Healthy communication skills can help you reduce conflict, frustration, anger, stress and facilitate problem resolution. Our communication style has a significant impact on our lives at home, work and with our friendships. How you communicate can be the cause of difficulties in your relationships, or nurture a fuller and richer level of connection.
Understanding your unique communication style, while staying motivated to improve your skills, will result in less conflict and a more rewarding life. Realizing that your communication style is less than desirable is sometimes hard to accept and even harder to take responsibility for.
Remember it is not what you say that matters most, but the message that is received and in what manner it was received that is most important.
We can help you identify your verbal, non-verbal and para-verbal (tone) style with the goal of supporting your growth as effective communicator. Helping you to become sensitive to your personal style, and show you new ways to connect with your partner, children, work relationships and friends, will significantly improve all aspects of your life.
Some Resources to Improve Communication
A Crash Course in Communication Need a quick refresher on effective interpersonal interaction? Two communication experts offer 12 steps to smoother conversations.
- Lost in Translation
- Thanks to e-mail, BlackBerrys, and text messaging, the face-to-face encounter is becoming a dying art. Here’s why you should revive it.
- The Power of Listening
- How does an old-line manufacturer in a stagnant industry manage to grow 25% a year for 10 years? By taking its employees seriously.
- Do as I Say: Quick Tips for Masterful Communication
- Tired of doing all the talking and not having your message get through to your staff? Try these suggestions to improve your leadership communication skills.
- Just Listen to Yourself
- Tape yourself to better understand your communications style.
- Powerful Questions Can Have a Powerful Effect
- Questions can be one of the most effective communication tools available to us. Do you use questions enough in your day-to-day interactions?
- When Do You Lie? Strategies For More Authentic, Respectful Communication
- Lies come in all shapes, sizes and colors. (Ever heard of flat-out, teensy or white lies?) This article focuses on when it’s appropriate, if at all, to lie.
- 10 Tips for Communicating Change
- Transition is inevitable, but exactly what you say and how you say it can make a major impact on how change is handled in your company.
- The 4-1-1 On Constructive Criticism
- Being critical is easy, and offering criticism seems easier still. Yet constructive criticism – – the more refined and effective brand of critical feedback – – is like an art.
Lost in the Translation Tips on communicating with employees who don’t speak English.
- How to Say You’re Sorry
- Apologizing is part of doing business. But do it wrong, and you’ll really be sorry.
Tips on Becoming a Good Conversationalist In this excerpt from How to Work a Room: The Ultimate Guide to Savvy Socializing in Person and Online learn tips for becoming a talk target — someone with whom it is easy to make conversation10 Tips for Successful NetworkingKeith Ferrazzi needs two PalmPilots to keep track of all his contacts, people like Bill Clinton and Michael Milken. But there’s far more to cracking the inner circle of the power elite than just taking names.
Presentations and Pitches
- Powerful Presentations
- Small-business columnist Rhonda Abrams shares nine strategies for giving powerful presentations.
- Reinventing the PowerPoint
- New tech tools to liven your tired old PowerPoint presentations–and give your online marketing efforts a boost.
- Perfecting Your Pitch
- Check out these tips from entrepreneurs and business experts on creating pitches that can help you raise capital.
- More Power Than Point
- PowerPoint (or “presentation software”) has become the lingua franca of American business. It’s also become the problem with American business.
- Best of the Net: Power Brokers
- When it comes to presentation software, most users agree there’s one clear standard. We’ve found some Web-based resources to help you make your point.
- Captivate Audiences with Powerful Presentations
- Do you want your speeches to pack a punch? Professional speaker and speech consultant Patricia Fripp offers ideas on humor, movement, and vocal techniques.
- Short and Sweet: Mastering Quick Presentations
- Called on to make a brief speech? Professional speaker and speech coach Patricia Fripp offers tips for saying what you want, short and sweet.
- Present Before You Propose
- Improve your presentation by saving handouts until the end.
- Finding the Perfect Pitch
- Watch three rookies gear up for the investor presentation of a lifetime.
- The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Presenters
- Entrepreneurs learn pretty quickly that making a verbal pitch to investors is very different from submitting a written business plan. Here are seven good practices gleaned from a venture-capital boot camp.
- Elements of a Winning Pitch
- A presentation to potential investors in your business — to family, friends, or angels — should include most of these elements.
Meetings
- Escape From Meeting Hell
- It’s time for another soul-sapping, oxygen-depriving, time-wasting, mind-numbing company meeting. Or is it? We offer 15 clever solutions to the problems with most meetings.
- Meetings Go Virtual
- Web conferencing and other collaboration technologies — tools that help people work with one another through their computers — have become more available and affordable. This is a boon for smaller companies whose only previous collaboration option was to gather workers in a room with coffee, donuts and a whiteboard.
- Meetings 101: Was That a Good Meeting, or a Bad One?
- Five simple factors that help ensure every meeting is a good meeting.
- Tools for Boosting Communication Effectiveness
- Tips on how to boost the effectiveness of communication in meetings, during change initiatives, and in interviews.
- Advice on Getting the Most Out of Meetings
- Keith Lamb shares some advice on getting the most out of your meetings.
- Cure the Sick-Meeting Ills
- Ineffective meetings may be wasting time and lowering morale. Two communication experts offer seven strategies for dramatically improving your meetings.
- How to Manage Meetings More Effectively
- A look at companies that hold unique meetings for developing products, building camaraderie, generating ideas, and reviewing employees’ needs and achievements.
Speech Writing and Delivery
- Writing and Organizing a Winning Speech
- Public speaker and speech consultant Patricia Fripp suggests following one of two basic outlines for your speech. She also offers speechwriting tips.
- Polishing and Rehearsing for a Perfect Presentation
- You’ve written a speech, but there’s still work to do before delivering it. Patricia Fripp gives six suggestions for making sure your speech hits home along with several ideas on effective rehearsing.
- Deliver a Stellar Speech
- Powerful presentations happen when you check out the room in advance and work to connect with the audience when talking. Patricia Fripp offers ideas for ensuring that what you say is a smashing success.
- No More Pre-Speech Jitters
- From virtual reality therapy to positive visualization, we’ve got relaxation techniques to help offset your fears of public speaking.
- Free Speech
- Preparing for a big speech? Resources on the Web can help.
The Written Word
- Work through Writer’s Block
- Need help working through some written projects? Two communication experts offer eight tips for clear and effective writing.
- Writing Well on the Web
- Content is king. Here are easy ways to make your website more reader-friendly.
- Polish Your Prose
- Poor grammar and punctuation in proposals and reports could cost you business.
How to Blog The trick, say experts and longtime bloggers, is restraint. “For marketers, it’s about being more authentic, which is so ironic,” says one analyst.
- How to Drive Traffic to Your Company’s Blog
- Driving traffic to your small business’ corporate blog takes equal parts old-fashioned marketing and contemporary Web tools.
Troubleshooting
- Are You Assertive or Aggressive?
- Assertiveness is the skill that tops the list for success or failure in any workplace situation. Learn how to be more assertive — not aggressive — and apply it to your interactions.
- Get Your Point Across without Being Rude
- Is your communication style a little rough around the edges? Here are five techniques for saying what you mean without making enemies in the process.
- Communicating When People Leave You Speechless
- Improved communication is a nice idea, but can it work in the real world? Take a look at these real-life business issues and suggestions for better communication that may lead to better business.
Reach out today
Seeking to improve communication at work, school, or simply in your relationships?
I can help you improve your written and verbal communication skills in small and large settings. Contact me for a complimentary consultation. Give me a call, or just fill out the contact form and press Send.
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