Coaching

As a coach, I see a lot of different kinds of speakers: those who are confident and controlled and others who are nervous and still figuring out how to get their point across. And I’ve had people ask, “Don’t you sometimes want to laugh at how bad some of these presentations can be?” It might be hard to believe, […]

I had an interesting question come up in a workshop last week. One of the participants made a statement and then asked me to validate it… he said “You can never go wrong being self-deprecating… right?“ I thought about it for a few moments, and quickly responded with “I am not sure I agree with […]

We coach people to be as powerful in their communication as possible. But sometimes, your audience is just not open to what you have to say. Our clients often share experiences where the audience is not always open minded. Some of our clients tell us, “They don’t want to hear that from me,” due to […]

One of the key elements of successful persuasion and consensus-building is how you frame the choices for your audience. I spend time in every single workshop I teach, trying to help our clients think about a problem from at least two angles: what they want the audience to think/feel/do; and how much urgency they will […]

In business, we have all sorts of plans… strategic plans, sales plans, operations plans, marketing plans. Plans, plans everywhere. And for the last twenty years our clients have also heard my colleagues and me talk at length about message plans. There is no shortage of plans in the world of business. But how many of […]

When we communicate well in the workplace — when we get to the point, when we articulate value, when we make the point clearly — what we are really doing is respecting our audience, and their time. When we do not prepare sufficiently, or make the point quickly and clearly, then what we are really doing is disrespecting […]

One night last week, I was going through some old files in my basement, and stumbled across a box simply marked “Desert, Spring 2002.” I knew immediately what it was… in May 2002, right around the time I was launching The Latimer Group, I took some time to clear my head and enrolled in an […]

The single most frequently asked question I hear regarding public speaking is this… “Dean, how can I be more confident as a speaker?” I’ve been in this line of work for twenty years, and every year, I hear that question more than any other. And throughout my time leading The Latimer Group, my answer has remained essentially the same: Self-awareness and Practice. Great […]

It is a very early August morning here. The sun is just rising in the east, and the only sounds are the tapping of my keyboard, and the drip of the coffee machine. My head is completely clear, and my heart is completely full. And so, I want to talk to you today about the […]

(Author’s Note: This post was originally written in July 2020, when all of us were in the depths of the initial wave of Covid, and its impact on everything. I am on vacation this week, recharging my batteries and building up my own resilience. So this post spoke, loudly, to me. And, with the business […]