A little bragging

I don’t spend nearly enough time singing the praises of the Ignite CSP coaches, but today I’m going to take a step to rectify that. Neela Muñoz has been an Ignite CSP coach since 2008. If you don’t already know Neela, you can read about her here, but I want to share a particular accomplishment.  ... Continue Reading

Form or function?

When you’re learning to perform Shakespeare, you spend some time studying how verse works. When does he use it, when is it “regular” verse, when is it not, and when does he abandon verse altogether and use prose instead? Ultimately, we learn that Shakespeare is sending signals to us through the way he uses (and ... Continue Reading

Don’t waste your time practicing

If you’re familiar with this blog, the title of today’s post may have made you do a double-take. After all, the third part of our 3-part approach to developing communication skills is Practice!  (Intention and Alignment are steps 1 and 2.) So what’s all this “don’t waste your time practicing” stuff? When you practice, do ... Continue Reading

Communication isn’t the point.

Developing communication skills isn’t an end in itself.  The point of becoming a better, more effective communicator is so that you can be a better, more effective everything else in your life.  Communication is the way we do all the other things that are important to us.

“What do you need from me in order to have this conversation?”

I was honored to be a guest on business coach Study McKee’s podcast, “Focus Forward.” We talked about business successes and challenges, and what it means to be a good communicator. Sturdy has a focus on building strong processes that support you and your business, and I was excited to learn about his work. Check ... Continue Reading

Lessons from the hardest job I’ve ever had

My first “big job” was as the Education Director of the National Shakespeare Company, in New York. Our mission was to bring Shakespeare plays and classroom workshops to students at K-12 schools all over the city, and I was absolutely on fire for this project. In order to make it happen, I raised money for ... Continue Reading

How do I know you heard me?

Job interviews often cover the subject of communication skills. Like most nontechnical areas, communication skills are pretty unquantifiable, so there’s not a single agreed-upon way to report on our own capability.  Because of this, we tend to assess our “communication skills” in terms of how we think we talk. In our own estimation, can we ... Continue Reading

Knowing when, or rather why, to leave

The coach of the college basketball team I root for (Go Heels!) announced his retirement last week. I’m sad about it, but that’s not what this post is about. Roy Williams is a Hall of Fame coach. He has 903 wins, three National Championships, and literally dozens of other accolades he earned at both UNC-Chapel ... Continue Reading

What’s outside your (Zoom) window?

Lately, as I’ve been on video call after video call, I’ve wished I could turn the camera around and show the people I’m speaking with what’s outside my window. Spring is really underway here in western North Carolina. The forsythia is fully in bloom, a massive yellow burst in a corner of the fence. Above ... Continue Reading

The real f-word

This post was originally published in the fall of 2018. A recent conversation with a colleague made me think of it, and it still seems relevant! Most of the people I coach have a horror of failure. They are leaders who look for the next achievement, personally and professionally. They have a lot of accomplishments ... Continue Reading