#BePrepared

We work all the time with people who want to improve their speaking skills. But like any coaching situation, you need to determine what the root cause of the speaking problem is, before you can solve for or eliminate the problem. Does the speaking problem manifest itself with poor delivery and little projected confidence? Well, […]

In our communication skills workshops, there is a theme that always comes up that seems to surprise first-time participants. We talk about many of the most important aspects of great business communication: clarity, brevity, being memorable, setting context, communicating value, staying “on message”… all of the things that are required in the 21st century business […]

Happy new year to all! We trust and hope that your holidays were happy and healthy. We’re back today from a well-deserved and welcomed break, and are excited for a great 2015. Over the course of our holiday break, we spent a lot of time thinking about the year gone by, and the year to […]

We’ve been reflecting a lot lately here at The Latimer Group… not only on 2014, but also on the last 8-10 years. The business environment has changed dramatically: more demands on our time, more access to information, more channels to communicate than ever, social media, lean organizations, a cacophony of opinion on everything… the world […]

Whitney and I are planning in earnest for another trip to Australia for client work, in 2015. We’re finalizing dates, logistics, content, etc. And when we are getting ready for a big trip with lots of client time, we always make sure to spend some time getting (or remaining) familiar with the client’s situation. We […]

I had an outstanding experience yesterday with a workshop participant from one of our major client companies. This young man had participated in one of our one-day presentation skills workshops about six weeks ago. And then he signed up for a different workshop this week, a two-day “executive communication skills” workshop. In the October session, […]

When we say someone has a strong “presence,” what does that actually mean? I mean, specifically, what does it mean? Ask 100 different people (and we have), you might get 50 different answers. A strong presence means different things to different people. And when you push people to define what it actually is, you tend […]

Today’s post was written by Amy Fenollosa, Director of Learning at The Latimer Group. Did you see Apollos Hester this week? He’s a high school football player from Texas whose 2-minute interview on local television went viral. It’s gotten more than 5 million views in less than a week. What is it about Apollos that intrigued […]

We spend a lot of time with our clients talking about ways to create outstanding business communication. And all great business communication has five common characteristics, or ingredients: clarity, brevity, context, impact and value. Every single time we communicate in the work place, we need to be thinking about all five of these things. We […]

In nearly every one of our communication workshops, we spend significant time discussing the role of detail in 21st century communication. Does detail matter? Of course it does. How much detail is necessary? That depends on many things: who your audience is, how familiar they are with the topic, how senior they are, how mission […]