Year’s end is a time of reflection for most people. My contribution to that reflection effort is re-running some of the most popular communication blogs from the past year. Click on any of the links below to remind yourself how much your communication habits, attitudes, and skills affect your career success and the profitability of your organization.
Learn to avoid these common presentation mistakes: Jokes rather than stories. Word fillers for thinking gaps. “Talking to the slides.” Falling into a monotone. Click on this blog title to identify and correct the other five.
Self-reflection and self-analysis can be difficult for most anyone. Weak leaders rarely make the effort. Strong leaders seek continual learning and growth. For the how-to specifics that your staff will notice and love, refer to this blog.
Salespeople typically have great interpersonal skills—but not necessarily the best writing habits to support their face-to-face or phone efforts. Check out this blog for three ways that your follow-up and goodwill emails can hit a wrong note.
You’ve probably heard it said that there’s a book inside everyone. I agree. But some people will never write their memoir, that business book, or that great novel. The reason? The voices in their head. Take a new look at this blog for five habits that often hold you back from your best work—or even keep you from starting at all.
Many professionals succumb to this self-sabotaging habit: checking their email box the first thing every morning. Worse, the majority of users (55 percent, according to the University of Northern Colorado’s survey) leave their email open all day long, letting it drive their priorities from hour to hour.
(For full details of the shocking stats on email use reported by respondents to this national survey, see my recent book Faster, Fewer, Better Emails.) For 5 tips to become more productive with email and master your inbox, check out this blog.
Can you afford to be in the dark about how your executive team evaluates your presentations? Identify the most common irritants and how to replace them with smoother habits and techniques.
You’ll find here 3 options for handling your email inbox. I recommend Option C, along with 4 guidelines to get to “zero” inbox daily.
If you have a role almost any place in the workplace, your team leader or executives appreciate hearing these six items from you: Suggestions to improve. Pending delays. Loyalty. Mistakes. Your career goals. And one other message that many professionals actually fear to share….
Being locked into a leadership role or project with a person who rubs you the wrong way produces stress—and often collateral damage and bad decisions. The result plays out at the highest levels of government, corporations, and nonprofits. So how do you neutralize such situations and work together smoothly without creating havoc for a project or the organization? Four solid strategies here…
Money used to be the glue that held people to their jobs long term. But after years of boredom or stress, people get the itch to move on to something they’re more passionate about and something less stressful. What are the signs suggesting that it’s time for a change?
The higher you rise in an organization, the greater the chance you’ll do more and more speaking before a group: To your own staff. To top-tier clients. In industry meetings. In community gatherings. Learn what tactics you need to regain audience attention after a major interruption: A loud noise. A fire drill. Bad news hitting listeners email box. Or even your own disruptive statement that causes skepticism.
One more thing during your time of refreshing and reflecting: Happy New Year!
Need more? Take your leadership and communication skills to the next level in 2020 with Communicate Like a Leader: Connecting Strategically to Coach, Inspire, and Get Things Done.
