Make a Great Virtual First Impression

We’re all spending so much more time in online meetings these days, and much of our interviewing and client onboarding is happening via video chat. So what can you do to make a great first virtual impression? Andres Lares, Managing Partner at Shapiro Negotiations Institute (SNI), offers these five body language tips to ensure you are making the

Read More

How to Confront Negative Behaviors When You Hate Confrontation

“Problems in the workplace are often created not by what we do, but by what we fail to do.” -Aubrey C. Daniels – Bringing Out the Best in People “All problems become smaller if you don’t dodge them, but confront them.” – William F. Halsey And one from me: Failure to confront a negative behavior

Read More

What Social Media Doesn’t Teach You About Effective Communication

We all communicate in a variety of ways every day. The fact is human beings are born to communicate. And the number of ways we can communicate has never been greater than today. In fact, some of our most prevalent communication mediums today didn’t exist twenty years ago. Unfortunately (though probably predictably), an abundance of

Read More

The Compassion Paradox

Effective leaders are comfortable with paradox. They can call on skills and work in ways that seem to be contradictory. Dictionary.com defines paradox as “a seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true.” As I study the field, I find many paradoxes associated with leadership. I see that developing the skills of a great leader

Read More

5 Communication Red Flags

People desperately want to feel connected, especially now when so many are working remotely. Helping employees feel like they’re an integral part of a caring, trusted team is not just a nice thing for companies to do; it’s more like a survival strategy. The highest levels of performance require that people care about and understand

Read More

Don’t Forget Your Phone – Remarkable TV

When I was growing up, most households only had one phone and it was usually in the kitchen. And teens spent alllll the time on that phone. Today’s teens also spend a lot of time on the phone, as do most of us. These tiny devices consume so much of our time and attention, although

Read More

Is It OK to Turn Off Your Webcam?

Is it okay to turn your webcam off in the middle of a team call? That seems like a reasonable question, but it always seems to get people worked up. It should be a binary answer: yes or no. But the real answers are “sometimes,” and “it depends.” We all know the pros and cons

Read More

Transaction or Interaction – Remarkable TV

In a fast-paced (and often remote working) world, we seem to run our days on “transactions” – short-term, project-driven tasks. And while transactions get things done in the short term, relationships are built and nourished on interactions. And in a remote working world, relationships are even harder to maintain. That’s why it’s important that we

Read More

Where Does Mistrust Come From?

One of the great paradoxes of remote work is that it requires a lot of trust, yet that trust is hard to build at a distance and easily damaged. Most of us start out assuming positive intent, and that we trust in people until they show us they’re more deserving of mistrust. At worst, we

Read More

Using Apology to De-escalate a Conflict

Apology is a powerful — and often underused — conflict resolution tool. One reason for not apologizing that I often hear in my work with clients is the concern that apologizing either totally admits fault for the conflict or reveals a weakness. While those concerns may be legitimate in some situations, they are overblown in

Read More