Blog

In the coming weeks, we’ll be doing some work with clients on three continents, and executives from 15 different countries. In planning business travel of this scale, it always gets me thinking about how we communicate in that global environment, and how we have to adapt what we do to an audience that may not have […]

The Essence of Presence

Posted On October 6, 2014 BY

When we say someone has a strong “presence,” what does that actually mean? I mean, specifically, what does it mean? Ask 100 different people (and we have), you might get 50 different answers. A strong presence means different things to different people. And when you push people to define what it actually is, you tend […]

Today’s post was written by Brett Slater (above, left), Chief Social Media Officer at The Latimer Group Last June, I started taking comedy improv classes at Unscrewed Theater in Tucson, Arizona. My original motivation was to fan my creative flames by working with others in a collaborative setting. As a freelancer, I don’t work with […]

In Praise of Derek Jeter

Posted On October 1, 2014 BY

The “Derek Jeter is Awesome” narrative has been pretty well done to death by now, so I won’t belabor the point. But his retirement on Sunday marks the end of a lot of things, above and beyond a baseball career. Sports, celebrity and politics have undergone a sea change in the last 20 years. Everyone […]

A quick thought for you today… We preach “knowing your audience” here at The Latimer Group. We preach it all the time, all day, every day. It is critical to clear communication in the 21st century. In a team context, we would add a slight wrinkle. In a team context, being a great teammate and […]

Today’s post was written by Amy Fenollosa, Director of Learning at The Latimer Group. Did you see Apollos Hester this week? He’s a high school football player from Texas whose 2-minute interview on local television went viral. It’s gotten more than 5 million views in less than a week. What is it about Apollos that intrigued […]

We recently contributed another article to our friends at Switch and Shift, a business blog focused on “the human side of business.” Our latest piece is called, “How to Practice the MOST Human Thing,” and is all about listening to and respecting our colleagues. 21st century communication has become more about speaking than listening. More […]

When to Debate, When to Dictate

Posted On September 22, 2014 BY

I’m working with an executive right now who has an interesting and engaging leadership style. He likes to collaborate, he likes dialogue, he wants to hear what people have to say. He allows lots of input, and seems to detest strict hierarchy. I like this style, actually, because it is similar to my own. But […]

We spend a lot of time with our clients talking about ways to create outstanding business communication. And all great business communication has five common characteristics, or ingredients: clarity, brevity, context, impact and value. Every single time we communicate in the work place, we need to be thinking about all five of these things. We […]

In nearly every one of our communication workshops, we spend significant time discussing the role of detail in 21st century communication. Does detail matter? Of course it does. How much detail is necessary? That depends on many things: who your audience is, how familiar they are with the topic, how senior they are, how mission […]

A book about change

The Latimer Group’s CEO Dean Brenner is a noted keynote speaker and author on the subject of persuasive communication. He has written three books, including Persuaded, in which he details how communication can transform organizations into highly effective, creative, transparent environments that succeed at every level.