Perhaps you are like me and certain types of questions, asked in retail and restaurant environments, set your teeth big time on edge: How are those first few bites tasting? Any plans for the weekend? How’s your day been so far? On the one hand I get it: servers...
Recently, I had the pleasure and challenge of speaking to several hundred junior high school students during an all day conference. I was the keynote in the morning, kicking off their day which was full of workshops on topics such as money, sex, jobs and...
I love my younger self. She was re-introduced to me as I began to digitize and clean up old home movies and, I have to admit, she was a bit of a surprise. Having five children in 10 years means that my memories of those...
It may surprise you to know that many senior executives and leaders struggle with public speaking. More contemporaneously they struggle with public speaking on the two-dimensional stage that is the virtual work world. Today’s leaders must be even better communicators because the flattening of the experience makes...
Would that we were all a little slower to judge, to jump to conclusions, to assume, well…pretty much everything. My partner and I are finally getting around to finishing the lower level of our home with the result that there have been various tradespeople coming and...
I do a lot of work in leadership coaching, specifically in presence and strategic communicating. Today, as I prepared for an upcoming training session for a new client, I was reviewing some of their information about success in the profession and what it takes to...
After 30 years of coaching, training and teaching in a variety of leadership programs and initiatives, I have come to the realization that you simply can’t teach leadership, any more than you can teach height, or creativity. It’s strangely axiomatic that something which cannot be...
I bet that any problem you are currently struggling with has a communications challenge within it. And in some cases, solving the communications problem, or reframing the conversation, can actually solve whatever is wrong. Last winter I was in snowy Calgary to work with a group...
Sorry. I apologize. Please forgive me. It seems as if the demands of navigating the pandemic, changing my business model and responding to new challenges and opportunities has meant that I haven’t been fully present in the way I’d like to be. Here’s my plan going forward: ...
You are not attending virtual meetings; you are performing on camera. One of the interesting insights that has come from my virtual workshops with clients in diverse sectors is how much of their time is now spent in virtual meetings with staff, clients, and suppliers. There...
Amanda Gorman burst onto the international stage with her 6-minute poem at the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris inauguration and while enjoying her performance and her poetry could be enough for all of us, there are also valuable lessons to be elicited from the structure...
I think of family as a kind of meiosis, cells dividing, recombining, and dividing again, like genetic bubbles joining with other bubbles, some popping, some growing larger, some drifting away. When I think back on my family, the genesis of it often starts with my grandparents,...
I had the pleasure of MCing a Soiree/gala/fundraiser last night, this one for the Georgia Strait Alliance. Although it was disappointing not to be able to get dressed up and meet people in a classy venue somewhere, to share stories, drinks and silent auction bidding,...
Ah yes, the days of cursive writing and basic grammar! Subject, action, object. If you apply those early lessons to your own communications you'll learn a lot about how your requests and instructions are perceived by others. Do this right now: click on your email sent...
When COVID hit, the public health nurses at Sechelt Hospital immediately recognized that they would have to offer their pre-natal training virtually AND they realized right away that one of the most reassuring parts of the baby-in-waiting program was a tour of the hospital and...
Several years ago one of my clients mounted a global search for a new CEO. This was in the world before COVID, before Zoom and before Microsoft Teams. Skype was the only game in town to do initial interviews with candidates around the world. My client...
You are not attending virtual meetings; you are performing on camera. The more clients I work with the more I hear about screen exhaustion, the pressure of being constantly "on" and the time commitment, technological commitment and learning curve that comes with this new world of...
One of the unexpected treats that has come out of my Covid experience is the opportunity to host a weekly live stream on the topic of mental health and resilience, presented by the Sechelt Hospital Foundation here on the Sunshine Coast of BC. Find the...
What a rewarding, and exhausting, week it has been! How about yours? I presented a virtual crisis communications workshop to four different CEO groups and learned as much from how they are managing their communications as I likely taught them. The overarching advice is that you must...
You may be amongst those who have lost work, or you may be busier than ever in these uncertain times. Either way, what you are saying about the situation matters, and how you communicate with your staff and your customers and partners has never been...
I have several virtual workshops coming up and I’m struggling. No, it’s not the technological challenges that bother me although I’m still not a fan of online group interactions; it’s relevance. As you likely know, my work is around strategic communications: how to organize and curate your...
OKAY, you got me! For the better part of a decade, I taught an executive development course in Persuasion, with the inimitable David McPhillips. We searched the world for the latest research into the art and science that makes up the body of knowledge of how...