Recently I was asked “how do I listen more effectively?” There is no quick or easy answer to that question but if one person asked it, chances are more of you are wondering the same thing!

Listening is a huge part of the communication process. If the first half of that process if the creation and transmission of information, the second half is reception and perception. Listening occurs in the second half.

We hear things constantly. Hearing is passive. Sound is all around us, and our ears are masters at sorting and processing all that sound. But listening is so much more than just hearing.

While hearing is a passive process, listening is an active one. There are varying degrees of listening, however, all of them are active processes.

Today, we will focus on intentional listening. Intentional listening is done by intentionally paying attention to what is being said and internalizing the information.

In his most recent book, Think Again, Adam Grant talks about a series of experimen...

I recently went on a trip across the United States with my family. I love to travel, and I don’t mind spending the extra money to fly on my favorite airline. (It’s Delta in case you are wondering 😉)

As I was settling in to get comfy for the 5-hour flight home, I started to think about why I am willing to spend the extra money to fly Delta. They are certainly not the cheapest airline out there and they don’t have direct routes to some destinations from my home airport. And with all the current issues facing the airline industry lately, their reliability has come into question (I still believe they are one of the most reliable airlines. Current issues are impacting all airlines and it stands to reason that the biggest ones would have a greater number of problems with short-staffing, flight cancellations, etc).

Anyway, I was sitting there watching my children get comfy in their seats, enjoying their apple juice in fancy cups (we flew first class) and overall, just having a great time. I...

How many times have you heard someone tout their ability to solve problems? Being a problem- solver is a resume-worthy skill in just about any profession. However, what if instead of solving problems, you could prevent them? Wouldn’t this be a more valuable skill?

Problem-solving by nature is a reactive process. Something happens that shouldn’t, and you have to determine how to proceed. Problem-preventing is a proactive process in which you anticipate what could go wrong and take action up front to ensure it doesn’t. Anticipation is the first step in problem-prevention.

As a business owner, you will inevitably deal with problems. Being a problem-solver is in the unwritten job description of every business owner out there. The good news is that there is a way to deal with fewer problems!

As with so many things in life and business, communication is the key to success when dealing with problems. Clients will have complaints or questions, or something may happen that is out of your ...

Soft skills are all the rage this month. As I have been thinking and researching more and more about the soft skills necessary for business success, there is one skill that keeps coming back to the forefront of my mind: Anticipation.

We hear all the time about the forward thinkers, the innovators, those that drive our progress. We need people that can create the technology and products of tomorrow. However, we also really need people that can think forward.

Not to be confused with forward thinking, thinking forward is the ability to anticipate what others need, want, or will say, before they do. Anticipation is an important skill for any business owner or professional to master.

When you anticipate, you have a reasonable expectation that something will happen. As you spend time in your business learning, experiencing, and working with clients, you will come to know the usual questions or reactions they will have to different things, and you can start to anticipate those things befor...

I try not to hang out on social media too much these days. I can only handle so many graduation pics and arguments about the latest issues that won’t result in any real change. I really only stick around for great recipes and to follow Adam Grant.

If you don’t know, Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist and author of Think Again (and a few other books on my to-read list). I read Think Again a few months back and it was very insightful. It forced me to evaluate my own thinking about several things and the ways that my thinking impacts my life and my business.

One of Mr. Grant’s recent posts on the book of faces (or maybe it was in his book…) was this quote:

“The ability to communicate is always in demand.”

I wanted to high-five him through my screen. This is a simple statement but carries so much truth. I would amend it only to say, “the ability to communicate well is always in demand.”

This got me thinking about all the people I encounter that tell me things like “I didn’t ...

I recently had the chance to speak at a virtual event. I enjoy public speaking but prefer to do it in person. However, this was a completely virtual stage, so I had to get out of my comfort zone to be on video. It was a great opportunity to share my knowledge and push myself to do something I may not otherwise do.

I had a short notice to prepare for this event so I didn’t waste any time pulling together some content to present. That short notice got me thinking about the process I use to get ready for speaking events. This week I am going to share the 3-step version of that process to help you get ready for any event that may require you to speak to a group!

1. Preparation. The first step in getting ready for a public speaking event is to prepare. In this step you determine your topic, pull together your content, create a rough draft, edit, then draft the final version. In the preparation phase you should also get familiar with the venue in which you will be speaking and decide what ...

For the better part of my life, I have been a musician. For all its complexities, music has always come easily and felt so natural to me. So much so that at the ripe old age of 29, I enlisted in the military as a musician! I could talk all day about how amazing Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto is, or how Beethoven’s 5th Symphony is one of the greatest works ever written, or how Barber’s Adagio for Strings can make even the strongest of us tear up with its intensity…but I won’t. I will save those conversations for my fellow music friends!

Being a musician has taught me many things over the years. Not the least of which is that music is a form of communication. Like music, communication (more specifically, conversation) is made up of many moving parts. These include phrases, ideas, themes, emotions, and silence. All of these components are parts of any musical piece and any conversation.

Phrasing and emotion are inherent in our ability to communicate. The words we choose, the emotions they c...

It’s amazing isn’t it? At the touch of a button we can instantly (and constantly) be connected to hundreds, maybe thousands of people simultaneously. We can like, share, and comment on information from people from miles and miles away, most of whom we have never met. We can learn from teachers at institutions across the country, we can network with people across the globe, we can stay in touch with friends and relatives we don’t see very often…

All this connection, all the time…yet we are more disconnected than we likely have ever been.

In the modern era of communication, everything is virtual or e-communication. An email or text message in place of a letter, a voice mail instead of a conversation, zoom meetings instead of physical meetings.

So much is lost in the constant use of e-communication. Tone, body language, non-verbal cues, intention, and emotion are all missing in this type of communication. Hence the disconnect. Too often when we write or respond to these messages, we ar...

Every day we have to do things that make us uncomfortable…it’s called living. I try to live by the notion that without discomfort, there is no growth. Today, I took the opportunity to get uncomfortable and I spoke on stage…a virtual stage.

I’m one of those weird people that actually enjoys being on a real stage, speaking to and with others, but being on video is a whole other ball game. However, I couldn’t pass up the chance to speak at this event and since it was all virtual, I had to reach out of my comfort zone to make it happen!

Every coach, mentor, and teacher in the world says we should “get out of our comfort zone” in order to grow. I’d like to challenge that idea and instead think that we should expand our comfort zones in order to grow.

If you think about it, stepping out of your comfort zone implies you are leaving it behind. However, you need some level of comfort in order to feel confident moving forward and trying something new. By expanding your comfort zone, you kee...

There is no “I” in team, but there is definitely “YOU” in commYOUnication. Communication is a process that begins with you, and no one can do it exactly like you do. We all have our own communication style, quips and quirks that are unique to us, and ways of saying things that set us apart from the crowd.

Communication is a huge umbrella that covers a variety of skills, topics, and practices. Perhaps this is why so many people feel inadequately prepared to communicate confidently. In school, we only have so much time to learn how to format an essay or story and we usually pick up new words for our vocabulary toolbox along the way. But these are very basic skills, and we all absorb them at different levels. 

It is the not-so-basic skills that we really need to be taught. Today I am going to share a few of those with you. Now, these are all aspects of communication that we have discussed before, so there’s nothing new here, but the importance of these skills and traits cannot be overst...