3 Keys to Holding Your Audience’s Attention
Posted On October 13, 2020 BY Dean Brenner
Your audience will only remember a small percentage of what you say. Some studies suggest it will be less than 20%. Fact. Other studies suggest that the average adult attention span is now about 8 seconds. Bummer. So what do you do about it? Focus on all three aspects of the audience experience: Make sure you prepare your […]
5 Solutions to Classic Communication Problems
Posted On October 9, 2020 BY Dean Brenner
If your communication problem is time, then brevity is your friend. Make sure to shorten your message significantly. Reduce your information to a list of “three things,” so that your message is easier to remember. If your communication problem is attention span, then a “hook” is your friend. Work hard to connect with your audience with something […]
Introducing Persuaded
Posted On October 7, 2020 BY Dean Brenner
Good morning, friends. I am proud to share the news with you that my new book, Persuaded, is done, and available! This is my third book, and I have been looking forward to this day for a long time. We will be announcing the book more broadly next week, but I wanted the regular readers […]
The Balancing Act of Leadership Communication
Posted On October 5, 2020 BY Dean Brenner
The world is a constantly evolving place made up of constantly evolving people with constantly evolving expectations. What does that translate into? A world where your skills need to be constantly evolving (obviously). But as obvious as the point sounds, that is a really hard thing for most people to achieve. Agility is a good […]
Lessons from The “Debate”
Posted On September 30, 2020 BY Dean Brenner
My job with The Latimer Group is to coach and train our clients to be better communicators. And regular readers of this blog know that I will use stories or examples from any area of my life to draw out the lessons I want to discuss. Occasionally over the years, I have gently referenced real-world […]
Moving Your Event to a Virtual Platform
Posted On September 28, 2020 BY Dean Brenner
I was recently speaking to a close friend who had just attended a conference for her industry. The conference had been on the schedule since last fall, since right after the prior annual event. So, everyone knew this event was coming. But what transpired during the day-long conference last week was, in the words of […]
Communicating in a Masked World (Continued): What Else Gets Muffled?
Posted On September 25, 2020 BY Hannah Morris
This post was written by Hannah Morris, Director of Assessment & Advancement at The Latimer Group. In Dean’s recent post about the impact of masks, he addressed new challenges to conversational communication. Indeed, the combination of muffled voices and invisible lips makes it far more difficult to catch every word that is said – especially for those […]
Are Communication Skills about Nature or Nurture?
Posted On September 23, 2020 BY Dean Brenner
Can great communication skills be taught? Or are they entirely natural? Let’s try to answer that via a story. My wife and I have two children, 10 and 5. At their respective ages, the age gap is pretty big. They like different things, play a little differently, have different expectations… exactly as you would expect […]
Forensic Preparation for Stronger Connection
Posted On September 21, 2020 BY Dean Brenner
How do you prepare for that big sales call, or that important meeting with your boss? If you prepare at all (not trying to insult you, but a shocking number of people still try to “wing it”), and if you are like most people we meet, then your prep goes something like this… organize your […]
Check on Your People, People
Posted On September 18, 2020 BY Dean Brenner
We are now six months into a health crisis that has changed everything we do… the ways we work, go to school, socialize, shop, vacation, walk past others on the street… there are very few things that are the same as they were in early March 2020. When we all “went home” from work and […]