Listening

When we say someone has a strong “presence,” what does that actually mean? I mean, specifically, what does it mean? Ask 100 different people (and we have), you might get 50 different answers. A strong presence means different things to different people. And when you push people to define what it actually is, you tend […]

Today’s post was written by Brett Slater (above, left), Chief Social Media Officer at The Latimer Group Last June, I started taking comedy improv classes at Unscrewed Theater in Tucson, Arizona. My original motivation was to fan my creative flames by working with others in a collaborative setting. As a freelancer, I don’t work with […]

We recently contributed another article to our friends at Switch and Shift, a business blog focused on “the human side of business.” Our latest piece is called, “How to Practice the MOST Human Thing,” and is all about listening to and respecting our colleagues. 21st century communication has become more about speaking than listening. More […]

We spend a lot of time with our clients talking about ways to create outstanding business communication. And all great business communication has five common characteristics, or ingredients: clarity, brevity, context, impact and value. Every single time we communicate in the work place, we need to be thinking about all five of these things. We […]

This past weekend, I participated as a speaker in a training conference for young leaders. This is something I do every year, and that I enjoy immensely. It’s a great program, well designed, with lots of valuable information from multiple speakers. I spoke twice (both times on good communication skills) to two different subsets of […]

No matter how certain you are, you never really know what another person is going through. You never really know what it is like to walk a mile in another person’s shoes. You never really know what is going on in another person’s life. Yesterday, the world learned that comedian and actor Robin Williams had […]

Have you ever listened to that person who says something like “um” over and over and over? After a while, all you hear are the “ums.” How about the person who says “like” or “you know”? Hard to listen to that after a while. How about the person who qualifies everything they say with a […]

I prefer speaking with people who think differently than I do. It’s more interesting. It’s more challenging. It makes me think. It opens my eyes to other perspectives. And sometimes it makes me angry. But it’s all 100% healthy. And unfortunately our society – in business and politics, and especially on social media – is […]

Sometimes it is hard to know the right way to say or write something. Sometimes it is hard to know the correct tone to take. How should I speak to these people? How formal or informal should it be? The answers depend on lots of things: the nature and seriousness of the topic; the level […]

The pronouns we use when we speak can be a powerful window into the way we think, the way we lead, and the way we think about others. When we hear a leader speak with “I” as the dominant pronoun it creates a certain experience. And when we hear a leader speak with “we” as […]