Listening

I recently had the pleasure of being a guest on the Ebb and Flow Podcast, hosted by Paul Leeming of Long River Wealth Management. I know Paul and his partners at Long River really well (full disclosure… the senior partner and founder of Long River is my father-in-law, Tom Lips). Their group sets the standard […]

How well do you actually listen to the people around you? Do you think you listen well? Are you sure? I think I listen fairly well, most of the time. When I focus on it, which is most of the time, I do listen well. But it is far too easy to get distracted, and […]

“That’s not what I said…”“That’s not what I meant…”“You’re not hearing me…” You’ve probably said at least one of those three things at some point in communicating with your colleagues. At first pass, they may seem like simple objections, simple statements to help steer someone to the point you’re trying to make. But if we […]

I am always amazed at how often there is a crossover between the things my wife and I speak with our kids about, and the conversations that come up in my work with clients. The context and the vocabulary is usually pretty different. But the essence of the discussions are usually the same. So, just […]

I love to garden. Anyone who regularly reads this blog knows that. I write about it all the time. Its relaxing, gets me outside breathing the fresh air, and there is a distinct sense of satisfaction that comes from creating something and watching it grow. I also love the rhythm of the seasons with gardening. […]

Have you ever considered mapping your progress as a communicator? In short, the only way to REALLY be sure you’re improving as an effective communicator is to have some way to measure that improvement. When we work with clients at The Latimer Group, we use a three-stage rubric of Professional-, Leadership-, and Executive-Level communication… So how do we […]

One of the strongest and most enduring myths about drowning is that it is loud. Thank you, Hollywood…. Drowning is often incorrectly depicted with lots of splashing and screaming for help. But in reality, it doesn’t happen that way. Not even close. Drowning, in fact, almost always happens completely silently. The silence is caused because the […]

(Author’s Note: I was recently scrolling through our archive of old blog posts. And I came across this one, which I wrote in 2014. It is a simple story about an interaction with my then-four-year-old son, where he outmaneuvered me at the frozen yogurt shop. But as is often the case, the simple story illustrates […]

We get inquiries all the time from managers, directors and organizational leaders about a need for communication training for their teams. And in nearly every conversation, the leader is very clear about the needs and weaknesses of his or her team. Then, when we actually conduct the training, and once the participants get comfortable enough to speak […]

In a recent workshop, one participant asked a series of questions about how broad the application of the content we were teaching in the course actually was. I answered in a very “Latimer way,” by saying that our model applies to all forms of workplace communication: meetings, conference calls, presentations, email exchanges, etc. As I […]