The Message Makeover Podcast: How Better Listening and Awareness Will Improve Your Communication
Posted On July 2, 2018 BY Dean Brenner
This post was written by Dan Cooney, Director of Coaching and Senior Facilitator at The Latimer Group. Can you be a good communicator without being a good listener? The answer is an emphatic NO. In this episode, The Latimer Group’s Dean Brenner, Amy Fenollosa and Dan Cooney talk about why improving your listening skills and […]
Communicating Respect: Listen Up
Posted On May 23, 2018 BY Dean Brenner
Originally published with the Forbes Coaches Council, April 2018. 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 […]
“Simple” Does Not Mean “Simplistic”
Posted On May 21, 2018 BY Dean Brenner
In our workshops, we talk all the time about making things simple. The simple answer wins the day most of the time. In a world that is increasingly fast-paced, time-starved, and overloaded with information, the person who can make complicated things simple and easy to understand rules the world. But when I talk about this […]
Communication Tips from the “It’s Not About the Nail” Video
Posted On April 23, 2018 BY Brett Slater
This post was written by Brett Slater, Chief Social Media Officer at The Latimer Group. Dean shared this video with me over the weekend… Have you seen it yet? At 16 million views, it’s likely that you’ve run across it in your social feed before. If not, the short version is that a woman tries […]
Make Yourself Easy to Listen To
Posted On April 4, 2018 BY Dean Brenner
We write constantly in this blog about all the different elements of good communication… clear messaging, effective visuals or slides, powerful presence and delivery, speaking with the “executive voice“… these kinds of topics are the dominant themes in this blog. But today, I want to write about the “net effect” of all of these things. […]
Proof that Clarity and Simplicity Bring Good Fortune
Posted On March 23, 2018 BY Brett Slater
Brett Slater here, Chief Social Media Officer for The Latimer Group. The above photo is of an actual fortune I got in my Chinese take-out last weekend. We had a great laugh about it around here. If you don’t want to listen to the team at The Latimer Group when they talk about getting to […]
The State of the Union is “Distracted”
Posted On January 31, 2018 BY Brett Slater
This post was written by Brett Slater, Chief Social Media Officer at The Latimer Group I admit, I only watched the first 20 minutes of President Trump’s State of the Union address last night, but something struck me as I watched. On any given panning shot of the crowd, attendees in the chamber – particularly […]
The Most Important Skill in Business
Posted On January 17, 2018 BY Dean Brenner
If you can persuade others to think or act in a certain way, influence their decisions and behaviors, and build consensus among your colleagues, you have competitive advantage. Period. Full stop. In the 21st century business world, (where information is more available, attention spans have plummeted, organizations are leaner, and everyone is less loyal and […]
Soundwaves: The 4 Skills of Great Communication, Part 1: Assess
Posted On December 11, 2017 BY Dean Brenner
At The Latimer Group, our teaching model is based on the 4 Skills of Great Communication: Assess, Message, Document, and Deliver. In this new four-part series of our Soundwaves podcast, Dean shares the four skills of our model, through the story of The Latimer Group’s origin and evolution. As we conclude our 15th year of […]
Gratitude: An Important Form of Communication
Posted On November 22, 2017 BY Dean Brenner
We communicate with each other in so many different ways… a topic we write about all the time. Our words, facial expressions, body language, how we speak, WHEN we speak, the way we listen, the way we behave… all of these things are communicating messages out all the time. And since this is Thanksgiving week […]