It's okay to admit it, we've all been there before. You receive a message and instantly become upset, so you immediately respond without thinking twice. But then comes the regret. Sending a text, email, or making a phone call when you're upset is never a good idea. The emotions that we experience can cloud our judgment and lead to consequences that we may later regret. To avoid this situation, it's ...

As the world has shifted further away from more “traditional” methods of communication, such as phone calls and in-person meetings, writing skills have become increasingly important. In the business world, this means that employees and leaders alike must always be proficient, effective, and concise in their writing. Here are a few of the most common business writing mistakes that you should avoid in all of your written communication: Forgetting to ...

You probably know the big secret of being a great conversationalist - show interest in your conversational partner. That's just common sense. But here are five specific techniques for doing that. They can make your conversation more engaging for your partner and more interesting for you. 1. Ask open questions. Ask your partner questions, but take care not to elicit short answers. With a closed question, you usually know how ...

Paul White, who founded the CBS news division in 1933, is credited with the most successful formula for broadcast news presentation: Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em. Tell ’em. Tell ’em what you told ’em. Because it works so well for news, it is frequently offered as a template for business presentations and may well be the most commonly quoted advice for preparing a presentation. I copied and ...

When you address an audience, there are four ways to make your voice expressive: volume, pitch, rate, and timbre. Volume is probably the most difficult quality for business professionals to increase. We work in offices or from home all day, and most of us instinctively use our “indoor voices” in conversation. We hunch over at our desks, and we probably speak softly into the telephone to preserve our privacy. Habits ...

When asked to give a presentation, whether it’s to a prospect or at an event, the first question we typically ask is “What’s the topic?” Sure, we all want to know what we will be speaking about so that we can prepare, but this is a self-centered concern. What we should ask first is “Who’s my audience?” Before you begin to prepare your speech, you must first consider your audience. ...

One of the most important presentation tips we teach in our presentation skills courses has to do not with speaking, but with looking. Let me depart from presentation tips for a moment to give you some background. If you give somebody a visual stimulus and ask them to press a button every time they see the stimulus, they are likely to do it with a high degree of accuracy, provided ...

Communispond has helped many, many organizations deal with communication problems, so we have seen firsthand how miscommunication can sabotage your business goals, zap organizational morale, and increase your costs. This is my list of the top five issues in workplace communication. 5. Misinterpretation. This is probably the most common issue. Language is not usually a precision instrument, and we each have an individual way of using it. Consequently, the meaning ...