Secretly learn the workplace habits of foreign managers: how to build trust and work efficiently

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[This article](https://medium.com/@evonneyifangtsai/%E5%B9%BE%E5%80%8B%E9%AB%98%E6%95%88%E7%8E%87%E8%88%87%E5%BB%BA%E7% AB%8B%E4%BF%A1%E4%BB%BB%E7%9A%84%E5%B7%A5%E4%BD%9C%E7%BF%92%E6%85%A3%E5%88%86%E4%BA%AB-708d52b4685f) Author Evonne Tsai, who is a financial person, a technology person and a marketer, is now a foreign manager. Position yourself as an anthropologist, always maintain curiosity and enthusiasm, learn new things across fields, and hope to eventually become a complete person. Thank you for authorizing the “Content Hacker” website to reprint it. Thank you hereby.

[Why we reprint this article] The “Content Hacker” website not only focuses on teaching and sharing skills in the fields of content marketing, copywriting, and growth hacking, but also attaches great importance to the development of readers and friends in the workplace. This article by Evonne Tsai not only talks about the working habits of office workers, but also shares her own tips for writing documents and managing letters. These are actually related to the content, and there are many details worth learning!

Sharing habits of efficient work

Readers who read my article are on [Medium](https://medium.com/@evonneyifangtsai/%E5%B9%BE%E5%80%8B%E9%AB%98%E6%95%88%E7%8E%87%E8%88%87%E5%BB%BA%E7%AB%8B%E4%BF%A1%E4%B B%BB%E7%9A%84%E5%B7%A5%E4%BD%9C%E7%BF%92%E6%85%A3%E5%88%86%E4%BA%AB-708d52b4685f) The key points above seem to be mostly about work thoughts and practices, so I will quickly sort out some of my work habits and share them with you. If you have better practices, you are welcome to share them!

About plans and documents

• Weekly plan: The first task every Monday morning is to schedule what you want to do for the week, and check your plans for the previous week. Those that were not achieved, and why they were not achieved. Even if my boss doesn’t ask me, I will make a plan, otherwise when I face the computer on Monday, I will be at a loss and blue Monday. It often lasts a wasteful hour or two. After listing the plan, you can quickly focus and prioritize.

• When I start to feel distracted, I go back and look at my weekly plan. In most cases, I can focus immediately. If I still can’t focus, I will list the things I want to do one by one, and it will be easier to prioritize.

• Frequently create a check list (check list). Basically, I will create a list of things that I will forget or be careless about, so as to ensure that I can check it directly next time and not make the same mistake again. Of course, it also saves time in recalling.

• Often create flow charts and ask clearly how something happens and how it ends? Then record it, and you can actually practice it, or even better, observe it on the spot.

• Organize all the information required for a project, including plans, file links, contact windows and progress, into one document, and the required files are organized in the same cloud folder.

• Grab the buffer, both time and budget.

About demand and communication

• When receiving a task, you will ask: What is the purpose? What are the causes and consequences? And, what are the relevant departments?

• Use 5W1H to clarify the real needs.

• After clarifying the purpose of the demand, I will directly tell the demander briefly what I will probably do next? Part of it is to ensure that I have finished thinking about it initially, which can greatly reduce the effort of forgetting the cause and effect of the matter and rethinking and planning when planning later; part of it is also easier to ensure that the output is generally in line with the other party’s expectations. When the other party hears that you have quickly made plans for the next step, they will also think that you have given this matter a high priority.

• In the past, even if it was not finished, I would take the prototype of the semi-finished product and confirm with the buyer whether this direction is what he wants, and then continue, that is, release the beta version first. This can reduce the situation of taking the wrong path and taking a long time to repair it, but you must pay attention to the fact that the other party’s expectations are correct - you are just confirming the direction for him first, not the finished product, otherwise your output may be considered unprofessional. I won’t do this now because my boss has high requirements on format and content, but it still wastes some time doing non-required things and testing the boss’s limits.

• Anyone who tells me their needs, I will definitely write it down with a pen. Part of it is that he doesn’t trust his own memory, and the other reason is that he writes it down very carefully while talking to you, which will make the person who hands you the work feel more at ease. At the same time, I also know that you value this matter and will not forget it.

• Letters or requests must be answered within a day or two. Even if there is no complete answer, a preliminary response will be given and when will the answer be available? I thought this was very fast before, but now compared with others in SP company, it is considered very slow.

• When you want to talk to someone or ask a question, you usually first ask if the other person is free. I probably need to take up as much of his time as possible instead of rushing in to ask questions.

• Don’t mention “this is urgent” unless necessary, but if it’s really not urgent, tell the other person that it’s not urgent and just give it to me at any time.

• Keep your promises, and give whatever you promise to give to others at any time. If it really doesn’t work, you should communicate with the other party in advance and make a new offer time.

• Confirm from the inside out. For example, if you have questions, before asking external partners or people in other departments, you must first Google them. If you can’t find it, ask people in the same department. If you can’t find people in the same department, ask people in other departments or partners.

About the meeting

• When you have a meeting, you must send a meeting invitation. The meeting invitation must list the agenda (agenda), including the topics to be discussed and who should talk about what (this should be very basic, but I have encountered many people who do not list the agenda in meetings).

• Before the meeting starts, be sure to arrive at the conference room 5 to 10 minutes early; if it is a conference call, be sure to start calling 3 minutes in advance.

• When everyone arrives, the projector must be connected and the files to be discussed must be opened. If the time is up and someone still hasn’t come, please take the initiative to send a private message to confirm.

• At the beginning of the meeting, the purpose of the meeting and the expected results will be discussed again. A simple record will be made during the meeting, and each item will be confirmed with the person who has the action item (it must be confirmed on the spot through crowd pressure).

• Meeting minutes will be sent out after the meeting (I used to ask myself to do it on the same day, but now it depends on the situation…but it must be sent out the next day at the latest).

• For meetings where a large group of people are reporting together, even if it has nothing to do with what you are talking about, you will not type boringly while others are talking. Instead, you will listen to what the other person says and see what you can contribute. Even if you don’t have it, it can still be regarded as knowledge.

• We will work hard to synchronize information and background knowledge from multiple parties, and spread the information for everyone to see.

• When discussing something, if I suddenly think of something that I need to confirm later, and I am embarrassed to interrupt the other person and afraid that I will forget it, I will secretly make a 1 with my fingers, and a 2 for two things. In this way, at least you know how many more things need to be discussed later? Generally speaking, this will remind you of what happened (this is [Sister](https://medium.com/@evonneyifangtsai/%E7%AC%AC%E4%B8%80%E4%BB%BD% E5%B7%A5%E4%BD%9C%E4%B8%BB%E7%AE%A1%E6%95%99%E6%88%91%E7%9A%84%E4%BA%8B-2ef9081cb8f6) taught me).

About letters

• Discuss by phone or private message first, and don’t send random letters if nothing happens. The purpose of sending letters is to record the conclusion of the private message discussion so that everyone can follow up later.

• Important letters, or letters in common categories, will be marked with [ ] at the beginning of the letter, such as [Report], [Meeting minute].

• Super Invincible cares about who is the recipient of the letter and what role it is, and will never mess with the boss (send a copy) or add someone? At the same time, we will also indicate who has been added at the beginning of the letter to let everyone know. If there are too many people who have been CCed in the mail, we will start to remove people (especially the boss); of course, who has been removed will also be let everyone know at the beginning of the letter.

• I have a letter folder called finish, which is dedicated to letters that I feel are not safe to delete and that keep them and take up space. In fact, 99% of those letters will not be read again, but putting them in makes me feel no psychological burden.

• You must read the letter nervously three times before sending it out. If it is an important letter, you will see it is bad, then leave it in the draft first, and then go back to confirm after a while (of course, this depends on the timeliness of the letter), and then send it if there is no problem.

Core principles for building trust

Some of the above work habits may seem basic, some may be minor tips, and some must depend on the situation and your role. In other words, when I point my finger at number 1 and compare my fingers to the engineer but can’t remember what it is, I will be considered a weirdo.

In fact, the unchanging work principle is to respect everyone’s time and think one more step for everyone. With a little effort, you can save 5 minutes for 10 people, which saves almost an hour in total.

Also, don’t trust yourself too much, because humans are animals that forget, lose focus, and even become distracted, so you need to organize, record, make plans, and send conclusions.

The accumulation of these little things becomes the source of your professionalism and the trust of others in you. Although it really takes accumulation to establish these working habits, it only takes one night to dismantle them!

Finally, I would like to share a work-related “Could’s Law”: If there is something that I haven’t figured out yet, just throw it out for discussion or reply first, and 99% of the time there will be problems with it. Then, I will definitely be asked, and then I will regret to death why I didn’t take the time to understand it. It really works every time.

Any event, as long as it has a probability greater than zero, you can be sure that it will happen.

Therefore, you really can’t take chances just because you are busy! Because that is consuming your precious Credit, so be careful…

But on the other hand, when everyone is talking about things blindly, if you can jump out and explain clearly the cause and effect, everyone will think that you are super strong and professional, and this can also save everyone’s time.

Well, what work habits do you have that you think are good? Let’s share it too! If your work habits are 90% similar to those mentioned above, please send me a private message with your resume.

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