TSIC Blog

Speak with Confidence

The Skills You Need to be AGILE

  There is a difference between being an agile HR department and being an AGILE HR department. The ideal, of course, is being an agile AGILE HR department. This is especially true as AGILE becomes a way of doing business in more and more companies. The emphasis in AGILE is on speed and accuracy. At the Bank of Montreal, where AGILE has become popular, the Chief Transformation Officer, Lynne Rogers, says that “speed is the

Read More »

If you don’t put in the work, your communication cannot improve

Have you ever heard of the often-quoted business statement “anything worth doing is worth doing badly”?  Whether you have or have not, the question you should ask is, what is this quotation saying to us as professional. The quote is urging us to do. Very inspirational and successful people generally speak statements like this. People, we want to emulate. The problem is that statements like this don’t reflect the years of work that went into

Read More »

Three Lawyers and an Actuary

This week I had the privilege of coaching three lawyers and one actuary — bright people indeed who were preparing to speak at various conferences. Three of them needed help structuring their presentations. One executive was having trouble relating to his listeners. Yet they all expressed concern over the thing that holds so many people back. If you guessed they all suffer from the fear of speaking, you’re right. There are two types of comments I heard: Physiological: They

Read More »

Is Conversation Dead?

By no means is it shocking to say that teenagers live on their cell phones. As a GenXer, I grew up as a teen that spent hours talking on the telephone. (The thing attached to the wall that had a cord.) I can still hear my mother yelling, “GET OFF THE PHONE NOW! Someone may be trying to call.” Yes, I used a phone to talk. That is no longer the case today. I find

Read More »

Your Spoken Word Is Not Enough 

When preparing for a presentation, you start by thinking “What do I want to say?” The focus is on ourselves. How will it go? What is best? Think bigger. As a communication coach, I tell my clients all the time “I’m going to tell you something important: it’s not about you.” It’s about your listener. How one successfully reaches a communication goal is by thinking about what tools will help you effectively get your message

Read More »