Persuasion

Good morning, friends! It’s a noisy world out there, with lots and lots of things competing for everyone’s attention. And in this kind of a world, it is harder than ever for our message to cut above and through the noise, so that we can be heard. We all need to be heard. We all […]

I recently had a conversation with a person I am coaching, and he recounted a story to me. He recently had led a really hard meeting with colleagues, where he made a presentation on a challenging, divisive topic. He was trying to build alignment within the business unit on how to handle a significant business […]

(Author’s Note: I was scrolling through our blog archive over coffee in the early morning hours yesterday, when I came across this post from several years ago. The story is a simple one, and pretty self-explanatory. But as I always say to my clients, colleagues and friends, the simplest stories often have the most powerful […]

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 […]

“That’s not what I said…”“That’s not what I meant…” “You’re not hearing me…” You’ve probably said at least one of those three things at some point in communicating with your colleagues. At first pass, they may seem like simple objections, simple statements to help steer someone to the point you’re trying to make. But if […]

I had a powerful discussion yesterday with a room full of people from one of our client companies. We were talking about their new service area, and how to position it. Their company is in a highly competitive industry where differentiation is hard, and where price is highly scrutinized.  The fear in the room is […]

My wife and I were at a wonderful birthday celebration yesterday for a dear family friend, and the party was filled with many friendly faces, some of whom I had not seen in a while. Among those faces was a lawyer friend who is an accomplished and highly-regarded litigator, and who I had interacted with […]

This post was written by Hannah Morris, Facilitator and Coach at The Latimer Group. In Part 1 of this post, we examined the importance of knowing one’s persuasive point of view to effective communication. It is our thesis statement. It is what our audience most needs to hear in order to understand our message, care […]

This post was written by Hannah Morris, Facilitator and Coach at The Latimer Group. Have you ever found yourself struggling to respond to the question, “What’s your presentation about?” or “Why were you meeting with X?” or “What was in that report you sent?” When asked to create concise summaries of complex topics, many of […]

During work discussions with our colleagues — when we are debating issues and making choices about things like strategy, policy or design — many (perhaps most) conversations come down to the following choice: Which is more important? “Winning” the discussion or maintaining functional dialogue with our colleagues? In other words, when we are debating the […]