When you travel frequently, your time home with your family becomes that much more important.  Recently, my wife and I realized that if we didn’t have a good greeting at the airport, then our time together would be off as well.  Not bad, just off. So we decided to create a ritual.  I put together a playlist of songs that she and I both like and put them on our respective iPods.  When the airplane touched down, I texted her to start...

You may recall when you were a kid or when playing with your kids the activity of connect the dots.  The fun of this game is that as you connect the dots, assuming you do it correctly, the dots come together to reveal a bigger picture. The same thing goes for communication.  In fact, if you want people to really “get” what it is you’re communicating, you have to connect the dots.  People only understand ideas in...

Have you ever had a meeting with someone or attend a presentation in which it felt like it wouldn’t matter if you weren’t there.  Even if you got up and left, they would still be doing their thing, talking away.  That is clearly a one-sided form of communication and they’re clealry not paying attention to you: the customer (listener).  And that is a big mistake.  To be a good communicator, you have to listen to your...

The best form of customer service is getting it right the first time.  But as we know, that doesn’t always happen.  In doing training and consulting, I get to fly all over the world.  And as unbelievable as it may be, when it comes to commercial travel, sometimes things don’t go as planned.  Shocking…I know. But on this particular occasion, I had to call Delta customer service to get an itinerary issue resolved.  I called after...

Certainly success is a good thing.  But that’s not to say that it doesn’t have negative consequences.  (Is that a triple negative?)  Anyways.  In the real world, success is not always clear cut.  Could we have been more successful?  How might our current success impact future success?  What tradeoffs did we make? In the academic world, success can easily be evaluated based on grades.  I sometimes teach university classes and...

Even if you’re not a professional speaker, you may have to make a presentation from time to time.  Whether to your company’s Board, your boss, or even your customer.  A lot of times we get so caught up in what we want to say that we overlook an the most important part: the audience. Think about it. Someone crosses their arms and leans back during your presentation.  Does this mean that they don’t like what you just...