Let's face it. We've spent the last 3 years dealing with wild, unprecedented, crazy, depressing, hopeful, heartbreaking, strange, and (add your favorite pandemic adjective here) emotions. No breaking news there. But most importantly, for many of us, it been a time of learning - whether we wanted to or not - the power of the pause.

The word “pause” has been used a lot to describe how, for most of us, we’ve been able to slow down life a bit. It’s been an unexpected...

Last month I gave a presentation for the 11th Annual Washington State Government Lean Transformation Conference. I have attended and/or spoken at all of the conferences, and they are always a highlight of my professional development journey. 

The team of conference organizers did a remarkable job getting 30+ presenters prepared for the event to run smoothly. They did this in spite of people like me, who was well prepared and still missed hitting the "show your screen" on...

When it comes to improving your workplace communication skills, small changes will make a big difference.

Remember the David Letterman Show and his Top 10 Lists?  I know I'm aging myself here - I got hooked on them in college and still love to use them as a way to illustrate the best of the best - the top of the heap... THE TOP 10! 

So, I've compiled my TOP 10 workplace communication challenges with some ways to make improvements. That includes changing some habits and...

And all of a sudden it's back to school time for children of all ages. There is one habit I've learned as an adult that I wish I would have taught my children sooner as they entered school each fall: building the habit of gratitude.

Practicing intentional gratitude can be a game changer for helping your child build confidence, overcome stress, and help them focus on what matters. 

Research is finding that gratitude can be a powerful way to improve mental health, reduce stress and be more...

We don’t grow when things are easy, we grow when we face challenges. – Joyce Meyer

Get Comfortable with Uncomfortable Communication

If you want to improve your communication skills and become a more confident communicator there is one skill you need to begin with, and it may be one of the most challenging. That is getting comfortable with new things that are uncomfortable.  

We’ve all had some recent experience in the demands of doing new things. Like many of...

If nothing else, the pandemic that started in 2020 introduced us to an historical digital experience that has changed business communication. And with it the introduction of endless virtual meetings.

The virtual and in-place communication trend is predicted to be the beginning of new era of standard communication revolution. Safe to say, they are here to stay.

One of the biggest challenges is managing all those virtual meetings. How do you keep participants engaged...

Meetings only run well if they are facilitated well from start to finish.  Knowing how to run good meetings is a skill that anyone that is ever in charge of ANY kind of meeting facilitation.

Ever Been in Meeting Hell?

Haven't we all?  When I’m in poorly run meetings, I get distracted and find myself doing unproductive things like calculating the cost of the meeting (number of participants x approximate cost per staff hour x number of hours/minutes).  And if I’m...