Listening

Originally published with the Forbes Coaches Council, December 2018. One of our central tenets in teaching persuasive communication is to know your audience. Having an informed sense of your audience’s needs, concerns, and context (did the company just suffer a drop in the stock price, did the VP in the room just get a big promotion, […]

Originally published with the Forbes Coaches Council, December 2018. When we go into a meeting, we all usually have some sort of plan for what we want to say. But how many of us make a listening plan? Now, listening may seem like the simplest thing in the world to do, and the idea of taking a […]

In our communication workshops, we work with clients from many countries, across several continents, and of course, in varying age groups, from just-out-of-college Millennials to Gen X’ers to late Baby-Boomers. In our work with these individuals, we often find a disconnect between how the generations speak to each other. These differences across the generations exist […]

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, with a major milestone looming on the horizon. It could be parenthood. It could be experience in my job. It could be the influence of some of the people […]

Originally published with the Forbes Coaches Council, September 2018. As a coach, I see a lot of different kinds of speakers: those who are confident and controlled and others who are nervous and still figuring out how to get their point across. And I’ve had people ask, “Don’t you sometimes want to laugh at how bad some […]

My colleagues and I always talk about the importance of knowing your audience, and preparing for your work communication correctly. We work with our clients on their ability to clarify the message and the ask, and to try to anticipate what the audience will care about, and the questions or objections they may have. And […]

America lost more than a well-known politician on Saturday, August 25. We lost one of the last leaders of a breed that is not only dying, but might perhaps now be extinct. We lost a politician who was not afraid to speak his mind, but always did so with respect and decency for those with […]

Winston Churchill once famously said “the most important thing about education is the appetite.” We teach and coach communication skills all day, every day, here at The Latimer Group. And we see all kinds of people walk into our workshops. We see the willing, the unwilling, the motivated, the unmotivated… and everything in between. Some […]

We’ve written on this topic before, but it is such a global business issue, that I am writing about it again. We have clients across a range of industries and on five continents. And no matter where we go, no matter what the industry is, everyone complains about the exact same thing. Everyone wants their […]

Originally published with the Forbes Coaches Council, May 2018. Have you ever been in a meeting with someone who is clearly giving you the same presentation she’s given before to other audiences? There are some telltale signs: a generic set of benefits, little anticipation of objections, a lack of details that speak to your specific […]