Your audience will only remember a small percentage of what you say. Some studies suggest it will be less than 20%. Fact. Other studies suggest that the average adult attention span is now about 8 seconds. Bummer. So what do you do about it?

When we map out what a possible future state looks like, we discuss three levels of communication success, each with specific skills that can be mapped. Here is a quick primer on how to think about your own skills:

There are tangible outcomes that arise from good communication skills, and those outcomes can often be measured specifically. But there is another benefit that comes from being a good communicator, one that is harder to measure, but often even more powerful.

Have you ever listened to that person who says something like “um” over and over and over? After a while, all you hear are the “ums.” How about the person who says

We write constantly in this blog about all the different elements of good communication… clear messaging, effective visuals or slides, powerful presence and delivery, speaking with the “executive voice“…

In many workshops, we see two parallel fears come up over and over. People fear silence when they’re speaking. Silence makes them uncomfortable.

Anyone who has ever worked with The Latimer Group, or read or listened to any of our content, will easily recall one of the primary tenets of our work – great communication requires that you understand who you are speaking to. We discuss this constantly — anyone who

Have you ever, um, listened, um, to someone who, um, has a distracting pattern to the way they, um, speak?

A healthy body has oxygen flowing freely. And inside your organization, information flow is like oxygen. Organizations need information flowing freely to the right people, in the right ways, in order to drive good business results. So how do we activate that information flow? By doing THREE specific things:

I love the quiet of the early mornings. One of my favorite things to do is wake up early, pour a cup of hot coffee, sit in a rocking chair on our front porch and just

Therefore, the most valuable person in most meetings today is not the person with all the details. The most valuable person today is the person who can

We have been having the same conversation over and over lately, with many different client companies. Many of our clients are looking closely into

Great communication requires a full toolbox of strong communication skills. And my colleagues and I can (and do) talk about such skills with our clients every day. But before we can fill up your toolbox with strong skills, we first need to lay the foundation of strong mindsets

Twice a week, The Latimer Group’s experienced facilitators deliver clear, succinct, and actionable lessons about business communication to tens of thousands of readers worldwide. Here’s the latest entry:

We do an enormous amount of writing here about how to prepare well, and not waste other people’s time… especially if that person is your boss. We all know how important it is to be able to communicate well to people above you on the org chart. But let’s flip that around for a moment.

Before you start your day, take a moment and walk with me… a quick, figurative one. I know you are busy and you have a lot to do today. Just a few minutes, is all I ask.

A great leader will find a balance between her or his own priorities, and the needs of the team. A great leader will have a range of styles and behaviors from which to draw depending on the situation. Here are some of things to strive for when leading and communicating with your team

Every organization is a dynamic organism, in a constant state of evolution… sometimes expanding, sometimes contracting, sometimes getting stronger, sometimes weaker. What an organization needs at any given moment is likely to

My colleagues and I coach people on their communication skills for a living… all day, every day, for the last 21+ years. And one of our biggest lessons learned over these last two decades is this:

in May 2002, right around the time I was launching The Latimer Group, I took some time to clear my head and enrolled in an eight-day desert survival course in Boulder, Utah. At the end of the journal, my final entry in fact, I wrote down three things that I learned from the experience.