Category: Communication

Jumping The Gun – 5 Ways to Avoid a Communication False Start

There is always the intense excitement when you see runners in the starting blocks waiting for the gun to go off to signal the race is on.  There is also the heartbreak of a runner who ‘jumps the gun’ which is also called a false start. There is absolutely an equivalent of the false start in communication and five ways to avoid it.

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Personalize your Presentation with a One Sentence Story

When you hear a speaker share a brief snippet from their life, you instantly feel more engaged and connected to them.  “That’s just like me!”  “I have kids too!”  It may be a simple reference to where they grew up, a sport they played, or how many children they have.  When you share a bit of your human experience with an audience, you instantly become more relatable, and in turn, the point you are trying to make is better retained. Can this be accomplished in just one sentence? YES!

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How to Focus: Lessons from a Banana Cream Pie Debacle

I must acknowledge immediately that I do not count cooking or baking as personal strengths or talents.  As a result, when the holidays roll around, I get a tad nervous about what dish I will be asked to make for potluck gatherings. This year’s assignment was to make a banana cream pie. I jumped in excitedly, because I love banana cream pie, but missing some of the key recipe details turned the pie into a soupy mess. Here’s what I learned about how to stay focused and attentive to the details. Critical for pie -making and any other pursuit you may have…

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Listening re-visited: The closer you are, the less you listen

Recently my sister shared with me a stack of letters sealed in a plastic zip-locked bag she had found amongst my mom’s possessions.  They were love letters from my father written around 1952 in the year before they were married. The letters reveal sides of my father I did not know. Kate Murphy’s new book, You’re not Listening:  What you’re missing and why it matters illuminated how “closeness communication bias” may have prevented me from learning more about this side of my dad while he was still with us.

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