Reading time: Less than 1 minute Does your company need some communications training? Here’s how to hire a trainer… I’m negotiating with a potential client right now about delivering a series of communications workshops. Today, I thought, we might be getting close to signing a final contract. Instead, I learned, they’re […]
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Have you ever had to put a really bad photo in an annual report or important PowerPoint presentation? It’s time for you to understand the value of Photoshop. This week I had a terrible photo I had to use for a client. What was
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Reading time: Less than two minutes Training dollars are rare with most companies. So here’s some important advice on how to get more value from your training… My husband recently took a four-day training course. He loved it although he found it exhausting. (And he had an awful pile of work
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute The next time a boss or client tells you not to worry about whether your writing includes enough stories, I suggest you get him or her a copy of the book Significant Objects. Here’s why. Back in 2009, American authors Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn bought a series
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Reading time: About 3 minutes I never thought I’d see the words crisis communications and Jian Ghomeshi in the same sentence. Now, they seem inseparable… If you don’t live in Canada, you might be unaware that Jian Ghomeshi was a media god in this country. He was host of the popular
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Reading time: About 1 minute When things are going badly, many organizations want to act rapidly. But don’t make decisions too quickly…. Parents with “challenging” offspring learn one manoeuvre early on: they don’t dish out consequences too quickly. That’s because they know that if they have to retract or change their minds, they’ll
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Reading time: Less than 2 minutes Looking for the secrets of how to write a better speech? Here are two key ones… I coach a debating team at my local high school. I LOVE this volunteer job because it allows me to connect with teenagers and it lets me teach them a
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Reading time: About 1 minute Here’s a handy tip for how to get better work out of illustrators… On behalf of my clients, I work with a graphic artist I really appreciate. Not only is he fast and reliable, he can also illustrate — a talent not in the quiver
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Reading time: About 1.5 minutes Can plain English be good enough for a medical article? You bet it can! Full disclosure: When my children were young, Dr. Alisa Lipson was their pediatrician. While I don’t know her beyond those brief interactions, I always found her to be cheerful, smart, sympathetic and,
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Reading time: About 2 minutes No one wants to communicate bad news. But what happens when your leader gets sick?… When Toronto mayor Rob Ford recently revealed he had cancer, he did more than change the face of the upcoming Oct. 27/14 Toronto mayoral race. He also changed the rules for politicians and company leaders reporting
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