Business Communication Skills Can Help with More than Just Business You won’t hear this at a job interview, but the fact is, there’s a lot of inter-personal emotion mixed into our daily business lives: People have trouble accepting feedback. People get annoyed with (and are sometimes rude to) their coworkers. Personal situations show up at Read More
public speaking
The 3 Rules of Great Pitching
There are two kinds of great pitching: One happens on a baseball diamond. The other happens when employees, entrepreneurs — really, anyone in business — “pitches” a prospect, donor, influencer, or boss to get support for a project or an idea. If you work “outside the home,” you’ve probably given a business pitch, and you’ll Read More
How To Ask for What You Want
Public speaking — and effective communication in general — is always about preparation. So really, the title of this post should be… How To Prepare to Ask for What You Want I shared these tips at the annual conference of The Women’s Alliance of Xerox: When You Ask for What You Want, You’re Starting a Negotiation! You’re not asking Read More
How to Manage Yourself in Public Speaking and in Life
I recently had the kind of week that every consultant cherishes. I delivered three workshops and one major keynote speech to exciting organizations, all in a six-day period. So what did I learn from this whirlwind of activity (aside from, get to the airport early)? In Public Speaking, as in Life, Learning to Manage Yourself Read More
How Much Information is Too Much for Your Listener?
Imagine that you’re carefully explaining something — to your boss, or a client, or a colleague, or someone who reports to you — and their eyes start to glaze over. This can be a sign that they’re getting too much information. None of us wants to bore our listeners, so here’s how to avoid over-explaining. Use the Instant Read More