Have you ever met someone whom you thought you had met before? This may be because they reminded you of someone you already knew. Or perhaps you meet someone who does in fact look different but in time that unique face soon becomes an acquaintance or even a good friend.

Learning a foreign language can be quite the same. Just as there only so many features which can make up a person’s face there are only so many sounds that the human tongue, throat and facial muscles can make.

So, over time you may realize that, in some ways, that strange and unique language doesn’t sound so strange anymore. What is the key to making a once unfamiliar language as familiar to you as a dear friend?

Exposure.

In these series of 2 articles, we will share 20 tips to exposing yourself to a language, so that that once unfamiliar language may become a close relative. Read below to find the first 10!
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mYngle CEO Marina Tognetti will present at the 11th European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ECIE) which will be held and co-hosted by JAMK University of Applied Science and Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics in Finland this week (15-16 September 2016).

The ECIE is an international conference attracting an interesting combination of academic scholars, practitioners and individuals from more than 40 countries, who are engaged in various aspects of innovation and entrepreneurship teaching and research.

Marina will take the stage on Thursday afternoon to present a real case of entrepreneurship through a presentation titled:

Doing a 180 kick flip with your start-up

In her presentation, Marina will tell a story you don’t hear enough about: that of an early stage company that turns around with bold moves and sets itself on the way to success. She will share what went on behind the curtains at mYngle, covering topics like:

• Why change is an essential part of being an entrepreneur
• The difference between “The Plan” and “The Reality”
• Finding the right product market fit and a sustainable business model

If you are attending the conference, don’t miss this presentation at 16:00 on Thursday 15^th! And if you are interested in these topics but can’t make it to the conference, feel free to follow the event via Twitter through the hashtag #ECIE16.

Several studies indicate that companies with a diverse workforce tend to perform better. Their growth benefits from the enriched pool of knowledge and a high level of creativity, the direct results of varied communication styles, thinking processes, and motivation drivers. As a HR manager, you can help your company achieve profitable and well-balanced inclusion through commitments, communications and collaboration between departments.

Diversity is more than gender issues or racial matters. Your company can dedicate to supporting women in tech or embracing minority ethnic groups but don’t limit yourself. It’s beneficial to consider people from all walks of life, and lifestyles.
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Many companies have embraced a culture of working from home because their employees can be as productive if not more than when they are in the office. Well-known names like WordPress, Github, Basecamp and Buffer are a part of a growing list of companies that let their staff work from anywhere.

Staying productive at a home office requires specific mindsets, habits, and skills, and commonly recommended strategies include taking regular breaks, planning time for workouts, limiting distractions and self-tracking the daily progress.

As HR managers, you can help your staff to reach the maximum level of productivity from their home office. By adjusting certain aspects of employee relations, training and development, you will help build a productive team, and one in which the working location is irrelevant.

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Employees like perks. The extra benefits that motivate them to stay longer on tough days become the stories they tell to their friends at parties, and form a weight that might tip their job satisfaction scales. According to a recent research by Glassdoor, nearly three in five people said benefits and perks were their top considerations before accepting a job. Read the rest of this post »

Where do you see yourself in five years? This is a common interview question, but a manager plays a huge role in an employee achieving the success that a candidate envisions. (After all, no one says, “In five years, I see myself doing this same job.”)

If you’re a manager, how can you train your employees for success? It’s not just for their good, but for the good of your business. You want employees that can learn and grow and here’s how you can help them to do it.

Help clarify goals.

Some new hires—especially entry level ones—come in with boundless energy and a lack of understanding about how the professional world work. They have the idea that it’s junior analyst today, CEO tomorrow.

On the other hand, you have another group of employees who have no idea where they want to go from here. Perhaps this isn’t their dream job, or even if it is, they don’t have a practical idea of where to go from here. Just how does one get from point A to point B?

As a manager, you want to help both groups of employees with their goals—and help mold those goals around the company’s success. In order to do this effectively, you’ll need to be open and honest with your employees and not punish anyone for saying their real goals lie outside the company. You still want to help an employee achieve that goal. Why? Because while they are working for you, they’ll be engaged and happy. An engaged and happy employee who works for you for two years is far better than an unhappy and disengaged employee who stays with you forever.

Once you have goals, you have to put a plan in place, or goals are simply dreams. There are two different sets of goals you should be concerned with. The first is business and job specific, and the second applies to the long term.

Immediate goals

Most managers are great at business and job specific goals. We send employees to technical training to learn the new systems. We sit next to employees and help them put together presentations. We help prep employees for important client meetings. We see the critical nature of these things because the impact is immediate.

However, when we train for success, sometimes we can’t focus too much on the short term. For instance, let’s say you have a great salesperson who has been with you for several years. She’s a great performer. Then you hire someone fresh out of school or training. Naturally, your new hire isn’t as great as your seasoned salesperson.

The temptation is to always give the good leads to the experienced sales person and to provide extra support for that person—because she’s bringing in the business. However, this short term success will hamper your future success. Why? Because one day your seasoned employee is going to move on, and your new person will not be prepared. Even if your expert salesperson stays and continues to perform at a high level, you’re losing out on the potential of your new hire. Your business will be better off with two fabulous employees than it will be with one fabulous employee and one mediocre one.

It’s true that when your employee is new, giving her a chance may cause short term loss for your business, but if you’re training for success, allowing room for failure is critical. If we only let people try when they are perfect, you’ll be twiddling your thumbs waiting for something that doesn’t exist.

Long Term Goals

These are a bit harder for most managers, because you need your employee to focus on the current job. You need a junior analyst right now and you’ll need a junior analyst tomorrow and next year, you’ll still need a junior analyst. So, if you train your junior analyst to the point that she can be a senior analyst, then she won’t want to continue doing junior work. If your senior analyst quits, you have someone prepared for the job, but if not, your junior analyst is going to move to a new company to achieve her goals. Which means that you’re stuck hiring someone. Why would you want to train someone out of her current job?

Why indeed? Because no one wants to stay a junior analyst forever. Your employee will go looking for new things even if you don’t support her. If you do support her, you increase the probability of her staying with your company and benefiting your company for years to come. You want that.

So, how to train? Listen to what your employee’s long term goals are and explain what the company’s long term goals are. If you have a new HR analyst, but you know that you’ll probably need an employee relations specialist down the road, you can work with her to train for that potential role. Hopefully, her goals and your company goals mesh together well. If not, see if you can find a way to make her goals work with the company. Even if that’s not possible, you’ll find better success with a happy and fulfilled employee.

Some long term goals aren’t handled well in house. For instance, your employee may want an advanced degree. Supporting an employee though that can make a world of difference to your company. It may require offering an 80 percent schedule, or using flexible time so that she can leave early every Tuesday for classes. These are little things that can add long-term value to your company.

Looking Towards Your Own Success

There is a selfish aspect to training great employees: you look great. If you can be seen as the person that brings in great talent and prepares them to take on the world, that’s a gold star on your employee record. You bring extra value to the company when you help train your employees. When you support an employee, she is more likely to do well at her current job, respect you as a boss, and bring value to the company. That’s a winning move for any manager.

The post was written by Suzanne Lucas from The Evil HR Lady

There’s an often used saying, “fake it until you make it,” meaning people should be someone they’re not until they get what they want. An example might be the business professional who pretends to like certain things or believe a set of values in order to get a promotion. Then once they have the promotion, the individual can either stop the charade or continue with the inauthentic behavior.

Amy Cuddy, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, suggests a different point of view on the well-worn phrase. She says individuals should “fake it until you become it.” Instead of viewing the behavior change as temporary to achieve a desired result, it’s about creating small but successive behavior changes with the goal of gaining the confidence to be ourselves.

Human resources professionals understand that confidence isn’t an easy thing. Not only do we have to deal with our own confidence but we have to deal with how others have confidence in us. And we have to coach others to have confidence in themselves. Those dynamics aren’t always working in perfect alignment. Have you ever been in a situation where a group had confidence in you but inside you were wondering whether you could really accomplish what the group wanted? On the reverse side, have you ever known that you could accomplish something only to feel that others had some doubts?

The way we manage confidence in ourselves and with others is with our presence. In her book “Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges,” Cuddy uses the story of an actor on his way to an audition to illustrate her message. The actor is nervous and anxious, questioning whether he should actually be there. That he might not be deserving of the audition. But in his moment of self-inducted panic, he remembers an activity that a friend told him about gaining focus and confidence.

“Find a private place and pose like Wonder Woman for two minutes.”

You know the move: standing tall, head held high, fists on hips, and feet slightly apart. So the actor finds a bathroom stall and does the pose. For two full minutes. Then he proceeds to have the best audition of his career. The actor had confidence. He conveyed confidence to others. Cuddy goes on to explain that organizations are using this move to teach young women and girls how to build confidence. You can hear Cuddy tell the story in “Your body language shapes who you are”, which is the second most viewed talk in TED’s history.

Confidence gives us the opportunity to “become it” – as in “fake it until you become it.” And the “it” is the understanding of how to positively use our personal power.

The use of personal power isn’t a bad thing. Alice Walker, author of the acclaimed novel “The Color Purple,” is quoted as saying “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” We cannot minimize or joke about power. You might have heard or even said, “Who me? I don’t have any power.” The reality is everyone has power. It’s understanding what kind you have and how much.

While we have a tendency to focus on coercive power, there are several types of power that we should be trying to cultivate in today’s business world. Human resources professionals are very aware of connection power, defined as the power of people we know and have relationships with. Networking is a impactful tool that brings tremendous value. Another is expert power, being the power associated with being particularly skilled at something. We are all good at something. Expert is not limited to doctoral degrees and awards.

As women leaders, we need to be comfortable with the use of power. We also have to be comfortable giving power to others. It takes confidence to share power. Shared power is how everyone succeeds. Wonder Woman is okay with others having super powers as long as they don’t abuse them.

Speaking of abusing power, because we have a tendency to focus on people who abuse power, Walker’s quote about power is noteworthy. Failing to acknowledging our power can be equally damaging to our credibility. Especially when others perceive us as having power and not using it. Leaders have to be careful in their efforts to be modest that they don’t dismiss their ability to influence change.

Recent research indicates that female dominated professions (like HR) take a hit when it promotes diversity. However, if women don’t advocate for greater diversity, then how will it happen? Human resources leaders need to use their ability and opportunity to advocate for positive change within our organizations and community. Because as much as we’ve made progress, even Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook and author of “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead”, admits we still have work to do.

For women leaders, the rules of business are still evolving. And, that’s not a bad thing. We have the opportunity to make the rules what we want them to be.

• Constantly create small opportunities to build confidence in ourselves and others
• Understand personal power is important and not to be minimized
• Focus on the positive results that can be achieved using our personal power
• Hold ourselves and others accountable for using power responsibly

As a human resources leader, it’s part of our role to coach employees within the organization. Employees need to be confident in their work and in sharing their views about the best way to accomplish their goals. One of our greatest legacies as a leader is to inspire others, which means understanding how to use our personal power to “fake it until we become it.” And encouraging others to do the same.

This post was written by Sharlyn Lauby from HR Bartender

Hello everyone,

As you have probably noticed, we have been silent on our blog for a really long time. This is because we were in the process of making significant changes to our company. We started the evolution in 2011, focusing more on the corporate market rather than the consumer market. We listened to our clients, and proceeded to adapt our training solution and service to their needs. This is the mYngle you see now, much more mature to serve even the most demanding customers.

The communication hiatus was taken in order to be consistent across all our communication platforms; we preferred to be quiet in order to not confuse our corporate clients nor our private clients. Right now the business decision has been made to focus primarily on the corporate market. Therefore, we will start sharing pieces of information that are not only useful as language learners, but also for HR managers, covering a broader spectrum of HR related topics.

As so many companies today, we have been undertaking transformations since 2007, when mYngle was founded, and we would like to thank you for staying with us through all the changes. For sure, the best is yet to come.

Looking excited towards the future,

Marina Tognetti

mYngle CEO and Founder

For the first time (looking for more to come), Myngle has presented in the Future of Education conference in Florence- Italy.

The conference discussed a lot of Education related topics ( E-learning- Distance Education- Education and new technologies……).
During the conference, there was great interest in E-learning and all the concepts, theories and all practices related to it.
As Myngl is always taking the lead in E-learning, we have presented our case-study about “The New Online Blended Learning”.
Online blended learning is ” bringing the best of both worlds, the offline learning, where you can get complete individualized lessons with a teacher, built around and for the exact needs of the student, and the asynchronous where you get more flexibility, as you can choose where and when to study, at your own pace”  in our perspective. We explained our case study of Myngle teachers together with the Instituto Cervantes asynchronous AVE material oppblåsbare Telt.
Blended learning was one of the major themes discussed and everyone talked about it in different ways. Our presentation had  the answers to many of the questions and worries that other presenters and visitors had discussed in the previous presentations, it also raised more awareness about the best way to apply this method, and gave good results.
One of the very interesting questions was about the material teachers use during the blended lessons; can they make use of their own material or simply work with the material provided for them? Another question was about the concept of “offline” learning and how we were able to define the meeting a teacher online as offline, for many people live online teaching is still something very new.
If you are interested in the presentation, or have any more questions please feel free to contact Hala at [email protected].
We look forward to reading your opinion and answering your questions about this topic!
Best regards,
Hala

Google gave the Boston Consulting Group the assignment to do an independent research (Dutch Research) about the current value of the internet economy in the Netherlands. Google has done this research in many other countries, to be able to compare how each country is doing and to see where countries can improve and move forward. Google would like to help companies to grow their online presence.

Google and BCG chose Myngle to be one of their casestudies, take a look at the video made at our office in Amsterdam.

You can see the video here:

Myngle – Impact van het internet op de nederlandse economie

Kind regards,

Marina Tognetti