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Browse published articles attributed to Joan Curtis, with full-archive search.
We’ve heard of leadership styles and communication styles. Have you ever wondered about your listening style? Most self-assessments do not measure how we listen. Yet, we all recognize how important listening is to communication. Many people say that listening ranks much higher than actual ...
What is the biggest communications challenge my clients face? The simple answer is listening. My clients struggle with listening because their heads get in the way. They grapple with ways to communicate their messages and often ask me about how to go about saying what they want to say the ...
How do you express your anger? I once had a woman in one of my workshops who said, “I never get angry.” Can you imagine that? How can we go through life and never feel anger. Anger is a part of the passion of living. There is nothing wrong with anger. What is wrong is when we pass our anger on to someone else. What is wrong is when we blame our angry feelings on ourselves or others. What is wrong is when we channel our anger in the wrong place. So, what can we do when we feel that nasty heat rise inside us?
What does it take to really hear someone? In a previous article I discussed 4 types of listeners-Compassionate, Too Busy to Listen, Trees for Forrest, It's Me. Each of us has a bit of all four of these types and yet we all aspire to the Compassionate Listener. Some of us think we are ...
To better understand the Say It Just Right (SIJR) Model, you must know more about the people you are “saying it” to before you apply it to sticky situations. If we faced cardboard people everyday, who always acted the same way, we could apply the SIJR Model right away. Unfortunately (some may say fortunately) people are different.
Larry thought he was a great listener. That morning while drinking his coffee his wife was complaining about the kids. “They never pay attention to anything I say.” She went on to list all the mundane mishaps of each child. Larry tuned her out. He heard little after the first sentence. ...
Did you know there are Six Messages in any conversation? • What you Mean to say • What you Actually say • What the other person Hears • What the other person Thinks he/she hears • What the other person Says • What you Think the other person says No wonder we have communication problems. To make matters even worse, did you know that our mind thinks four times faster than the average person can speak?
Whenever we face a communication dilemma, whether we must tell our aging parents that they can no longer live independently or tell our best friend that her clothes do not suit her, we agonize over what to do. How do we tell people things they do not wish to hear? These kind of communication dilemmas slip up on us all the time. We go our merry way, and as if they were waiting in the bushes to ambush us, there they are. We are caught off guard.
A customer breaks his word, chews out someone on your staff or keeps calling you in the middle of the night. What do you do? Do you shrug it off, remembering the customer is always right? When looking at sticky situations with clients, we sometimes decide to put our heads in the sand. Maybe those clients are a bit difficult to work with, but they bring us lots of business, right? Is the business they bring us really worth the trouble? Are valued employees deserting you while you keep that pesky client?
What is the value of Facebook over Twitter? Is there a difference? When do you use one or the other or both? In writing our book, The New Handshake: Sales Meets Social Media, Barb Giamanco and I discovered that some businesses prefer Facebook; some prefer Twitter and some use neither. We decided to take a look at the two platforms to help you distinguish which is best for you. As we’ve stated many times in the book, the ultimate decision about which social network to use lies with your company culture, goals and customer.
The Team Development ProcessnnWhen I became a team leader, I quickly learned that there was more to teams than I'd realized. Although I had been on many teams, I had never realized what it took to manage a highly functional team. People do not always respond the way I think should. Sometimes they get frustrated with other team members or with my leadership. Perhaps, you've had similar experiences. nnLater I learned that teams go through a natural maturing process from a simpl
How many of us have walked into a room full of people and wanted to turn around and leave? When I think about networking events, my heart freezes. Didn’t our mothers teach us not to speak to strangers? Yet, in this article we're going to examine how to talk to strangers. First thing you need to know is we all hate going to networking events. Why? It’s hard to thrust yourself on someone else, no matter how “outgoing” you may be. Knowing that we are all miserable makes these things a tiny bit easier. Second, your job at a networking event is to meet people.
For years I’ve studied management and leadership theories. Everyone says basically the same thing. Managers manage and leaders lead. Everyone wants to do the same thing— lead and not manage. In thinking about this conundrum while talking with an executive client, it occurred to me that good leaders are also good managers. In other words, it’s not a question of either managing or leading; it’s a question of doing both and doing them at the right time.
"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."nnThe premise of learning is experiencing and doing. Participants come into a learning environment with the expectation that they will be engaged in a learning experience. All too often, the instructor or workshop leader, focuses too much attention on him or her/self and forgets the basic tenet of adult learning: We must engage our audience.nnAs public speakers, how do we engage the audience when there are obs
Years ago I uncovered a definition of communication that I doubt would appear in Wikipedia. I like it because of its simplicity as well as its inherent complexity. Communication is behavior that transmits meaning from one person to another person This definition tells us that we cannot communicate without behavior. We must do something to communicate. It also tells us that communication does not happen unless meaning is transmitted. Of course what I mean and what you think I mean pose two entirely different things.
Last week I taught a class on Business Etiquette. My class consisted of people ranging in ages from the mid 20’s to the early 50’s. I noticed a definite gap in how people identified “correct” behavior. The younger people seemed more relaxed with the rules. Webster’s defines etiquette as “behaviors required by good breeding or prescribed by authority.” When I showed that definition to the class, they burst out laughing. What is good breeding? Did our parents prepare us for today’s workplace?
When your boss asks you to do something that you feel is unethical, what do you do? If you spot two co-workers having an intimate lunch, what do you do? How do you handle telling a long-time employee that his job has been eliminated? One of the biggest headaches any manager faces is dealing with “people” problems.
How are we supposed to behave during an interview? Most of us know not to eat with food in our mouths or to give an interviewer a résumé with typos.
How can we hire the best with today’s job market? We all know that unemployment is at its highest. What does that mean to the employers? When I wrote the book on Strategic Interviewing (which, by the way, you can buy for a huge bargain used right now) nine years ago, there were more people ...
Fall is in the air and the school doors are about to open. For many this year offers some unique challenges. Many schools are facing budget cuts and some personnel cuts. These reductions place greater pressure on the people who remain. As demands increase but resources shrink, we face a world ripe for “sticky situations.” In the book, Managing Sticky Situations at Work, http://www.stickysituationsatwork.com I described a school related situation in which two teachers had trouble working together.
What are we afraid of? In the workshops I teach on managing sticky situations at work, people describe the troubling situations they face every day. During those sessions we share information about how to diplomatically approach each situation. Too often people let matters go too long. By the time they say anything, they say it just wrong. They are tired of dealing with the matter or they are frustrated that the person hasn't picked up on their nonverbal cues.
What is our universal language? By universal I mean, the language we all understand. By we, I mean not just the human species but also the animal species. Let's imagine for a moment what goes through our dog's head when we speak in a commanding voice. The command in our voice communicates a message to the dog. He learns to stop and pay attention to what we are saying. Often he understands what to do. Let's imagine for a moment when we communicate sadness to someone who does not speak our language.
What is the value of LinkedIn over Facebook in business? Is there a difference? When do you use one or the other or both? In writing our book, The New Handshake: Sales Meets Social Media, Barb Giamanco and I discovered that some businesses prefer LinkedIn; some prefer Facebook and some use neither. We decided to take a look at the two platforms to help you distinguish which is best for you. As we’ve stated many times in the book, the ultimate decision about which social network to use lies with your company culture, goals and customer.
Why are we so resistant to change? As I loaded up my dogs this morning to take them to the vet for their annual physicals, I wondered why they were panting their heads off and their bodies were shaking from head to foot. Dogs, like people, are accustomed to routine. When I loaded them in the car, that was contrary to their daily routine. I had moved them out of their comfort zones. We, too, get nervous when we are faced with change. Many of us choose to stay in bad marriages or in horrible jobs rather than choose a new course. Yet, it’s change that keeps us alive and vital.
How can you budget for social media time? People keep asking me how they can add social media to their already packed daily schedule. They fear that employees will be using their work time to Tweet about personal things or to talk to their friends on Facebook. One of the biggest complaints I hear from salespeople as well as CEO's relates to time.
How do you tell someone what not to wear? When it comes to looking professional, many factors come into play. We all recognize the need to be clean and pressed (right?), but what about our hair or our nails or the scuffs on our shoes? I remember years ago interviewing candidates for a CEO ...
How can you use the social media and still maintain your privacy? This is a question we hear over and over from our clients. They tell us they do not want others to know what they like to do in their off time. They do not want others to know about their personal lives. At the same time, they’d like to explore using the social media. We’d like to make one thing very clear. The social media is innately social.
Have you wondered about what LinkedIn can do for you as a powerful lead generator? One of the most important things you need to do is create a profile that will entice people to your services or products. A boring, resume-looking profile will not do the trick. Furthermore, your profile must be complete. If you go to a networking event and someone later looks you up on LinkedIn (and they will!), what will they see? Here are some tips to help you create a LinkedIn profile that will generate sales leads:
How many times do we find ourselves in awkward, uncomfortable situations? How many times have you wished you could talk your way out of those little messes or better still, disappear? Ever wonder how confident communicators do it? Want to learn ways to manage conflict and still keep your ...
One of the most common complaints we hear from our clients about the social media is that it eats up time. They fear that once their employees get on the sites, they will no longer have time to do their jobs. I remember hearing this same complaint about allowing employee access to the internet. There’s no question that internet access and email correspondence eat up much of our day. Does it waste time? There’s also no question that access to the social media will eat up your day. Will it waste time? Today no business can function without the internet.
Don’t you wish you could do your job and not have to travel all over the country or world? Don’t you wish you could let people know about your products and services without going to endless networking meetings? Believe it or not with the right use of the social media you can do just that. Notice we said with the “right use” of the social media. Even though your purpose is to sell your goods or services, you must be careful not to abuse the new technology. Unfortunately many people have not gotten that point. What we want to do is actually increase our sales, not turn people off.
I recently noted an entire book on the misuse of fillers in public speaking. Can you imagine that? Someone actually filled up 320 pages talking about um’s and ah’s and other verbal stumbles. The book title: Ums: Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders and What They Mean by Michael Erard. Yes, ...
Why Relationships Matter Whenever you read anything pertaining to the social media, you’ll read about relationships. On Facebook you can only invite your “friends.” LinkedIn will not allow you to connect with people you do not know. Twitter gives you more freedom. You can follow anyone you ...
What do you know about social media? Before you answer that question, let me tell you that you know more than you may think. Social media are simply other ways for us to communicate and connect with one another. If you are a smart communicator and understand the power of connections, you ...
How many times are we asked that question? How many times do we stumble over the response? Let’s see. . . I provide financial services to seniors. . . or I’m a research analyst at the university. As a coach the main problem I encounter with my clients is coming to grips with what they do and ...
Whether you run a small business or are a CEO in a major corporation, if you don’t speak up, you will not reach your full potential. Susan RoAne, in her landmark book, How to Work the Room tells us that 93 percent of people report that they are shy. This number astounded me and tends to astound the groups I speak to. What it means is that only 7 percent of us believe ourselves not to be shy! nnWhen I walk into a room full of people and see all those friendly faces, conv