Communication

Earlier this summer, I wrote a short post about giving up my mobile devices for part of my vacation. So many of us struggle with the balance between being connected with the world vs being connected with the people right in front of us. And our mobile devices have become toxic roadblocks to attention span, […]

Here’s a challenging one, with no easy answer. Do you make your work life harder if you become friends (non-romantically) with a colleague or colleagues? Does it become harder to do your job when your professional relationships are overlaid with personal friendships? I think the answer is “maybe.” Adding a personal component to a professional […]

A 2004 survey from Raindance Communications looked at the issue of multitasking. And for those of you who regularly lead conference calls (like me), brace yourselves… the numbers ain’t pretty. These stats are a little dated but still eye-opening. According to this survey: 90% of people surveyed said they multitask while on conference calls; 70% reported doing other, […]

A strange, true, recent and very personal story. The 2016 Olympic Games are underway in Rio, and because of my history with the US Olympic Sailing Program, I am (and always will be) a devoted fan of the Games. I attended two Games (2008 and 2012) as the Team Leader, and I was an alternate […]

According to some sources, more than 30 million business presentations are created each day. And you know what? Most of them are terrible. We’ve all sat through the proverbial terrible presentation with no purpose, nothing memorable, no clear action items, too many slides, the monotonous drone of the boring presenter. There is a reason business […]

I spent the last week on vacation with my family. Which means that for a few days prior to the beginning of vacation, my wife and I had our annual negotiation about mobile devices and the boundaries during vacation. In general, she and I agree on the basic premise… it is healthy to turn off […]

Let me know if this sounds familiar… you have a presentation to give. You immediately begin thinking about your slide deck. You pull out the last presentation you gave on the topic, you dust it off and realize that some of the same slides will work. So you are on your way. Then you look […]

Do you want to be an effective communicator? Be more memorable? Do you want people to follow your lead, support your idea, or buy your product or service? Of course you do. When I say “be memorable,” I’m not suggesting that you do something outrageous so that they remember that crazy person who did “x.” […]

I am traveling on business this week, with one of our best clients. And in a workshop yesterday, I lived a sad convergence of business and current events. During one of the breaks, the participants in the workshop shared that one of the victims of the Orlando massacre had been their colleague. None of them knew […]

I am relearning, once again, some powerful lessons about communication. And I am learning them from our infant daughter. Our daughter is rapidly approaching her first birthday, and is doing all the things you would expect her to be doing. Crawling around, getting into things she shouldn’t, making all sorts of sounds, screaming when she […]