It is simply impossible to become a great leader without being a great communicator. I hope you noticed the previous sentence didn’t refer to being a great talker – big difference. The key to becoming a skillful communicator is rarely found in what has been taught in the world of academia. From our earliest days in the classroom we are trained to focus on enunciation, vocabulary, presence, delivery, grammar, syntax and the like. In other words, we are taught to focus on ourselves. While I don’t mean to belittle these things as they’re important to learn, it’s the more subtle elements of communication rarely taught in the classroom (the elements that focus on others), which leaders desperately need to learn. In today’s column I’ll share a few of the communication traits, which if used consistently, will help you achieve better communication results. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Communication
How To Set The Right Expectations For Your Team
Setting expectations is one of the basic fundamentals of management; yet, many managers fail to do this very important step effectively. Setting expectations first requires planning. The more time you invest on the front end, the more effective your team will be when it is in operations mode. The second component of setting expectations requires communication skills. Continue reading
A better way to resolve business conflicts
Written by Anoop Sagoo, Jeremy Oates & Mary Lacity
Having a realistic perspective that life is not perfect is a good thing—whether you’re a service provider or a client. The ability to settle the smaller issues promptly and productively lays the groundwork for dealing with more serious, potentially deal-breaking problems that may arise down the road.
The number of strategic alliances across most industries, for example, has grown steadily over the past decade.
And a recent study has shown that 60 percent of companies worldwide now deploy outsourcing as a standard practice; an additional 19 percent say outsourcing is definitely in their future. Continue reading
I think we all know someone who fits this…..
Should I Accept that LinkedIn Invitation?
by Alexandra Samuel
That’s a question I am almost guaranteed to hear during any social media workshop, or indeed, in one-on-one conversations about social networking. Even committed LinkedIn users are often uncertain of which connection requests to accept, or which invitations to extend: Someone who regularly shares your blog posts on Twitter? That guy on your condo board? Your cousin’s girlfriend with the commemorative-gold-coin business?
The problem of who to connect with on LinkedIn puzzles people precisely because the network itself is neither fish nor fowl. Is it a social network like Facebook, where your connections are (at least notionally) “friends”? A public platform like Twitter, where people can see and judge you on the number of your followers? Or just a really awesome address book? Continue reading