Listening

Clients of The Latimer Group have heard me say, many times, that the hardest thing for any organizational leader to do is to change the way his or her people actually behave. If you want to reinvent your organization, you can add or subtract business units, product lines, services, locations, etc, etc, etc. You can […]

I heard from a business leader last Friday, someone I have done some business with, but who is also a friend. And what started as a quick “hey, how are you” conversation, turned into an hour-long therapy session of venting and asking for advice… in both directions. I was thinking about this conversation for the […]

We spend a lot of our time in workshops, on this blog, and in all our conversations with our clients, discussing the importance of good communication skills. We always talk about the power of listening, of being prepared, of having goals and talking points and plans… all of it matters. When you take a good […]

We think and talk about persuasion a lot over here at The Latimer Group. We believe that the ability to use your words to create good outcomes is a critical skill in our world today… this has probably always been true, but perhaps never MORE true than it is today. In a world where communication and information […]

One of the primary goals of this blog is to share our team’s ideas on communication skills, and highlight all of the ways that great communication helps you in the workplace. Great communication contributes to stronger leadership, collaboration, customer service, client retention, brand building, sales success, employee retention… a long list of important business success […]

Three years ago, things were going well for me and my colleagues at The Latimer Group. We were like a boat running hard downwind in a following breeze. The wind was blowing the dog off the chain, and we were barely holding on, white knuckles at all times. But even though the breeze was blowing […]

In our coaching and training, we end up discussing the interview process all the time. Many of our clients interview regularly for promotions within their company. And almost all of our clients have to conduct interviews with others, for positions they are trying to fill on their own teams. Part of our coaching process is to ask […]

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 be easy to overlook: respecting your audience. Why respect? […]

I have been teaching and coaching communication skills for a long time… twenty years in fact. Which is a strength, in many ways. I have a large reservoir of experiences and stories, and have seen a lot. But doing anything for a long period of time can also be a weakness. Your experience can become […]

This post was written by Dan Cooney, Facilitator and Coach at The Latimer Group. We all see things differently. Thanks, Captain Obvious! Yes, it’s a truism, but why is this one so important to you as a communicator? You have to understand the perception gap — the difference between what you said and what was […]