Apart from working hard, having the right technical skills, and always achieving all your work goals, there are other ways you can impress your boss, and we’re not talking about washing his car or shining his shoes.

From being an employee who does manual work to one that manages a team of 50 people, there are certain principles that are universally appreciated by bosses regardless of the job scope and market.

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In order to be highly successful impressive employees, there are a few timeless traits that you should inculcate in your working attitude. Here are 8 legitimate ways you can take up to impress your boss, regardless of whether you are a new employee, an established one or a team lead.

Recommended Reading: 7 More Tips for Moving Up the Corporate Ladder.

1. Be Proactive: Be Willing to Learn

When you first join an organization, chances are that your boss will only ‘teach’ you what you need to know in order to do your job properly. There are many things outside your job scope that you need to learn in order to familiarize yourself with the organization.

There are also things that can’t be taught, such as unofficial or unwritten shortcuts that your boss and/or colleagues might know of when it comes to dealing with certain things or people.

For one reason or another, your boss would probably prefer that you find out these shortcuts for yourself through the course of your work or interactions with colleagues and clients. That’s where your willingness to learn will help propel your career.

Learn the hard way or Just Listen

In some cases, there are lessons that you can only acquire through experience; there’s no way to go about it but to dive in headlong and learn things the hard way. Hence, you should be proactive and be open to new experiences, be willing to try out new things, and listen to the advice from people who have been there, done that.

Your initiative is essential to your personal career groowth. If you don’t have the initiative, you’ll never ‘get it’ no matter who teaches you.

2. Be Proactive: Find Solutions

After getting acquainted with your job, you’ll find that there are certain existing loopholes or prevailing problems that have been left unsolved by the current crew. This can well be your opportunity to shine.

Seek these problems and raise the issue with your boss, but don’t stop there. Come up with some potential solutions to solve them. Even if you have yet to appreciate the scenario as much as your boss does, the fact that you’ve showed the initiative to think through them will probably impress on him or her.

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Suggest but Don’t Force

Do not however make the mistake of forcing your solution into effect. Some problems prevail because of unclear reasons that you should probably figure out before you make any rash changes to the norm.

This is especially true when you are in a decision-making role, because the changes you impose to a well-established structure, no matter how flawed, will undoubtedly face resistance from parts of the organization.

Also check out: 6 Tips Towards Not Having Pointless Meetings

3. Be Responsible: Admit Your Mistakes

We make mistakes from time to time, that’s how we learn. Any decent boss will recognize this as a way of life, and will value your honesty and integrity over your ability to fess up and admit that you screwed up. Everyone can make mistakes but not everyone dare admit that they did.

Your boss may actually be happier to know that he has an employee who takes responsibility for their actions even if you feel that you have let them down.

That being said, take note that not all bosses (or management) tolerate mistakes. Therefore, it is expected of you to come up with a solution especially when the problem you have created had dire consequences.

Draw up and present a concrete plan to rectify the issue or minimize the damage caused. Even if the idea dooes not sound feasible to them, at least you have shown your efforts in trying to remedy it.

4. Be Responsible: Act on What You Say

Establish a good rep for yourself in the organization by making your promises happen. This is important if you want people to take your words seriously. Being able to deliver is a mark of reliability for you as an employee or essentially someone people work with. Your boss will entrust you with greater responsibilities as you prove that you can walk the talk.

Watch what is on your Plate

There are times when you may find it hard to keep fulfilling your promises for various reasons. For instance, you may have promised your boss to get a certain project done by a certain deadline, but other work commitments got in the way. Under such circumstances, you should consider negotiating with your boss for a lesser workload, or a later deadline to get the project done.

It’s not that straightforward all the time, so you will definitely have to weigh your options and prioritize. The bottom-line is, don’t promise what you probably can’t deliver!

5. Be a team Player: Volunteer

Offer to help your colleagues when they get overwhelmed by their workload. This will not only earn you the respect from your boss, but also from your teammates. If you prefer this approach, there are a few things you should be wary of.

First, make sure that you can cope with your own workload first before offering to help. Secondly, suffice to say that you should assume a secondary role especially when decisions are to be made. You should not assume responsibility for another person’s job.

Also be advised that when you offer your help too often, your colleagues might take this for granted and pass their work to you. You should know when to draw the line to make sure that you only help them when they are drowning in their work, not when they still have time to chat with the receptionist. One thing you can look forward to with this approach is that when you need help yourself, you know who you can turn to.

6. Be a team Player: Stay Upbeat

When morale is low in the office, everyone’s dragging their feet to work every morning. Work productivity drops, and complaints get louder day by day. If there could only be a person who turns up for work on time every day, who gives his best in his job, doesn’t complain, keeps everyone motivated with his positivity, subconsciously inspiring and lifting the spirits of even those who’ve only heard about him, he would be the life of the office.

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Now, imagine if you are that person. You will be that shining beacon of light in times of chaos for others to look up to. You’ll ‘lighten’ up your working environment. For this to work, you need to have a positive attitude at work. Not only does positivity give you the energy to perform your best at work, it also distinguishes you from the rest of the crowd. You’ll not only impress the boss, you can impress everyone in the office.

7. Be a leader: Fight for your Staff

If you’re managing a group of people under you, note that your boss will assess you with a different yardstick. As the leader and decision maker of the group, you represent your team when dealing with higher authority aka the boss.

You have a greater say than your subordinates when it comes to requesting for things important to the well-being of your staff. This is where you can impress your boss and make your team members look up to you.

Be a part of the Team

Whether it is about turning away unnecessary workload for your team, or about getting a larger chunk of the resources or more benefits for your people, showing that you care enough to act on their behalf would earn you valuable points as a leader. And in return, your staff would prefer to remain under your care and supervision and will deliver and perform better.

Fight for your staff and in return, they will fight for you. And that’s how you impress your boss and become invaluable to the organization.

8. Be a Leader: Practice what you Preach

You can’t be the person setting the rules, then breaking them. Life doesn’t work that way. Lead by example, they say – actually nowadays they demand it. If you yourself demand that your team be punctual to work every day, as the leader who is seen to be more capable and reliable, you can’t be the last person to enter the office. Break the rules one time too often and it’ll just be a matter of time before your authority and power gets undermined.

Ultimately, how you behave as a leader affects the entire team you’re leading. A team is only as disciplined as how their leader is.

Read more: 8 Tips To Simplify Your Work Life

Conclusion

How your team acts will have an impact on the entire team your boss is leading: the organization. If you are looking to impress your boss, then make sure you put on your best behavior for your people to follow. For more survival tactics in the office environment, check out Survive Office: 10 Tips For Moving Up Corporate Ladder

Considering the fact that WordPress is the most popular Content Management System out there and serves many users, it’s no wonder that developers feel encouraged and motivated to create themes for WordPress. After all, the gigantic size of the WordPress’ user base simply means that themes created for WordPress are likely to be used by many people, thereby giving developers good returns for their hard work.

In fact, if you can get it right with your WordPress themes, the opportunities to earn off premium themes are endless. Yet, often we find talented developers not making it big with WP themes in terms of financial gains. In this article, we take a look at certain things that you should do right in order to make money from WordPress themes created by you.

But first, here are some collections of WordPress themes and websites you might want to check out:

• 50 Hand-Picked Beautiful Premium Responsive WordPress Themes
• 55 Fresh & High Quality WordPress Themes
• 35 Free And Professional-Looking WordPress Themes
• 40+ Free Responsive WordPress Themes
• 41 Great Looking Free WordPress Themes
• Showcase Of Beautiful WordPress-Powered Websites

1. Obey The Standard Norms

As a developer, following norms of standardization always gives the right impression to potential customers. Going in an unorganized manner not only gives other developers that distinct advantage over you by putting them in a better light but also burdens you with additional hard work and unnecessary coding.

By all means, you should consider employing a well-known theme framework such as Genesis or Thesis to make your coding life easier. If you are not a freelancer, but a premium theme store in your own right, it helps to have your own custom theme framework to model your themes on.

Coding Rules and Practices

WordPress has its own set of coding standards. Obey them! In an ocean full of WP themes, many advanced or even mid-level users will discard your theme if it is not properly coded. In order to ensure that your theme confirms to coding standards, you can make use of a handy plugin called Theme Check.

2. Internationalization and Localization

Having a translation-ready theme goes a long way in adding to its popularity. Considering the diverse set of users that WordPress serves, it is obvious that not every one of them speaks fluent English. Thus, a translation-ready theme is the best answer to attract a wide user base and gain popularity.

3. Theme Options and Customizability

Obviously, every user would like to be able to customize a theme as per his or her preferences. In order to be something that a user would like to invest money in, your theme should have customizability settings in a user-friendly manner.

If you expect every user to tweak the code to make minor changes to your theme, you can expect your theme to be used by a handful of websites only. Thus, having a non-bloated yet useful Theme Options page is a good idea.

4. Documentation and Support

Considering the fact that many themes are sold for $35 on ThemeForest, you may not be keen on providing 24×7 support for your work. That is understandable, but you should also note that the relatively low price point attracts a new set of audience in itself: student bloggers and casual bloggers who would want to have a unique look for their blog.

Such users generally appreciate if the theme author can answer a few questions, possibly via a tweet at least. As a result, you should be keen on reaching out and connecting with your audience. Similarly, ensure that your theme is properly documented and regularly updated.

5. Other Winning Tips

Apart from the above, having themes that serve a specific purpose, such as photography websites or real estate websites, always helps and gets better financial returns. Furthermore, certain features such as social media integration, if done with innovation, can also present a solid case for your theme’s financial performance.

Are you a theme developer? If so, what ideas and strategies do you follow to ensure that your themes have a good showing in the market? Share them with us in the comments below!

Editor’s note: This is a written post by Sufyan bin Uzayr is a freelance writer, graphic artist, programmer and photographer based in India. He is also the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of an e-journal named Brave New World. You can visit his website, follow him on Twitter or friend him on Facebook and Google+.

The Personal Hotspot feature in Apple’s iOS devices was introduced in iOS 4.3 back in 2011. This feature allows you to take advantage of your iPhone or iPad’s internet connection to get online. It’s a great alternative for when your Wi-Fi connection is not working or you simply can’t find a dependable Internet connection anywhere else.

However, we are aware that there are problems in trying to locate this feature, and sometimes it goes M.I.A. for no reason. In fact many users encounter this problem after updating their iOS to a newer version.

In this post, we will try to cover all possible reasons why your Personal Hotspot feature goes missing, and how you can recover it and put it to good use.

Read Also: Fix Home Button Delays On IOS Devices

#1. Reset Network Settings

Sometimes, when updating your iOS firmware, the iPhone network settings may go haywire causing the Personal Hotspot feature to go missing.

One method of getting your personal hotspot option back is to Reset Network Settings. This will reset every network setting including Wi-Fi passwords you have saved into your iPhone. Here’s how to do it.

Under Settings, tap on General. Scroll to the bottom and you’ll see the Reset button. Tap on it.

Tap on Reset Network Settings after that; when prompted, tap on the red Reset Network Settings button.

Turn off your iPhone then turn it back on and you should get your Personal Hotspot setting back

If you’ve tried this method before and found that it is not working, read on.

#2. Uninstall Data-Managing Apps

In the past, if you’ve installed an app which added a network profile to your phone, you could try uninstalling that app.

Apps like Onavo is said to be great for managing data, however it also installs a network profile to your iPhone which is said to cause issues that remove the Personal Hotspot settings from the iPhone.

To remove a network profile from your phone, go to Settings > General > Profile to uninstall the profile.

After uninstalling the network profile created by a data-managing app, you should uninstall the data managing app too by tapping and holding the app icon until the X button appears on the left top corner of the app icon. Tap on that X to uninstall it.

If this doesn’t work, try Method 3.

#3. Delete Pre-installed Profiles on iPhone

If you have previously installed a data disabling profile like iPhoneNoData.com to block GPRS, EDGE or 3G Internet connection in an earlier iPhone to avoid extra charges for data network access, try to delete that particular installed profile.

It might be able to bring Personal Hotspot option back. To remove iPhone Configuration Profiles, go to Settings > General > Profiles. Tap the profile name like "Disable Edge 3G" and tap "Remove" to discard the particular profile.

Restart your iPhone and check if Personal Hotspot is back.

Still can’t find Personal Hotspot? Try the next method.

#4. Delete iPhone Configuration Profiles on Mac

If you’re not able to see a pre-installed data service blocking profile at Settings > General > Profile, perhaps deleting your iPhone configuration profiles on a Mac can solve your problem.

To delete iPhone confirguration profiles on Mac, you need to install iPhone Configuration Utility 3.5, a free utility to maintain configuration profiles. Upon installation, launch iPhone Configration Utility.

Click on "Configuration Profiles" on the left sidebar.

Select installed profiles like "Disable Data Services", "Disable Edge 3G" or a similar profile name, press Delete to remove it from your iPhone configuration profiles.

Restart your iPhone and you should be able to see the Personal Hotspot option in your iPhone now.

#5. Reset iPhone To Factory Settings

If all the above does not get you back your Personal Hostpot settings, then you probably need to restore your iPhone to Factory Settings. But doing this will erase all your data from your iPhone, restoring it to the its original untarnished status (right out of the box).

So before doing this, we’ll advise you to visit your local carrier provider and ask them to take a look at it for you (some people reported that this fixed their Personal Hotspot issue, so it’s worth a shot).

When all else fails

To Reset or Restore your iPhone to Factory Settings, first go to Settings and then General. At the bottom, tap on Reset.

Then tap on Erase All Content and Settings, and when prompted, tap Erase iPhone.

Your iPhone should then go through the resetting process and you’ll see the Apple logo with a loading bar.

Remember, this method removes all your personal info, settings, apps and data including Photos and Music; this step should definitely bring back your Personal Hotspot settings but at the cost of your data.