The Blog / Archive

When we’re talking casually, many of us have run-on sentences that follow our stream of consciousness, it’s s conversational habit, there’s nothing wrong with doing that, but if you’re speaking to a group of people and it’s not a conversation, you might think about figuring out where you want to stop and which points you really want to land because otherwise we don’t know what to pay attention to or what the most important bits are.

Friend and reader Catherine responded to last week’s post: What Kind of Listening Do We Owe Each Other? She said, “Now I’m waiting for the next email on how to be a better listener.” I hope this is that email! I want to start by defining “better listener.” That word “better” seems like it’s clear, but it hides a lot of confusion and assumptions in its folds. When I think about being a “better listener,” what comes to mind is true openness, and a mindset of willingness to hear and to change one’s mind. The actor Alan Alda wrote a … Read more

Most of us do the many of the same things in the same way every day. We take the same route to the grocery store, we have the same routine in the shower, we turn to the same meals for dinner. Routine is helpful—it lessens the number of decisions we need to make every day. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to decide whether to wash my hair or my face first every time I get in the shower. Having some stuff just be on autopilot is necessary. But. (You knew there was going to be a … Read more

Your body knows a lot. It knows when you’re feeling out of your depth, when you’re under-prepared, when you’re worried, when you’re excited. Sometimes it knows before you do. What does your body want you to know? What messages does it send you? What happens when you listen? What happens when you don’t?

A client of mine has gotten feedback that he’s too wordy and goes into more much detail than is necessary. It’s clear from the volume of this type of feedback that this is a behavior that shows up all the time, regardless of the situation. I’ve observed it myself in our coaching sessions. In the course of our conversations, it emerged that he assumed the only way to practice mitigating this habit was by preparing to be concise for a specific meeting or a presentation.  The great thing about needing to practice talking, I pointed out, is that we do … Read more

We are often hired to coach people who have been told they need more “executive presence.”  This is one of those pieces of feedback that is completely in the eye of the beholder; it’s a moving target. Often, “improving executive presence” simply means “look and act more like the person giving the feedback.” If that’s the case, then, how do we define executive presence in a way that’s helpful? Most often, people describe presence by saying how the person who has it “seems.” They seem confident, they own the room, they aren’t nervous. It’s a subjective quality that we can … Read more

One meaning of to incorporate is to make physical, to embody. When we learn something in our brain, we have to figure out a way to bring it into our understanding, our embodied knowledge. For example, you can watch YouTube videos for days about the perfect golf swing, but until you start to incorporate the information, you aren’t any closer to playing better golf. Being a more clear communicator means  1) developing self-awareness of your communication patterns and how they affect your ability to communicate, 2) embodying or incorporating that knowledge in your body and voice, and 3) practicing this awareness … Read more

In theatre, we talk about the cardinal sin of “popping pronouns.” This is when an actor emphasizes a pronoun  instead of a verb, noun, or adjective.  To illustrate this idea, I’ll borrow one of my favorite lines from “The Negotiator,” starring Samuel L. Jackson. He plays a police negotiator whose partner has been murdered, and he is being framed for it. He has taken hostages in an effort to clear his name (it’s complicated.) Anyway, here’s the line: “You gave me a way out when you shut the heat off.” If Samuel L. Jackson pops the pronouns, it reads like … Read more