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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. It could be parenthood. It could be experience in my job. It could be the influence of some of the people in my life. Probably, it is a little bit of […]

I was recently leading a workshop, when a participant named Paul started talking about the card game poker. We were discussing body language and presence, and Paul equated the conversation to having a good “poker face” while playing cards. In other words, he was talking about maintaining a consistent presence when speaking, no matter what we might […]

The world is noisy and getting noisier by the day. The amount of information available — through email, texts, chats, video calls, meetings, online media, and more — can be overwhelming, disorienting, and is almost always distracting. Good information becomes difficult to separate from bad. And in a business context, all this noise makes it harder to be heard causing good ideas to be ignored, important decisions to be delayed, and decreasing employee morale. Companies that want to compete and thrive need to find strategies to diminish the distraction.

My wife Emily and I have recently been going through some old files in our basement, clearing some stuff out and making some much-needed room in an already-crowded basement. And whenever one starts opening boxes from long ago, two things always seem to happen. You find some stuff, and wonder “why did I ever keep that?” And […]

“Would you like to turn on tracking to allow us to gather personal information to improve the experience?” After downloading a new operating system, app, or device, we have all pondered this question. This question often creates antipathy or anger, curiosity at best. But it is an important question. Direct, honest, raw feedback is needed […]

Communication (or rather great communication) is not a series of memorized steps, standard moves, or a list of tips and tricks (oh how I hate that phrase…) No. Great communication is really about questions and choices. It is about understanding what is really going on in a given moment, seeing the situation clearly, and then deciding […]

This post was written by Lauren St. Germain, Facilitator and Coach for The Latimer Group. I am an “at home sourdough bread baker”. And to know me is to know that I love talking about bread just as much as I love baking and eating it. Think of me as your new “bread obsessed” friend. I started […]

My wife and I were recently organizing a box of keepsakes we have been collecting over the last few years: birth announcements, report cards, art class masterpieces… you get the idea. And in that box, we found a note we had written to ourselves, where we had laid out our intended “principles of parenting.” We […]

This post was written by Ang Barnard, Facilitator and Coach for The Latimer Group. “How do you manage your nerves during a presentation?” It’s a frequent question we’re asked here at The Latimer Group. Everyone gets nervous – even seasoned speakers. I speak publicly on a regular basis, and recently gave a well-received Ted Talk. And as […]

This week, Latimer CEO and Co-Founder Dean Brenner is a guest on the Fiducient Advisors’ Nonprofit Investment Advisors podcast. The Latimer Group and Fiducient share a close corporate relationship, as we have worked together in a variety of ways on a number of different projects. So we were excited when they invited our CEO to […]