Here are some stats that will shock you: The average American employee attends 62 meetings per month, half of which are described by those same workers as a “total waste of time.” That translates into 31 hours per month, per employee of unproductive time. In addition, 45% of those polled felt “overwhelmed” by the number […]
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Originally posted with the Forbes Coaches Council, April 2019 Maybe this has happened to you: You walk into a conference room fully confident that you’ve prepared well and put together a crisp, persuasive presentation that will instantly wow your audience. The proposal you’ve developed is clearly the right choice, and you know the numbers that support your […]
We write and speak frequently on the importance of being a good listener. But most of our content is usually focused on listening tactics — how to listen better. But today I want to write about why it is so important to listen well. Listening, at its most basic level, is essentially a commitment to two-way […]
We spend a lot of time here coaching people on how to get the outcomes they want. And in some cases, the outcome is a sale of a product or a service. But in many cases, the outcome is the “sale” of an idea or a plan. The vast majority of persuasion that happens in the […]
So often in preparing to communicate, we make a fundamental mistake: we enter a messenger mindset. Rather than establishing a clear goal and aiming to persuade our audience, we set out to inform, to update, to share. On this path, we end our inquiry with a period: here’s what I need to say, full stop. But […]
In my last post, I used Chief Brody’s character from Jaws fame as an example of how our fight or flight system is triggered. Its manifestations run from sudden dry mouth, sweaty palms, flushed neck, butterflies in our stomach, and a brain that sputters like an old Fiat rather than performing like the Porsche 911 […]
It’s a common occurrence in the business world. You prepare a meeting, presentation, or speech for a certain length of time, only to find out that you have a lot less time than you planned for. Sometimes we even learn our fate as we are walking into the presentation. We’ve spoken a lot lately about […]
“Getting them to embrace their humanity in front of an audience is a leap, and often times, people don’t want to do that…When you are talking to an audience, you are trying to move people, and the best way to do that is to talk to them like they’re people.” – Bryan Gildenberg, Chief Knowledge […]
Chief Brody’s hands may have started to sweat and shake as he instinctively backs up away from the mortal threat, his mouth goes dry, his neck flushes and his voice wavers. He’s seen the shark, and he thinks that he and Quint and Hooper need a bigger boat to catch the shark. The Chief’s autonomic […]
In so many organizations, we see discussions around problem solving go wrong. To be an effective problem solving organization, there has to be a framework of questions that will lead towards full alignment on the issue. Once we have that alignment, then we can have a serious conversation around legitimate solutions. In a world where everyone […]