Right now take a breath and check into your body. Stop reading! What do you feel? You just took a step to enhance your communication skills. “Your body is your instrument.” That’s what I learned as an actor, and in the years that I’ve been coaching businesspeople to express, influence, and lead, it has become…
My consulting palette includes Career Transition work, and I’m heartened to say I’ve been inspired many times in the last year by senior managers in job search. Part of the process is to invite candidates to explore and tell their success stories; what makes them unique and valuable. More and more, I hear effective leaders…
As I work with more and more internet and technology companies, it’s clear that listening is the fundamental communication skill needed to increase productivity. When associates don’t listen to each other, messages are missed, misinterpreted, discounted, or just plain ignored. When communication is incomplete, the request or task doesn’t happen. When communication breaks down, action…
One of the big buzzwords for this decade is “Openness.” As the Nineties speed to their close and The Millennium beckons, I wonder how much we’ve really instilled this quality into the behavior of our organizations or most importantly ourselves. After all, “Organizations don’t change, individuals do.” Some might ask “Just what is openness anyway,…
Elusive Detractors: sounds like a new physics-based business term. I love that stuff, but it’s really much simpler than that. Remember the movie, The Bad Seed? Little Rhoda was an absolute charmer, until she was alone with her victims. Most of them never saw it coming, nor had the chance to complain about her behavior….
A recent study of communication at the University of California reported communication is perceived 55% through bodily stand and gesture, 38% through voice tonality and 7% through the actual words used. It’s clear how we present our message can be more significant that the message itself. The importance of a strong vocal image for achieving…
I recently attended a problematic presentation at one of my favorite professional groups. I protect the innocent by omitting all names. I thought the situation provided an excellent example for learning. I was quite interested in the topic. It was clear that the presenter had great expertise, but some ineffective choices with PowerPoint diminished the…
It was George Bernard Shaw in Pygmalion, who first a argued that a standard English dialect should be taught to all Englishmen in order to unify the culture and end social prejudice based on tell-tale dialects. Today, in the emerging diversity of the U.S. work culture, employees for whom English is a second language often…
Hamlet is known to be a play about Revenge, but I wonder if that is something rotten in Denmark might be a rampant expression of the Trickster archetype. Was Shakespeare ultimately cautioning us about the potentially disastrous effects of unbridling the Trickster in psyche or society? The playwright presents his audience with a psychologically modern…
I just gave up a large piece of income because I’m tired of being asked to do corporate quick fix when more is required. You can’t change an individual in four hours and you can’t change a company with a three-day workshop, but sometimes that’s what you’re asked to do. “Give us all your expertise…