe product. At the same time, skilled, educated cleanroom employees are essential for production of quality product.

Finding it hard to carve out time to get important things done? Checking email, people at your office door, unexpected meetings can all fill time but may not be getting you any closer to getting your own work done or to move ahead on projects. Taken from his blog, Three Star Leadership, Wally Bock offers key ideas on how to do more important things better.

If you’re the boss, you don’t necessarily want to hear the word “no.” If you have an issue or concern with a boss’s ideas, it’s not easy or may not be welcome to disagree. So is saying “no” taboo in the workplace? Not if you want innovation, productivity, and success.

A recent study titled “How Managers Use Multiple Media: Discrepant Events, Power, and Timing in Redundant Communication” published in Organization Science, found that the use of repeated communication using more than one media increased the effectiveness of the message.