There’s an unspoken secret that many coaches and teachers have. If your job is to help other people perfect a skill–to coach them–you sometimes secretly wish no one else had ever coached your client before they came to you. (That’s a broad statement: maybe it’s more accurate to say that you wish all their previous … Read more
Alignment
When we’re talking casually, many of us have run-on sentences that follow our stream of consciousness, it’s s conversational habit, there’s nothing wrong with doing that, but if you’re speaking to a group of people and it’s not a conversation, you might think about figuring out where you want to stop and which points you … Read more
Friend and reader Catherine responded to last week’s post: What Kind of Listening Do We Owe Each Other? She said, “Now I’m waiting for the next email on how to be a better listener.” I hope this is that email! I want to start by defining “better listener.” That word “better” seems like it’s clear, … Read more
Most of us do the many of the same things in the same way every day. We take the same route to the grocery store, we have the same routine in the shower, we turn to the same meals for dinner. Routine is helpful—it lessens the number of decisions we need to make every day. … Read more
Your body knows a lot. It knows when you’re feeling out of your depth, when you’re under-prepared, when you’re worried, when you’re excited. Sometimes it knows before you do. What does your body want you to know? What messages does it send you? What happens when you listen? What happens when you don’t?
A client of mine has gotten feedback that he’s too wordy and goes into more much detail than is necessary. It’s clear from the volume of this type of feedback that this is a behavior that shows up all the time, regardless of the situation. I’ve observed it myself in our coaching sessions. In the … Read more
We are often hired to coach people who have been told they need more “executive presence.” This is one of those pieces of feedback that is completely in the eye of the beholder; it’s a moving target. Often, “improving executive presence” simply means “look and act more like the person giving the feedback.” If that’s … Read more
One meaning of to incorporate is to make physical, to embody. When we learn something in our brain, we have to figure out a way to bring it into our understanding, our embodied knowledge. For example, you can watch YouTube videos for days about the perfect golf swing, but until you start to incorporate the information, … Read more
Quick tip: If you’re speaking in a meeting, facilitating, or presenting in the same room with a projector, remember that projectors are loud. Projectors have built-in fans, and those create white noise. We acclimate to the white noise, and then we don’t quite realize that we need to project over the projector. Make it easy … Read more
In theatre, we talk about the cardinal sin of “popping pronouns.” This is when an actor emphasizes a pronoun instead of a verb, noun, or adjective. To illustrate this idea, I’ll borrow one of my favorite lines from “The Negotiator,” starring Samuel L. Jackson. He plays a police negotiator whose partner has been murdered, and … Read more
