Dean Brenner

Like the rest of you, my colleagues and I are in the home stretch of our year… one more week, and then we shut it down for a lengthy, and well-deserved, break. At the end of a long, good, tiring year, it is human nature to look forward to a break. Kicking back, hanging with […]

One of my favorite quotes from the late Steve Jobs captures exactly how we feel about PowerPoint here at The Latimer Group: “I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking. People confront problems by creating presentations. I want them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of […]

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 […]

We spend a lot of time leading workshops for our client companies, and we are often impressed with some of the insightful things that are shared in those sessions. Some time ago, we were with one of our most significant client companies and a participant in the workshop, named Paul, started talking about the card game poker. At that […]

All of us are leaders in one way or another. We all lead, either formally or informally, constantly or occasionally, officially or unofficially. But we all lead. No two leadership situations are exactly the same, because every company, team and colleague represents a different organism, and every new situation represents a different challenge. And you, […]

I spend a lot more time thinking about listening now than I used to. Why? I am not really sure. It could be my advancing age, with a major milestone looming on the horizon. It could be parenthood. It could be experience in my job. It could be the influence of some of the people […]

Winston Churchill once famously said “the most important thing about education is the appetite.” We teach and coach communication skills all day, every day, here at The Latimer Group. And we see all kinds of people walk into our workshops. We see the willing, the unwilling, the motivated, the unmotivated… and everything in between. Some […]

Every once in a while, something unexpected happens that just makes your day so much better. I had one of those “somethings” yesterday. I am on the road again this week, away from my family, which is never fun. I landed and made my way to the hotel, got settled and unpacked, and prepared to […]

Have you ever considered mapping your progress as a communicator? In short, the only way to REALLY be sure you’re improving as an effective communicator is to have some way to measure that improvement. When we work with clients at The Latimer Group, we use a three-stage rubric of Professional-, Leadership-, and Executive-Level communication… So how do we […]

(We recently had a conversation with a good friend of The Latimer Group, who said something really powerful to us. Our friend shared that her firm no longer calls communication a “soft skill.” Instead, they refer to communication as a “power skill.” We LOVE that, and it caused me to write this post, which has […]