This is the eighth of the blog posts based on the top ten most read Straight Talk Tips that go to my clients each month. The tips are free and you can sign up for them here
How to use facts in conversations
When you open a conversation by putting the facts on the table you create a [...]

This is the seventh of the blog posts based on the top ten most read Straight Talk Tips that go to my clients each month. The tips are free and you can sign up for them here
How to start over over in a relationship
Relationships can get stuck. Conversations end in argument; the same buttons get pressed; [...]

This is the third of the blog posts based on the top ten most read Straight Talk Tips that go to my clients each month. The tips are free and you can sign up for them here
Make a plan - speak up
Re title: Tips for holding difficult conversations
At one time or another we all face [...]

One conversation can make or break a relationship, a career or a life. No wonder we find some of our conversations really scary. Getting to a point where you can speak up about almost anything to almost anyone takes practice, but if you start with these tips in mind you’ll go wrong less often.
1. Choose [...]

If you want to build a high performing team you must know how to hold people to account for their performance. In general however, people are more skilled at avoiding accountability than others are at holding them to account. There are three tactics that are most commonly used. For each, there is a specific behaviour [...]

If you’ve done any presenting at all you can probably think of moments when you could feel that your audience was completely absorbed by what you were saying. Most of us unfortunately have also had the experience of talking to an audience when we just couldn’t seem to make any connection.
When you have a good connection with [...]

Speaking up to anyone in authority can be difficult and high risk. If you get it wrong, it could be career limiting. But it may be the only way to remove feelings of frustration and dis-empowerment at work and can be a powerful way to increase your resilience.
One of the conversations that most people avoid is asking [...]

There’s some really good news this week. I’ve had the proposal for my second Straight Talk book accepted for publication by my publisher, Random House Struik!
And there’s some really bad news! They want the manuscript by the end of January for July 2011 publication. So whatever other plans I had for the December holidays, they [...]

One of the problems that almost all business managers wrestle with is that of holding people to account. When you don’t do it effectively you find yourself surrounded by people who are driving you crazy with their incompetent performance or inappropriate behaviours.
Conversations about poor performance often end with promises of improvement that come to nothing. [...]

How did something that started out as a straight forward training course last week develop into a conversation about reality?
I was training a group of young graduates who are on a two year development program, on completion of which they will be appointed as junior managers in their organisation.  As a group they all exhibited [...]