speaking

Have you ever listened to that person who says something like “um” over and over and over? After a while, all you hear are the “ums.” How about the person who says “like” or “you know”? Hard to listen to that after a while. How about the person who qualifies everything they say with a […]

I prefer speaking with people who think differently than I do. It’s more interesting. It’s more challenging. It makes me think. It opens my eyes to other perspectives. And sometimes it makes me angry. But it’s all 100% healthy. And unfortunately our society – in business and politics, and especially on social media – is […]

Sometimes it is hard to know the right way to say or write something. Sometimes it is hard to know the correct tone to take. How should I speak to these people? How formal or informal should it be? The answers depend on lots of things: the nature and seriousness of the topic; the level […]

The pronouns we use when we speak can be a powerful window into the way we think, the way we lead, and the way we think about others. When we hear a leader speak with “I” as the dominant pronoun it creates a certain experience. And when we hear a leader speak with “we” as […]

It’s a common occurrence in the business world. You prepare a meeting, presentation, or speech for a certain length of time, only to find out that you have a lot less time than you planned for. Sometimes we even learn our fate as we are walking into the presentation. We’ve spoken a lot lately about […]

There is a disconnect that I witness every day. The disconnect is between our own perception of what is “clear” and what others think about that clarity. When we have an idea or a strategy or something in our head, and we have thought it through and worked it out, in our own minds it […]

This is a simple idea, but a very powerful one. We’ve all heard it before, yet so many of us continue to ignore it’s value. Whenever possible, tell your story with pictures and not words. Pictures create images in the mind, and for most of us the mind retains the things it sees much longer […]

If we look at our communication as if it were a meal that our audience will consume, we’ll of course want to prepare a communication “meal” they will enjoy. And in order to do that, there are 5 ingredients that must be included in our recipe: Clarity, Brevity, Context, Impact, and Value. But how much […]

We’re pleased to contribute once again to Switch and Shift, a business blog focused on “the human side of business.” Our most recent contribution is called “5 Communication Behaviors We All Must Adopt.” In the rapidly-changing business world of the 21st century, there’s an overwhelming need for clearer, more succinct business communication. If we can […]

Details matter in business, and in some industries, the details are everything. But the amount of detail we discuss in meetings and presentations, and the way in which we communicate it, is a daily source of frustration in most companies. Ask yourself this question: “What percentage of meetings that you sit in take your time […]