Meetings

Most people think of their communication as a tangible and clear output: words on the page, images and messages on a slide, words coming out of the mouth. And there is truth in that belief. Strong communication is a series of clear outputs. We spend a ton of energy here at The Latimer Group helping […]

How do you prepare for that big sales call, or that important meeting with your boss? If you prepare at all (not trying to insult you, but a shocking number of people still try to “wing it”), and if you are like most people we meet, then your prep goes something like this… organize your […]

We are living in a very noisy world, the kind of world where good communication skills are an essential requirement for success… for you as an individual, AND for your organization. We all need to be able to communicate effectively, to a variety of stakeholders, if we want to be heard, and be successful. When […]

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 […]

How often do you sit in meetings and think to yourself “wow… this is a colossal waste of time“? My guess is your answer is some version of “far too often.” The next time you are feeling that way, do some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations. Make an estimate of what you get paid by the hour. […]

Over the course of this blog, we write frequently about the important ingredients for great communication… clarity and brevity chief among them. Today we touch on another critical ingredient: context. Context is critical. Context creates relevance. Context helps your audience engage and listen. Context helps your audience care. We are all time starved. We are all attention deprived, to varying degrees. […]

My colleagues and I always talk and teach about the importance of knowing your audience, and preparing for your work communication correctly. And at the center of that work is the ability to clarify the message and “the ask,” to try to anticipate what the audience will care about, and the questions or objections they […]

Good morning to our clients and friends around the world! Happy new year! We hope you all had a restful and joyous holiday, and we look forward to charging ahead into 2024 with you. Here is a quick thought to get our year started off correctly, something that we are taking on here at The […]

In nearly every workshop I teach, I ask a question that sounds something like this: “How many of you attend too many meetings that run long?” Nearly every hand goes up, every time. “How many of you get too many emails that are too overwhelming to read?” Nearly every hand goes up, every time. “How […]

So often in preparing to communicate, we make a fundamental mistake: we enter what my colleagues and I refer to as “the messenger mindset.” What this means is that our entire approach to communication is about the “delivery of information.” When we fall into the messenger mindset trap, we are only thinking about what we want […]