I’ve been spending quite a lot of time thinking about this. What makes a good team? What helps the members better communicate and work together. What causes the conflicts they might have to sort out in the future? I have not reached all the possible conclusions, but I think what keeps things going is basic common sense.

Most teams are actually collections of smaller teams. And the leaders of each team are highly important. They have to know how to manage their own team, motivate them, try their best to be impartial and fair, and make sure the collaboration model they promote when it comes to other teams is a functional one.

I strongly believe that the team leader’s actions and attitude are subsequently reflected by the actions of the people they manage. For example, if a Sales manager has the bad habit of treating a marketing department as if they were a joke, no good and highly incompetent, it’s most likely the sales people they manage will act the same way.

And now we come to the common sense aspect. I believe companies who know what they want and have a pretty good HR department are not about to go and hire all the incompetents in the world. Therefore, most team members are good at what they are doing. They bring a certain value to the company and in most cases there are nothing close to being crazy or antisocial. So what everyone (from the top down) should do to make things work is pretty simple:

1. Try to be as clear as possible when saying/writing something and make sure everyone understands you.

2. Give everyone the benefit of doubt. If something does not happen as you’ve planned it, don’t go making accusations when you have no idea what the others have been doing.

3. Agree on a means of communications and stick to it. Don’t go asking why you weren’t emailed the details of the project if you’ve agreed it’s better to use an online system to update task progress.

4. If you go crazy one day and publicly make false statements and accusations, apologize publicly. Private apologies will never compensate the damage you have caused.

5. Review all facts carefully and bare in mind you are human and could be missing important details.

6. Give everyone a second chance, including yourself, and try again.

As you see, nothing complicated. You can have all the training you want to make your team better professionals, to get them to be more efficient, to help them improve. But to have a team that gets along, has common goals and stays open minded, all it takes is common sense.

We all know there’s a certain age when boys run away from girls and never ever want to play with them. Well, imagine what it’s like to be a girl who likes boys’ games at that age! It all changes into: “I can’t play with you, the other boys will laugh at me”, “Go get your dolls and play with the girls”, “You, play football? No way!” and other such lines. As I was the type of girl who loved football, climbing trees, running and fighting boys, you can imagine I had a hard time doing the things I loved.

So basically, I was trying to get them to see things from my perspective. To get them to listen, understand and come to agree with me. Sounds a bit like PR to you? It does to me! So here’s a few things I picked up.

1. Giving up is rarely an option, but sometimes it’s worthwhile

I had a limited numbers of children to try convince on my street. The boys where the ones with power. I used to follow them around and keep asking them to let me play. It rarely worked. But it sometimes did. Right now, I am trying to reach a limited number of publications (online and offline). Let’s face it, mail servers are not as easy or as hot as cool phones and other gadgets. And for those interested in such matters, there are plenty of stories to tell. I just have to keep on trying.

On the other hand, trying to get the girls to play football and climb trees instead of making doll fashion shows didn’t work that well. I was really targeting the wrong group!

2. Whenever you have something really cool, everyone is interested!

Being the first kid on the block with a skateboard from Germany really made me a shiny star. And I negotiated a lot of fun games with the boys for rides on it. Also, having a new shiny ball when the one used for the game gets crashed under a car led to the same great results for yours truly.

Later I found out nothing beats a great story. If your product or service is really useful and what you launch or say is newsworthy, it will be picked up by the press. Having huge budgets helps, but so does playing smart.

3. When they need you, they know where to find you

My friend Dragos is a great example. We were raised together, living next door, and we were great friends. We were inseparable inside, but when we went outside, he completely ignored me. He didn’t want the rest of the boys to laugh at him.

Yet the moment we went inside and he had no other playmate, he wasn’t running away from me anymore. He actually came by or user our special knock in the wall to invite me over to his house. I would go wild playing with remote control cars

4. The situation changes in time

If you play your cards right, work on building strong relationships, they pay off. When it comes with girls and boys, we know how things get better a few years later. Same goes for your PR efforts. If you put your heart and mind to it, your emails are actually read, you see more reviews being published and people get to know your company’s name. It a really cool feeling actually!

Guest post by Alex Cristache

Did you know that every second a new blog is published somewhere in the World? That’s 84,600 new blogs everyday! Some of them are personal blogs, others are targeted, niche blogs. If you are running a niche blog, just think about how many competitors add up each day, eager to overtake your position, authority and search engine rakings. It’s a tough world for a blogger and to insure your success you must take advantage of every “weapon” at your disposal. My weapon of choice for today is Blog Design.

No matter if you are running a personal or business (niche) blog, you should always keep in mind that your blog is who you are, it’s your profile on the internet and a mirror for yourself. It is said that you can’t find two identical people, so why should we find 2 identical blogs?

Blog writers allover the World, agree on one thing: Give your posts a personal touch; make your presence felt on your blog. The same rule applies when it comes to blog design. These days we have hundreds of resources at our disposal, most of them even free. We have free and premium themes, we have plugins and widgets and we have experts giving away free advice on their own blogs. What we don’t have is an excuse not to make a difference by using them!

While a designer will always choose to create a new theme for his blog, the rest of us will have to search for a premium theme that will best serve our interests, or get a free theme that would need to be customized for a better use. Premium themes usually come packed with almost every option that a professional blog would need, so I’m not going to talk about them. Instead, I’ll concentrate on things that need to be taken in consideration when creating a new theme, or customizing a free one.

Choosing the best resolution for you theme

At this time, there is no fixed resolution that can provide accessibility to 100% of your readers. It pretty much depends on your blog’s target and your statistics.
My preferred resolution for design is 1024×768, since it has become widely used, but still there are people using old monitors, or simply don’t need a higher resolution and are using still 800×600. Look at your statistics and compare the two. If the 800×600 users are only a small percentage of your total (mine is around 0.64%), you should definitely make use of more of your available space.

Also, when choosing the right layout resolution you should consider your blog’s structure: 2 columns or 3 columns. If you’re going for 2 columns, you could easily use 800×600, but if you’re choosing a 3 columns layout, you should give your content enough space to “breathe” by using a larger resolution, preferably 1024×768. Always, make sure to eliminate the scrollbar width from you layout’s width (~40 pixels).

Structure and layout

Before designing or choosing a free theme to customize, take a moment to think ahead. Consider you blog’s evolution, advertising needs, required sections etc. These are all important factors in your decision when choosing a 2 or 3 column design. If you’re running a news blog, a 3 column design would most probably serve your needs better. It provides enough space to list recent, popular and featured articles, archives and categories, authors, advertising zones, links and whatever you might want to add at a future time.

Another important thing to consider is your sidebar placement. As most of us are right-handed, and the website’s scrollbar is on the right side, I’ll almost always go for a right-aligned sidebar for navigation purposes, since it’s closer to the users’ action zone. Placing the sidebar on the left has its advantages too. There are many resources online that can confirm the fact that a website’s main heat zone is top to mid-top left. This means that your users will scan your blog starting there and loose interest while advancing to the right and further down to the bottom. Still, I’m choosing the right side, as the heat map is relevant only when providing good, interesting, content, and I’m still to see the internet user more interested on clicking links than reading a good article.

When using a 3 column theme, make sure that your main navigation items are place on the first sidebar, not the one on the right. This gives the low-resolution users the ability to further browse you blog.

Make use, but don’t abuse, the white space. Having a clear separation area between sections and between blog posts it’s extremely important, as it help users scan faster for the desired content. When fighting for a lower bounce rate, making sure your reader finds his way easily around your blog becomes a top priority! Consider at least a 20 to 30 pixels space between your sidebar(s) and the content, and between 2 successive blog posts.

Highly important items and sections

When building up traffic (visits), three factors are essential: the number of pages viewed per visit, the time spent on your site and the bounce rate. These factors can all be improved by providing your readers with means to continue their navigation on your blog.

Always consider having a list of recent and popular items displayed on your sidebar, or at the end of your article, when reading the full post.

Give your users the option to search for relevant content by placing a search box in a visible area in the upper part (above the fold) of your blog. While most blogs automatically place a link to your RSS feed, most of the time it’s placed at the end of your sidebar. Consider repositioning that link closer to the top, and also, adding an option of email subscription.

Place your blog’s categories in an easily accessible and visible area. It serves both as a way to further guide your readers and as a statement of what your blog is all about!

The tag cloud is a great section that can guide your readers through your blog’s most popular topics. Make sure you place it in a visible area, or create a separate page that includes the tag cloud, like I do on my website.

Through phrases in your post and links in your template, guide your readers to the comment section. It’s highly important to add interactivity to your blog. Debates can lead to new content ideas or you might even learn a few new things!

Final thoughts

While having a well designed and structured blog is not enough to ensure your online success, it can easily make a difference between two equivalent-content-quality blogs.
Think ahead, plan, make the right choices and you’ll have a better chance against the thousands of new blogs breathing down your neck every day!

Alex Cristache is 27 and has been working for top Romanian web design, development and consultancy companies for over 9 years. Quite impressive for his young age, don’t you agree?

He’s tried a lot up to now: web designer, senior web, print & logo designer, occasional copywriter, web & SEO consultant and project manager. Although he focuses on design, he’s also been working with PHP & MySQL on the side. He also fell in love with WordPress the moment it appeared on the market and changed our lives.

He currently blogs at Blogsessive.com and runs CREATIVEurope, a website bookmarking the best European creative portfolios available.