“Your Career Advisor” is responding this week to:

• How to overcome my concentration problem? (h)
• What is the career path for Diplomats? (g)
• What to include in performance appraisals? (a)

All reasonable questions related to careers, skill development or employment related issues – sent to advisor@skill-link.com - would be addressed in this section every week.

Q1: How to overcome my concentration problem?
I work for a multi national bank as a Customer Service Representative. In fact, I face a problem that I think it may affect my career future, which is Concentration. Although, I am a hard worker, customer oriented and have very good relation with customers and also my manger, I feel that I have a problem with concentration. Sometimes, I do some very small mistakes in preparing reports, I forget a lot , I feel that my performance is reduced when there is a stress of the increasing the number of customers in the branch.

So I decided to contact you may I find a way to overcome my problem. I saw a program on TV about the Actor Studio (Dr. Mohamed Abdel Hady), he trains actors and actresses on acting. One of the exercises I have seen was the group exercise of how to concentrate in doing two or three things in the same time to allow the actor to act well and to be in the cadre of the camera, light, movement...etc.

The question is "how can I train myself to concentrate more than I do now?" Is there any training course available in Egypt to increase the concentration ability of the employee, or do you know any exercise that could make me able to overcome this problem which is not critical now but in the future, when I get promoted to supervisor, it will be very critical .

T. A. (Egypt

Replying:

Dear Mr. A.

You are right in saying concentration can affect performance and the lack of it can negatively impact a lot of hard work. As you know it is not an easy thing to overcome (unlike improving language skills or acquiring some technical know how).

What you did not tell us is if the "concentration" problem is an old one (ie. since your school days) or is it relatively new ?

Also we will assume that you sleep enough hours at night, hence you do not stay up late and wake up early, in other words you do not go to work while sleep deprived.

There are no straight forward solutions (unless of course it is very serious and you need to see a doctor "psychiatrist"); however try the following:

• As much as possible resist distractions at work: do not try an answer your mobile phone when in the middle of something, try and work on one single task at a time (ie. do not try and do three things in parallel etc..); also train yourself not to give in to distractions when someone enters the room, or when a door slams, do not allow yourself to participate; rather keep your concentration on what's in front of you.
• Always keep a small note pad in your pocket and write down every single thing you have to follow up on.
• Develop your own cheklists of what you should review for each aspect of your job (ex. When preparing xyz report; you must check totals, verify no items are left our, reconcile against pervious day number of entries etc….).
• Try an get some of the more complex tasks done when there are as little distractions around you as possible. For example come to work an hour earlier, when things are quite and/or stay a little late to wrap up and review things.
• You may wish to read a few books providing advice on "concentration" and exercises to improve it, for example:
    "Concentration Guide To Mental Mastery" by Mouni Sadhu
    "The Power Of Concentration" by Theron Dumont
    These books could be purchase online from Amazon.com or BarnesandNobel.com

We are not aware of courses available in Egypt addressing "concentration". But would like to suggest the simple "memory game" in cards… play it often.

If you do not remember it, here is how it goes: you put all the cards face down in rows. Each card contains an image. For every card (image), there is another card with the same image. Your job is to pick a card, see which image it has, and try to find its match. If you fail to find it, you turn both cards back to face-down and try to pick a pair again. Score is based on how few turns you take to find every pair of cards (how well you remember, plus a little luck.)

We hope the above was of some use to you.
Good Luck

Q2: What is the career path for Diplomats?
I graduated in 1999 for Alexandria University's Faculty of Commerce, Political Sciences section. While I am currently working as a free lance correspondent to a number of publications, I have always been interested in a diplomatic career. Could you explain to me the career path of a diplomat ?

R. K. (Zezenya, Alexandria)

Replying:

Dear Mr. K.

As you a probably aware, most of those entering the diplomatic service (ie. working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) start at entry level, after passing "tough" written exams and an interview. Out of the hundreds that apply to the entry competition every year about 30 or 40 are selected after an elaborate screening process.

The career path of a diplomat is as follows (as regulated by the relevant law):

Attaché (Molhak)
Third Secretary
Second Secretary
Third Secretary
Councellor
Minister Plenipotentiary (Wazeer Mofawad)
Ambassador
Ambassador first class (Safeer Momtaz)

These work in the Ministry in Cairo or in Embassies and Consulates around the world, in addition to the permanent missions to international organizations (eg. the United Nations, the Arab League etc…). As a rule diplomats must return to their home country for some time after serving 4 or 5 years abroad, before getting another international assignment.

The Minister Plenipotentiary (Wazeer Mofawad) is a position one reaches usually after 20 years of service. The title holder would be heading a Consulate General or acting as the number two person in a large Embassy. In some rare cases he acts as an Ambassador in some countries.

We hope the above was of some use to you.
Good Luck

Q3: What to include in performance appraisals?
I am a newly appointed Quality & Human Resources Officer in an engineering consulting firm in Cairo. While my background is engineering, which I have been doing for a few years, I got interested in quality and HR issues, hence I got the assignment by mutual agreement with the firm's President who needed to fill this position. It also allows me to work more regular hours, which is more convenient for my baby daughter.

As I am in the process of proposing a staff appraisal system to be introduced in the firm, I was hoping if you could provide me with the key criteria or sections that should be covered for such a purpose.

N. O. (Dokki, Giza)

Replying:

Dear Ms. O.

Congratulations on your new role, coming from the "front lines" as they say will give you a more practical and hands on perspective of quality and HR issues.

With regards to performance appraisals, kindly not that they vary, despite having common factors between them. At the end of the day the objective is to provide feedback to the concerned employee about how he is doing, where he needs to develop etc… The performance criteria (or dimensions) vary from one category of jobs to the other.. for example some jobs have a sales, business development, client management dimension.. others are more technical in nature or involve significant project, resources management…

Additionally, management and supervisory jobs would need to be measured also according to how the subordinates are being supervised, developed, motivated etc…

There are however a number of performance dimensions / criteria we present below that could be useful to you:

Professional Attributes
· Abides by working hours
· Portrays professional appearance
· Credibility with others
· Adaptable to various situations
· Decisiveness / decision making ability
· Self driven and demonstrates initiative
· Communication skills (written, meetings etc..)
· Active in self development and keeping current

Job Performance
· Ability to get things done
· Quality of work
· Ability to work with others / team player
· Ability to multitask and manage work load
· Anticipates problems and identifies solutions
· Technical skills and know how
· Functional and/or industry skills and know how
· Complies with standards, and methodologies
· Sharing knowledge with others
· Business & Client Handling
· Entrepreneurial & business driven
· Ability to close deals
· Managing client relationships & expectations
· Ability to cross sell (to other units)
· Achieving targets / meeting budgets
· Translates client needs into opportunities for additional services / products to be offered

Management
· Ability to manage unit / team effectively (planning, resources, status reporting)
· Ability to manage projects / assignments effectively (planning, resources, status reporting)
· Delivers within budget (cost & time)
· Monitors progress against plans / budgets, surfacing issues in a timely fashion
· Ability to delegate effectively
· Manages contractors and vendors effectively to mitigate risks
· Defines & communicates standards for quality and evaluates delivery against those standards
· Interest in subordinates' development
· Provides timely & adequate performance feedback / appraisals to subordinates

We hope the above was of some use to you.
Good Luck

Note from the editor: 
Employer names and inquiry sender names were withheld for confidentiality

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