In most cases you need to have the majority of the signatures of a group in order for the petition to be recognized as valid. State governments, for example, require that the number of petition signatures you have be a percentage of the voters in the region. Since this varies from one state to another, you should make sure you check it out before you submit the petition to ensure that you have the required number.

The more petition signatures you gather, the better the petition will be. You should not stop when you have the required number. In the case of a petition, more is better, so you should collect as many signatures as you can. The signatures must also be valid stating that those who did sign their names do believe in this cause.

How do you gather the petition signatures that you need? In a conventional citizen petition, you have to ask all the people to whom you speak to sign the petition after they read your petition statement. You can accomplish this in several ways, one of which is to physically canvas an area going door to door and speaking to all the homeowners.

The people who sign your petition must be of voting age, which means that in one home you can collect more than one signature if there are several adults living at this address. Another method of gathering signatures for a traditional petition is to set up a table in an area where you have access to a large number of people. As they pass along, ask them to sign your petition.

If you have an online petition, you have the ability to collect a very large list of petition signatures. When people visit your site and decide to sign the petition, they do so by typing in their name and giving their email address. You can only have one signature for one email address. When you have this type of petition, you have to be very cognizant of checking the email addresses to ensure they are legitimate.

There is no easy work to collecting petition signatures. Online petitions are easier because you do not have to go outdoors or actually speak to anyone. However, you do have to promote the petition in order to get the support that you need.

This means emailing the link to everyone you know and asking them to forward the link to their contacts. You have to check on the petition on a regular basis to make sure that the emails are valid and that an unscrupulous person is not trying to thwart your efforts.

When you feel you have enough petition signatures, then you can submit it to the appropriate person whom you hope will take a good look at the changes you suggest and take action on them.

The cardinal rule of handling problems between employees is doing ignore the issue. Any conflict that lasts more than a day or two must be dealt with head-on. Allowing inter-employee conflicts to fester results in reduced productivity, lower morale, and can strongly influence the level of respect the workers have for you, the owner.

Employer as Mediator

The role of a mediator is to hear both sides of a conflict and recommend the best resolution based on logical, non-emotional consideration. Your best bet is to listen to each side separately. Allow each involved employee to vent without judgment. Try to listen for any underlying issues — does the worker feel disrespected? Underappreciated? Is there some other issue between these two workers? Understanding any ongoing, unrelated issues will help you find a more lasting solution to help the employees return to productivity.

Ask each involved party how they think the problem should be resolved, including what they could do differently the next time to avoid conflict. Encourage ideas that reflect cooperation. Once you arrive at a solution, again speak with each employee. Be very clear about what you expect of them, and consider ways to hold them accountable for following your directions.

If either party behaved in a particularly unacceptable manner, be sure to address that immediately. While it is important to be fair, it is even more important to maintain control over your business. You set policies for a reason, and the emotional outbursts of conflict are not justification to violate those policies. Follow the established code of conduct, then deal with the underlying issues that are forcing you to play the role of mediator.

An Ounce of Prevention for Employee Conflicts

Dealing with internal conflict is never easy, but there are a few things you can do before problems start to reduce their frequency and intensity. As you are building your business, you are also building the overall company culture. Be cognizant of how you deal with conflict, because your leadership will guide the behavior of your staff — for better or worse. Encourage a culture of cooperation, integrity, and open communication. By making these traits standard from the beginning, you will be able to eliminate many employee issues before they start. Standard management principles advise that you get what you give, as well as what you expect, reward, and put up with from your staff.

As your venture grows, your key personnel will need strong conflict resolution skills to manage lower-level employees. Build these skills into your training program, and look for these skills before you hire through the use of targeted interview questions. When conflicts arise and are resolved, share the outcomes with your management team — actual lessons-learned tend to have a stronger impact than simplistic how-to manuals.

The role of employer can be a difficult one for entrepreneurs to embrace. Just remember that your employees cannot be just like you — if they were, they’d be running their own business instead of yours. Be as empathetic as possible without becoming everyone’s personal counselor. Develop a strong foundation of the culture you want your company to have, then reward those that strengthen the culture and handle those that don’t.

It leaves a good impression – When you get in touch with people on a professional level, it’s almost expected that you will coordinate with them on a professional note. Every good gesture is seen as a logical process in conducting good business. But giving out corporate giveaways sort of breaks that because you end up giving them a functional item that can also serve as a symbolic present or a token of appreciation for the time they have spent with you.

It is a subconscious way of marketing your business – People nowadays have become more clever when it comes to identifying if something is being marketed to them or not. The best way to get customers who believe in what your business can do is through giving them corporate giveaways that actually leave a mark. Just make sure that the items you choose will be very useful for the people to whom you plan to give it to.

It creates recall – This is also the reason why you need to be creative enough in coming up with concepts for your corporate giveaways. You also need to make sure that apart from making it actually functional for the recipients, it should also be something that would really represent your business as a whole. So take time to create a concept that would tie in all the corporate giveaways that you are going to send out with what your business is all about in the first place. Simple concepts can actually go a long way in terms of creating strategic partnerships.

These days, it’s also more affordable to spend for corporate giveaways because all you need to do is buy them in bulk so that you no longer have to worry about incurring too much overhead expenses. You can also do some sort of canvassing first so that you can effectively compare and contrast prices according to the budget that you have.

Aside from prices, you also have to check out the quality of your corporate giveaways. You need to be able to mix in the right price with good quality. Keep in mind that your corporate giveaways would serve as your company’s representation so you need to make a good impression with the type of items that you are going to send out. To be able to assure good quality it would be ideal to check for the credibility of the supplier based from reviews, comments, and actual experience from people you know who have already coordinated with the said company. You can also choose to do your research online.

As a leader, your high standards of performance, attention to detail, and above all-how hard you work set the stage for how your players perform. A lot of leaders want to tell people what to do, but they don’t provide the example. “Do as I say, not as I do,” doesn’t cut it when leading people to a destination of success.

Having friendly and supportive co-workers leads to increased job satisfaction. The behavior of one’s boss is a major determinant of satisfaction. Studies find that employee satisfaction in increased when the immediate supervisor is understanding and friendly, offers praise for good performance, listens to employee’s opinions, and shows a personal interest in them.

The activities of an organization can only be achieved through the combined efforts of its members. The relationship between the organization and its members is governed by what motivates them to work and the satisfaction they derive from it. The manager needs to understand how to elicit the co-operation of staff and direct their performance to achieving the goals and objectives of the organization. He must know how best to motivate staff so that they work willingly and effectively.

Lack of respect and credibility is one of the critical leadership issues of our country today. With the rapid changes continuing in organizations today, the typical employees sees little pain occurring at the top. Usually we’re so busy with our tasks we forget that, above all else, what our people want most of all from us is us–our values, our attitudes, our perceptions etc. In the long run, it’s not our skills or our know-how or our experience that makes the biggest impact-we are the main message!

When something is beyond the explainable “to me” is seems like magic.  I wake up in the morning (no, that’s not the magic part!), and if I turn on the light or the music, I have no idea how the particular mechanisms works to bring light or music into the room.  Sure, I understand the basics, but truly, who can explain electricity, light and sound?  Not how it works but WHY?

Now, I know some of you are engineers and can probably explain those simple phenomena to me.  However, as things get more complex, the magic seems even more amazing.  What about how computers work to send an email to a friend, or that we can store hundreds of songs in a device that’s smaller than a wallet?  Or that you can take blood out of my body, or hook me up to a machine and tell me all sorts of things about what’s going on inside me.  Even driving my car is amazing.

I could go on and on with what science has brought to our world in terms of health, and gadgets, and household and work.  And just a short time ago, all these things would have been “magic.”  They would have been “super-natural” and yet as we learn and grow, more and more things that seemed like “magic” become part of the everyday.

For those of you who lived B.i. (Before iPod), do you remember cassette tapes, or even (gasp!) 8 track tapes?  Science evolves what is possible so quickly and what we don’t think is possible TODAY we may have far surpassed in a few years.

And we take advantage of so many of them without truly understanding how they work, or why, but simply trusting and having faith that they WILL work, and that they’ll do what we want them to.

As Latinas, we women tend to be more open to the fluidity of the supernatural and how it affects our everyday lives.  Many of you might read and learn about your astrological sign, say prayers to your ancestors, or light a candle when someone is sick.  And how many of us say prayers believing that it will help those we pray about (and science has shown us it does!).  So, we’re open to magic in our lives of faith, but how about the little “magics” everywhere?

So today, look around.  Enjoy the magic of the everyday.  Be grateful for what science has brought to your life thus far and trust there will be much more to come!