How to be Heard in a Noisy World: FATHOM Issue #8
Posted On September 26, 2024 BY Dean Brenner and Kendra Raguckas
The world is noisy and getting noisier by the day. The amount of information available — through email, texts, chats, video calls, meetings, online media, and more — can be overwhelming, disorienting, and is almost always distracting. Good information becomes difficult to separate from bad. And in a business context, all this noise makes it harder to be heard causing good ideas to be ignored, important decisions to be delayed, and decreasing employee morale. Companies that want to compete and thrive need to find strategies to diminish the distraction.
Universal Communication Truths
Posted On March 15, 2021 BY Dean Brenner
Any good coach will always do their best to understand the unique circumstances of the person they are coaching. No two people are the same, and therefore, no two coaching assignments are the same. You have to meet the person you are attempting to coach “where they are,” because a good coaching relationship is exactly […]
Establishing Repeatable Performance in Communication: FATHOM Issue 2
Posted On June 1, 2020 BY Dean Brenner and Dan Cooney
Across industries, executives strive to create a culture of repeatable performance—a standard of work that promotes consistent, efficient, and predictable outputs. Yet when it comes to communication—one of the most integral components of any successful company— corporate leadership has rarely sought to set frameworks and standards to create a similar threshold of repeatable performance.
Video: How to Become an Olympic-Level Communicator
Posted On June 21, 2017 BY Dean Brenner
Want to communicate at the Olympic level? Work on the 4 skills of great communication one by one, and when you put them all back together, you’ll be communicating at a much higher level. What are the 4 skills? Dean lays them out for us in the video below: At The Latimer Group, our […]
The Words We Use Matter. Choose Them Carefully.
Posted On June 12, 2017 BY Dean Brenner
The recent controversy over Bill Maher’s use of a racial epithet was yet another example of the power of language. Words have meaning, both good and bad. Words have power, both good and bad. Words make us feel things, both good and bad. This post is not about Bill Maher, the politics of language or […]
To Change the Minds of Others, Change This About Yourself
Posted On May 9, 2017 BY Dean Brenner
Some of our most popular blog posts lately have been about how we communicate with each other, and the divide that’s so often formed when we’re faced with an opinion or viewpoint different from our own. And while there are plenty of examples we’ve written about from our President on this subject, it’s certainly not limited to […]
Video: The 4 Skills of Great Communication
Posted On April 24, 2017 BY Dean Brenner
Ask anyone who performs at a high level: athletes, dancers, singers, etc. They all prepare and practice their skills the same way. They break their skill down into smaller “sub-skills,” then practice each one individually, then put them all back together, and their overall skill level has improved. The same is true with communication. “Great […]
United Airlines: Every Day is a Job Interview
Posted On April 11, 2017 BY Dean Brenner
Like many of you, I watched the video of the United Airlines passenger being dragged off a flight with horror and sadness. It was an awful scene, and for those of you who have not heard the story, here are the basics… passengers had boarded a flight in Chicago, bound for Louisville. It was a […]
Video: The Recipe for Great Communication
Posted On March 27, 2017 BY Dean Brenner
The Recipe for Great Communication contains 5 ingredients: Clarity, Brevity, Context, Impact, and Value. But depending on your audience’s “taste” — that is, depending on what kind of information your audience needs — those ingredients may vary in proportion. So, how do we know how much of each ingredient to use when we prepare for meetings […]
Presentation Tips: Organize Your Details
Posted On February 9, 2017 BY Dean Brenner
Several of my coaching conversations have been focused on the same thing of late… when I am speaking to my boss, how do I stay out of the weeds? I get stuck in the deep detail, and he/she gets frustrated with me. Sound familiar? “Too much detail” is a constant issue in the 21st century […]