Authenticity vs. Confidence You know you need to exude confidence: perhaps you have a big presentation, a difficult conversation, or an interview coming up. Yet, you’re nervous. How do you reconcile these two realities? In any interaction, the higher the stakes or the...
Stop Depersonalizing Your Communication Recently, my friend moved away. On the day of the move, I messaged her, “I’m going to miss you!” She wrote back, “We are going to miss our friends, too, but we promise to keep in touch.” I couldn’t help but notice how...
3 Common Communication Pitfalls (and how to avoid them) No one is a perfect communicator. Not me. Not you. In the best of times, communication pitfalls can lead to breakdowns. In times of crisis when emotions run high, the effects of bad habits are amplified....
Stop Saying “Sorry” It used to bug me when I’d tell someone I was having a rough day or I’d stubbed my toe and they’d reply with, “I’m sorry.” “It’s not your fault,” I’d say. To say “I’m sorry” actually means, “I am filled with sorrow.” We equate “sorry” with...
One Key Way to Demonstrate Confidence In the face of crisis, you cannot stay calm without confidence. You can be apathetic. That’s nihilism, not calmness. That’s doubtfulness and uncertainty that leads to giving up—the complete opposite of confidence. True...
Mismatched Communication: Now What? Here is one of my favorite activities to do in presentations on differing communication styles: I have participants pair up and I pass out red and blue glass stones. I tell the people who have red stones, “You are under a...
