Public Speaking Skills

Have you ever sat through a meeting, listening to someone who just rambles on and on and on? Brutal, isn’t it? You are looking at your watch or your phone, trying to wish the time forward and each time you look you realize it is only 48 seconds since the last time you looked. It takes every […]

(Author’s Note: It’s that time of year again… wedding season! And many weddings are once again happening live and in-person… what a gift! This also means lots of people are getting ready to give wedding toasts, a muscle we may not have stretched in a while for all the obvious pandemic-related reasons. So I decided this […]

One of the questions I get asked all the time is, “How can I be less nervous when I stand up to present?” Confidence in public speaking continues to be a problem for lots of people. The spotlight is fully on you, everyone is listening, and we all want to do well. It is not […]

“Music is the space between the notes.” ~Claude DeBussy In many workshops, we see two parallel fears come up over and over. People fear silence when they’re speaking. Silence makes them uncomfortable. Therefore, they often fill the silence with more sound — extra words and non-words (we call them “verbal pauses’). And at the same time, people fear […]

Communication is often labeled a “soft skill.” Implying it is secondary behind the dominant “hard skills” which are more easily measurable like engineering, coding, physics. At LatimerNext, we disagree! We think of communication differently. Without communication skills, even if you’re the best at what you do, you will find it hard to advance and grow […]

My colleagues and I talk and teach all the time about the power of strong communication skills. When we communicate effectively, The Latimer Group always says, we drive results. We get approvals. We connect with the people around us. So many good things happen when we can communicate well. But let’s add to that long […]

The question I’m asked most often in workshops and coaching sessions is, “I get really nervous when I present; can you help me eliminate my anxiety?” And my answer is that having at least some anxiety is actually a good sign. It means that, at that moment, you’re engaged. You are plugged into your audience […]

I love sports. I have played a lot of sports, some very competitively, some merely recreationally. And I follow most sports on at least a casual basis. My favorite is baseball, which I consume voraciously. But I also actively follow American football, and I keep an eye on basketball, soccer, hockey, tennis, golf. I become […]

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 […]

(Author’s Note: The Latimer Group has been around for twenty years… a long time, and a milestone we are proud of. And one of the things I have been doing a lot of this year is reflecting on how much the world has changed in those twenty years. This post will be the first of […]