Dean Brenner

Let me get the footnote of attribution out of the way. I “borrowed” that line, with permission, from my great friend and business school classmate, Phil Bonanno. And now back to our regularly scheduled program… My colleagues and I talk all the time about how listening, awareness and respect are critical building blocks of persuasion. You simply can’t […]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about personal behaviors, especially in relation to how we “show up” in a professional setting. And here are five things that always seem to jump to the front of the line for me, as being the most important communication behaviors. Think about this… What would it be like if you could… […]

When people are asking us questions — during an interview, sales pitch, presentation, or anything else — there are lots of ways to think about and prepare for those questions. Let’s think about this on several levels. The lowest, and worst level, is when we don’t think about the Q&A at all. We don’t anticipate […]

If your communication problem is time, then brevity is your friend. Make sure to shorten your message significantly. Reduce your information to a list of “three things,” so that your message is easier to remember. If your communication problem is attention span, then a “hook” is your friend. Work hard to connect with your audience with something […]

What does the world of communication look like right now? What are the barriers to getting our point across today, at this moment in time? There are a bunch, and none of them are inconsequential. Truth #1: The world continues to be a really noisy place. There are lots of people and things competing for attention span and mind share, and it […]

One of the things that consistently comes up in conversation during coaching and training is the moving target of credibility. How to get it… what to do if you don’t have it… and how much of it is needed. And just like any other “power source” it helps to first understand the sources of credibility, […]

Author’s note: I was reading through our blog archive very early one morning recently, and I came across this post. I wrote this in the fall of 2020 during the depths of the health crisis, and with a controversial election looming. It was timely, for me, and based on the reaction from our audience, for […]

Before you start your day, take a moment and walk with me… a quick, figurative one. I know you are busy and you have a lot to do today. Just a few minutes, is all I ask. Pause for a moment, and think about your life, and your journey to get where you are right […]

Do you ever have to participate in a standard, regularly-scheduled meeting within your company, where you (or someone you work with) presents updated data and information on the business/project? (Most of you have either led such meetings, or at least sat in on them.) Do these meetings end up feeling like the same meeting over […]

My wife and I were recently organizing a box of keepsakes we have been collecting over the last few years: birth announcements, first report cards, self portraits from art class that are indecipherable. And in that box, we found a note we had written to ourselves, where we had laid out our intended principles of […]