Communication
Question: Our company is doing a lot more staff surveys these days. Any tips on how to do them well?
Gestures are a powerful part of active listening. Like many powerful things, however, they have both good and bad effects.
Watch your body language, and keep your ears open for the nuances of tone that create statements in disguise.
Whether giving a speech, addressing a meeting, or just talking one-on- one with an employee, take a pause before answering tough questions. Here’s why.
Question: “I’ve been asked to write a thank-you note to one of our clients who put the company through hell recently. How do we grit our teeth and write a pleasant paragraph that won’t seem disingenuous?”
Question: “I haven’t shared my mental illness diagnosis with my co-workers or my boss. But there are things my co-workers do that can trigger great, almost suffocating anxiety in me. Do you know of a good way I can let them know of the effect they’re having without making my mental health an open book?”
Holding your listener’s attention is as important as saying your piece clearly and fully—and probably harder to do. Use leading statements to keep the discussion focused on your main message.
Impact vs. affect, farther vs. further, emigrate vs. immigrate, and sympathy vs. empathy.
Over time, organizations gradually develop their own special terminology, abbreviations, acronyms, and jargon. But for new employees and people from outside the organization—like customers—this language can be bewildering. Here’s how to make it more accessible to the uninitiated.
It seems like a cop-out when a supervisor tells you they’ll be happy to give you a recommendation letter, but they don’t want to actually write it. This leaves you in the awkward position of praising yourself in the third person! These tips will help you power through this awkward task.
You can catch more typos, ungrammatical sentences, and so on in your writing by varying the speed at which you read the text. Try reading both faster and slower than your normal reading speed. Here are two techniques.
Write it right, say it right, spell it right.
If you or your people communicate with customers over the phone or via email, you undoubtedly have to deal with some who are worried, flustered or angry. Avoid making the situation worse with disingenuous, inaccurate or insincere replies:
