Category: Communication

A critical skill for leaders and aspiring leaders is storytelling. Throughout history, stories have been an essential form of communication. Brain science even gives us reasons why. I love to listen to and tell stories. Most people do. We tell stories to friends at social gatherings, share stories about work successes and failures, tell stories […]

Asking questions is the only way to find out what the “real” user requirements are — what the other person really wants. But there’s a great deal more to asking the right questions than knowing the difference between open-ended and close-ended questions (in fact, there’s really no such thing as a truly open-ended question). Here’s what to ask that will let the […]

Everybody wants their writing to be concise and clear. Here’s some simple rules that you can follow to achieve both clarity and concision in the next thing you write — and a warning about when being concise is a bad idea. When I ask participants in Learning Tree’s business writing course what matters to them in business […]

I recently got a $300 refund from a company that did not want to give me anything at all. Here’s how Emotional Intelligence made that possible. I’m not one of those people who instantly grasps how other people are feeling (just ask my wife). As a project leader and department manager, improving my Emotional Intelligence has been critical for me […]

When you go to write your next email, start by realizing that your recipient probably doesn’t want to read your email at all. Fortunately, you can use that your advantage. Back when I had a job, I mentioned to my boss that I rewrote my emails two or three times before I sent them to him. […]