Dean Brenner

… is not the absence of conflict. The sign of a great team is the ability to resolve conflict, in a respectful and productive way. Of all the truisms I hold dear, this one has proven to be more true, more consistently, than any other. I first learned this truism when I was competing for […]

In the 21st century business world, very few things are NOT global in some way, and successful professionals and organizations have no choice but to be thinking about how to reach and connect to a global audience. There are a few things we encourage our clients to do when they are speaking/presenting/meeting with a global […]

Here is a common scenario that I have watched and experienced many times: the words that were spoken/written by someone were received in way that was different from the intended impact. The message that was received or the feeling that was created was not at all what the speaker/writer was trying to send or create. […]

Attention business leaders… every once in a while, it is really healthy to pause, look in the mirror, and examine if and how you have changed and evolved. We are all evolving all the time, in varying ways and at varying speeds. We are all always evolving.  But the real learning from that evolution often […]

Have you ever, um, listened, um, to someone who, um, has a distracting pattern to the way they, um, speak? Or, like, have you ever, like, focused so hard on, like, one aspect of their speech pattern, that you, like, can’t hear anything else? OrHowAboutThePersonWhoSpeaksSoQuicklyThatEveryWordSeemsLikeItIs PartOfThePreviousWordAndTheAudienceCan’tRetainAnythingBecauseThe SpeakerWon’tSlowDown? Seemingly tiny distractions in your speech pattern can become a really big deal in the work place. Because once […]

My colleagues and I think about communication in very broad terms. We define our communication as more than just our words or our slides. Our communication is everything we bring into the interaction… our words, slides, body language, facial expression, attire, silence, questions… all of it contributes to what we communicate to people around us.  […]

I missed most of the inaugural festivities on January 20th, due to a long day with several of our clients. But we recorded everything, and my wife and I made a date for that evening to sit and watch all of it. I have only been to one Inaugural, in 1988. But I watch every […]

Originally published with the Forbes Coaches Council, November 2019. Have you ever gone into a presentation or a sales meeting convinced that you were about to deliver a slam dunk, only to come out feeling like you threw brick after brick? Have you ever introduced a new initiative to your team with great confidence that it […]

Welcome to the latest episode of The Message Makeover Podcast. In this episode, Dan and I interview Kellie Meiman Hock on the art of international trade negotiations, and the importance of thinking hard about the person, people or group sitting across the table from you.  Kellie is a Managing Partner at McLarty Associates in Washington, DC, […]

(Writer’s Note: We pulled this one from the archive today, for two reasons: First, this concept of followership continues to be an important one, from our perspective. And second, my creative juices were not flowing this morning… I needed a little help from the archive! But in all seriousness, you can’t have good leadership inside […]