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...
Make gratitude the new normal in your life.
As we welcome fall, we begin the season leading up to the big day of gratitude – Thanksgiving – when we celebrate all of our blessings with friends and relatives.
I love fall for this very reason. Gratitude comes into the spotlight! Then, after Thanksgiving, comes the season of giving (Christmas/Hanukkah) and more gratitude and goodwill. Win-Win.
Then, sometime in January, we go back to the “real world” of uncertainty,...
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...
Respect is about how to treat everyone, not just those you want to impress. ~ Richard Branson
How do you spell R-E-S-P-E-C-T?
Something I hear a lot from people that are having trouble communicating is: He/she/they just doesn’t respect me.
Have you ever felt that way?
Why is that? For most of us, not showing respect isn’t something we intentionally do.
It’s much easier to see what a lack of respect looks like in others, than to...
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