I was speaking with my good friend Tom the other day. Tom is a business owner, and the definition of a straight shooter. He doesn’t tolerate people who waste his time or who don’t deliver as promised. We were speaking about a few things on the phone, and he shared a story of a contractor […]
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Not long ago, while teaching a client workshop, one of the participants verbalized a great way to think about business meetings… specifically, a great way to think about the level of information you need to be able to discuss. The participant described the difference between an “index card meeting” and a “full binder meeting.” Some […]
Originally published with the Forbes Coaches Council, August 2019. Many of us likely want to become better communicators, whether your goal is to speak clearly, concisely or persuasively. As individuals, we can work to improve our own communication through preparation and practice of a few crucial underlying skills. We can set out to know our audience, hone […]
My son started fourth grade this week, and on his first day he brought home something from his teacher that I found profound and inspiring. As he was excitedly recounting his first day, and telling us about old and new friends, his new locker and how he intends to decorate it, he pulled out a […]
Keeping your energy level up all the time is hard. We all get tired. We all get frustrated. We all get sick of our work/colleagues/friends/selves. And when we are any of these things, our productivity suffers. One of the best quotes I have ever heard (well… more of an attitude than a quote) is that positivity […]
Clients of The Latimer Group have heard me say, many times, that the hardest thing for any organizational leader to do is to change the way his or her people actually behave. If you want to reinvent your organization, you can add or subtract business units, product lines, services, locations, etc, etc, etc. You can make yourself […]
Stereotyping… I thought we weren’t doing this anymore? I thought that as a society we had realized that making broad generalizations about a person based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, or demographic was no longer acceptable. Well, I guess Good Morning America host Lara Spencer didn’t get the memo. Or at least, the version […]
How often do you sit in a meeting, or on a conference call, or listen to a presentation, and feel disengaged within the first five minutes? Yep… me too. It usually takes people forever to simply get to the point, and find ways to engage the audience. And by the time they do, it usually […]
We work with our clients all the time on message development. We think that figuring out what you want or need to say is critical to great communication in today’s world. Otherwise, your unorganized, unplanned message will just drift in the background noise of an incredibly loud and busy world. But there is another way to […]
We think and talk about persuasion a lot over here at The Latimer Group. We believe that the ability to use your words to create good outcomes is a critical skill in our world today… this has probably always been true, but perhaps never MORE true than it is today. In a world where communication and information […]