Archive for Communication

Many managers dread having to do the annual performance review of their subordinates. And with good reason. They have had people get mad at them during performance reviews and stay sour for some time. They can usually remember at least one time when they resented the review they received. They remember that it hurt their [...]

In my Web-conferencing Virtual-Workshop, Leadership Communication™, we sometimes use cases as a way to practice applying the skills we have already learned. In the following case we practiced using two sets of skills: strategic thinking – knowing what you really want, and communicating in a way others can hear by starting with factual observations. In [...]

In other articles I have talked about the importance of starting crucial conversations with the facts. What can you observe? Tell the other person what you saw or heard in a specific situation. Now I would add that we also need to avoid making up stories about these facts. In our stories, we tend to [...]

To be a better communicator, avoid these things: 1. Rushing to judgments, evaluations, conclusions. Instead, start with the facts. What did you observe? Describe what you saw or heard in this situation. 2. Being critical, blaming, accusatory, inflammatory. We know how we react to these things, so how come we dish them out so readily? [...]

Would you like to increase your ability to “Speak in Manner Others Can Hear”? The key skill is to start your crucial conversations with a factual observation, not a judgment. You should observe facts about a situation that you want to discuss. Hopefully, you can state the facts in a way that the other person [...]

How to handle crucial conversations? Here are some steps to take. 1) If you know you must have a crucial conversation, prepare for it. When is it worth the time to prepare? If you have these three items of a crucial conversation: – When an important issue is involved. – The other person or group [...]

In work relationships, it is crucial that people trust you. Sometimes it is hard to build trust with someone who has a prior history that makes them afraid to trust you. For example, the CEO of a company once assigned me to give executive coaching to a VP of the company. I sat down with [...]

I had an administrative assistant who once resorted to passive-aggressive behavior toward me. She was in another room when I gave her some directions about a task to do when she returned to my room. She called back that she had already done that task in a better way than mine. I had my back [...]

When I was a student at Harvard Business School, our professors kept telling us that the technical things we were learning would be obsolete in no time at all. They said what they were really interested in teaching us was how to make good decisions. HBS Professors emphasized that the case method was an excellent [...]

This is a true case. Imagine you are the Executive Director of a large non-profit organization. Your insurance company notified you that starting in 6 weeks your premiums for health insurance benefits for your employees would cost 25% more for the next year. Your Board of Directors instructed you to change to another plan called [...]