Have you ever considered mapping your progress as a communicator? In short, the only way to REALLY be sure you’re improving as an effective communicator is to have some way to measure that improvement. When we work with clients at The Latimer Group, we use a three-stage rubric of Professional-, Leadership-, and Executive-Level communication… So how do we […]
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Category: Public Speaking Skills
(We recently had a conversation with a good friend of The Latimer Group, who said something really powerful to us. Our friend shared that her firm no longer calls communication a “soft skill.” Instead, they refer to communication as a “power skill.” We LOVE that, and it caused me to write this post, which has […]
Let’s talk about building credibility… real credibility. Not the short term version of credibility that comes from a referral or a common friendship or the personal courtesy of someone giving you a chance. No… let’s talk about the long-term credibility that is built by you, your actions and your performance. Real credibility is created in […]
There are a few questions we frequently hear from our workshop participants. And perhaps the most vexing is the question of detail: how much do I need, where do I put it, how much is too much? Without exception, it comes up and is a major topic of conversation in every workshop. Why? For two simple, […]
We live in a world of distractions, constant and loud. We are expected to be available to everyone all the time, we compete for mindshare with unlimited amounts of content and entertainment, we have a social media landscape which can turn every day into an all-day conversation with friends all over the world. Quieting the mind, and […]
It takes less than 30 seconds for people to decide what kind of person they think you are. What a quaint idea! In fact, Princeton psychologists Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov have demonstrated that study participants make judgments about a person’s competence and trustworthiness in as little as a tenth of a second. One of the […]
Does you message stand out? Do you make it easy for your audience to remember what you say? Does your message make an impact on the mind of your listener? You need to care about this, because there is so much competition for the mindshare of your audience. There are so many things that come at each […]
Not long ago, while teaching a client workshop, one of the participants verbalized a great way to think about business meetings… specifically, a great way to think about the level of information you need to be able to discuss. The participant described the difference between an “index card meeting” and a “full binder meeting.” Some […]
Stereotyping… I thought we weren’t doing this anymore? I thought that as a society we had realized that making broad generalizations about a person based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, or demographic was no longer acceptable. Well, I guess Good Morning America host Lara Spencer didn’t get the memo. Or at least, the version […]
How often do you sit in a meeting, or on a conference call, or listen to a presentation, and feel disengaged within the first five minutes? Yep… me too. It usually takes people forever to simply get to the point, and find ways to engage the audience. And by the time they do, it usually […]