Booher BanterYour Resource for the best ideas to improve communications skills.

What do popular movies have to tell us about communication—and the pitfalls of miscommunication?   Join me for my sessions at ASTD 2006 ICE (the American Society of Training and Development International Conference and Exposition) on May 7 at the Dallas Convention Center.   I’ll be speaking from noon to 1:15 in Room C-146, followed by an author book-signing for Communicate with Confidence in the onsite bookstore.  Drop by for an informal chat afterward and let me know what challenges your organization is facing this year.  For more information, visit ASTD’s website:  http://astd2006.astd.org/.

Posted at 1:07pm in Communication—Oral | Permalink | Add Comment » |

The great people at Leadership Excellence Magazine published one of my articles in their May issue: Praise Principles—Release Peak Performance.  Directed to the business environment, this article describes how to deliver heartfelt praise in day-to-day situations to improve morale and performance.  I also included two important facets of receiving praise that alleviate awkward exchanges.  To view the article, follow this link to the Press/Media page at Booher.com (http://www.booher.com/press.html) and go to the first article under "Articles Featuring Dianna Booher."

Editor Ken Shelton and the folks at Executive Excellence Publications produce this magazine and other great learning resources for business-minded people.  You can explore their offers here:
(http://www.eep.com/Merchant//newsite/index.html)

Posted at 9:51am in Communication—Oral | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Do you dread walking into the C-suite to make a presentation?  When there, do you have the impact you intend and deliver the value the executives there expect?  I’ll be leading a seminar on May 2 in Chicago (8:30 to 5:00 at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, 151 East Wacker Drive) providing ten strategies for communicating with confidence and authority in high-risk situations.  This session is open both to members and non-members of SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management).  For more information and seat availability, visit their website:  http://www.shrm.org/shrmacademy/courseDates.asp.

If you cannot attend the May session, mark your calendar for the SHRM 58th Annual Conference and Exposition June 24-27 in Washington, DC.  See the SHRM website for details: http://www.shrm.org/conferences/annual/.  I will provide more information on my speaking topics as the event approaches.

Posted at 12:31pm in Communication—Oral | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Complaining takes little effort and less etiquette.  But to complain and get the results you want takes skill.   Before I give you specific guidelines to get results, let me show you what NOT to do.  Here’s an email a colleague sent to his corporate headquarters:

“I will call you later but I want to say how disappointed I am in how Corporate handled this transaction.  The package was sent in over a week ago.  Yesterday afternoon a fax came in indicating my late status.  Unfortunately no one was in the office at the time.  Now via email, after you have had the package well over a week, I find out 3 days before the scheduled closing date that you won’t fund it and at the same time the review board is telling me that they will need to charge me more money for their report because they too just now got the file from you.  My question is why did Corporate sit on the file until the last minute?  I will now lose this contract because the seller has already indicated she won’t extend her offer for another week.

You all know I am backed in the corner.  I feel like you are all kicking me around instead of trying to help me when you sit on a contract for a week.  Let me make it clear that my financial position is not your fault, and I recognize you have no responsibility to help me.  But you don’t need to sit on the contract for a week.  And the interest rates you are now charging me makes marginal deals now impossible.”

Wrong approach:  First of all, the reader has to get half way through the email to understand what the writer is angry about.  But most important, what does the writer want the reader to do now?  The tone serves only to anger the recipient—not exactly put him or her in a frame of mind to respond favorably.

So, next time you’re ready to get real results, try this approach:

1)  Summarize the problem or issue in a sentence or two.

2)  State the specific action you want upfront.

3)  Provide details necessary for the other person to understand the complete situation and take action.

4)  Keep a matter-of-fact tone.  Avoid sarcasm.

So what happens if this straightforward approach doesn’t get results?  Escalate the “next action,” but not your tone. 

Posted at 1:46pm in General Communication | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Fox’s top-ranked reality show, American Idol, runs the gamut of contestants—from Wall Street “suits” to hicks from the sticks.  And a big part of their popularity comes from how much their viewing audience identifies with them.  But when it comes to those sitting in the boardrooms making decisions on hiring, promotions, budgets, they’re looking for polish.  Polish often boils down to perception.

Here’s the perception:  If you have a deep twang, talk slower than molasses, make a grammatical error every second sentence, then people think you’re not too bright. 

Don’t believe it?  Think Forest Gump.  Think about every movie you’ve ever seen when the director wanted to portray someone who was mentally challenged without actually writing that information into the dialogue.

Consider the opposite:  What stereotypical personality traits are assigned to the fast-talking, loudmouth from the Bronx?  Aggressive, overbearing, impatient, sly.

True or untrue in either case—it doesn’t matter.  Perception rules.  Whether a positive or a negative, our speech categorizes us faster than almost anything else.

Posted at 3:43pm in Communication—Oral | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Use the fields below to subscribe to my Communication Tip of the Month e-newsletter and receive my best ideas on improving communication at work, at home, and in all phases of life. The "CommoTip" (as we call it around the office) includes a current list of upcoming Booher seminars and workshops around the country. Just enter your email address in the yellow box and hit "Submit."

Posted at 3:25pm in Communication—Written | Permalink | Add Comment » |

If you are like me, you value ideas from great speakers and authors like Zig Ziglar, John Maxwell, Jim Rohn, and Brian Tracy. If you’re always on the lookout for ways to grow both personally and professionally, then you may be interested in the following new series.

I am personally involved in an audio subscription plan that brings you the best from today’s speakers and trainers, conveniently packaged in a 52-week format and billed monthly—just $14.95 (the regular retail rate is $19.95).

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As a practical person, I only endorse good deals:  Compare buying 52 teaching CDs for $18 each ($936) to this subscription offer of $14.95 per month ($179.40 per year). That’s a savings of 80%, and that’s why I wholeheartedly support this offer. And you can conveniently download the audio files to your laptop, PC, MP3 player, or CD burner to build your own reference library.

Here is the link again:  http://www.madeforsuccess.net/default.asp?AFF=388

Posted at 6:16pm in Potpourri | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Q.  What do these sentences have in common?

• Less than half of our agents have a degree.

• Jerome has less credit cards than I do.

• Su Lin has fewer patience than I do with whiners.

• He has less problems than I do.

• Less than twenty of the cars were damaged.

A.  They’re all incorrect.

Here’s the skinny on the often-confused FEWER and LESS:

Fewer: Use when items CAN be counted: fewer letters

Less:  Use with quantities that CANNOT be counted:  less nitrogen

Less is more—more than a meaningless modifier.   

Posted at 11:09am in Communication—Written | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Finally!  Stats to prove my point!  I’ve been on my soapbox for 25 years about using informative subject lines—whether memos, letters, or email (well, give or take a few years on the email).  Opening up Entrepreneur’s April 2006 issue, I find the article “The E-mail Effect” regarding consumer habits in email campaigns (source of the study:  Return Path).  The study reports that 43 percent of us open our email based on subject lines.

So if you want someone to take action, you need to think in headlines.  That’s right—newspaper headlines. Get both your message and your action into your subject line.

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And I’m NOT just talking about selling.  If you want them to attend a meeting, approve your budget, accept your new pricing policy, you need to state that action in the subject line.  Otherwise, you’ll chance their overlooking your email along with the other 300 hitting their inbox that day or week.  (If your total job is marketing, however, you may want to read the rest of the marketing stats about what makes readers open your email—offers, gift ideas, discounts, preview window contents, and so forth.  See Entrepreneur Magazine, April 2006, page 20 for the guidelines.  http://www.entrepreneur.com is an excellent source of business best practices.)

Posted at 8:08am in Email Hints | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Like food, fashion, and fitness, language changes.  To acknowledge change is not to discount grammar rules. Grammatical errors muddy your message and mar your image.  But as long as the language is still spoken, new words move into our language to convey new concepts.  Worn-out words fall into disfavor and become archaic.

Some changes, however, create confusion for writers.  For example, they see a word hyphenated at an organization.  Then they move to another company, and people there write the same concept as two words.  More perplexing still, their client writes the same idea as a single word. 

What’s going on here?  Words enter our language as separate entities: pipe and line.  Then they are gradually hyphenated: pipe-line.  When they are commonly put together, the hyphen disappears:  pipeline.   

Other examples: Make up, make-up, makeup.  Note book, note-book, notebook.  Feed back, feed-back, feedback.  On line, on-line, online.

What’s a person to do?  Stay up to date.  Use current references and style guides.  When grammar and common usage clash, common usage always wins over the course of time.

Posted at 8:34am in Communication—Written | Permalink | Add Comment » |