Followership

My wife Emily and I have recently been going through some old files in our basement, clearing some stuff out and making some much-needed room in an already-crowded basement. And whenever one starts opening boxes from long ago, two things always seem to happen. You find some stuff, and wonder “why did I ever keep that?” And […]

Everyone always wants to talk about leadership. Every organization is obsessed with training its leaders, present and future. And many professionals invest in developing their own leadership skills. Important stuff, and I am not suggesting those are bad things to focus on. But leadership is only one part of the equation for a successful organization. […]

Everyone always wants to talk about leadership. Every organization is obsessed with training its leaders, present and future. And many professionals invest in developing their own leadership skills. Important stuff. But leadership is only a part of the equation for a successful organization. The other part… and in some ways, the more important part… is […]

At the risk of oversimplification, there are two macro “messaging problems” that come up a lot in our work. Problem #1: the speaker knows what they want to achieve, has a general goal in mind, but has not put enough thought into the details of the message and how they will achieve the goal. They […]

So much of the psychology of our business culture is about teams, working together, looking for the “win-win” scenario… and that’s all good. Those are good things to work towards. But can we be part of a collaborative environment, and still be able to ask the hard and uncomfortable questions? I hope so, because it’s […]

In all the communication coaching that we do, one question seems to come up all the time. “How do I get my leader to realize he/she needs some coaching as well?” Most leaders are really good at identifying your areas of possible improvement. But the very best ones are also good at identifying their areas of possible improvement. If […]

At The Latimer Group, we often say, “no one leads all the time.” And today, we would like to dig into that a little bit more. Take a look at the image above. The yellow figure is usually the one that gets all the attention, much of the acclaim when things are going well. Many of […]

What makes a great speaker? The qualities that immediately come to mind are things like confidence, expertise, poise, concision and great storytelling. These are all incredibly important pieces of not only engaging an audience but also persuading them. But there’s another aspect to excellent, convincing communication that can be easy to overlook: respecting your audience. Why respect? […]

My wife Emily and I have recently been going through some old files in our basement, clearing some stuff out and making some much-needed room in an already-crowded basement. And whenever one starts opening boxes from long ago, two things always seem to happen. You find some stuff, and wonder “why did I ever keep that?” And […]

How good a leader are you? More importantly, how good a follower are you? And most importantly, have you ever thought about the connection between the two? We spend billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of hours each year teaching and learning how to lead. But we spend comparatively little time teaching and learning […]