Listening

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 […]

Let me get the footnote of attribution out of the way. I “borrowed” that line, with permission, from my great friend and business school classmate, Phil Bonanno. And now back to our regularly scheduled program… My colleagues and I talk all the time about how listening, awareness and respect are critical building blocks of persuasion. You simply can’t […]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about personal behaviors, especially in relation to how we “show up” in a professional setting. And here are five things that always seem to jump to the front of the line for me, as being the most important communication behaviors. Think about this… What would it be like if you could… […]

This post was written by Hannah Morris, Director of Assessment & Advancement at The Latimer Group. “I’m smiling at you.” “And I’m giving you a tired face.” This was the exchange I had with my daughter the other day as we were walking in public, masked. We had gone a long distance and I wanted to show […]

Author’s note: I was reading through our blog archive very early one morning recently, and I came across this post. I wrote this in the fall of 2020 during the depths of the health crisis, and with a controversial election looming. It was timely, for me, and based on the reaction from our audience, for […]

Here is a common scenario that I have watched and experienced many times: the words that were spoken/written by someone were received in way that was different from the intended impact. The message that was received or the feeling that was created was not at all what the speaker/writer was trying to send or create. […]

I missed most of the inaugural festivities on January 20th, due to a long day with several of our clients. But we recorded everything, and my wife and I made a date for that evening to sit and watch all of it. I have only been to one Inaugural, in 1988. But I watch every […]

Originally published with the Forbes Coaches Council, November 2019. Have you ever gone into a presentation or a sales meeting convinced that you were about to deliver a slam dunk, only to come out feeling like you threw brick after brick? Have you ever introduced a new initiative to your team with great confidence that it […]

I spend a lot more time thinking about listening now than I used to. Why? I am not really sure. It could be my advancing age. It could be parenthood. It could be experience in my job. It could be the influence of some of the people in my life. Probably, it is a little bit of […]