Fresh Thoughts
And some old favourites
You call this entertainment?
It's hard to be a Help Desk person. We customers only call when we're angry or confused or both. If only we could just learn to enjoy: waiting (Kenny G is Top Of The Pops on "Hold" this week) listening to long multilingual messages that don't make sense in any...
Communication Sinners – Are You One?
On both sides of this sinful situation, people failed to follow these principles of excellent organizational communication – of excellent communication in any context.
Get Real – Calling Out For Customer Service
I have a lovely telephone company. Through the magic of mergers, it's also my mobile phone company, my Internet service provider and (if I had a TV) my cable company. Multiple services mean multiple reasons to contact its customer service line. And there the...
Something to honk about
I've always believed I could learn from anyone. But a bird? Teaching me? About leadership communication? In recent weeks, the skies around me have been filled with migrating Canada Geese. I've never been interested in these critters, unless I had to chase one off the...
Leadership Lit
In the past few months (make that years) I've read everything I can on the topic of leadership. Several bifocal prescriptions later, I know qualify for guru status. Ostensibly, I'm gathering information that can help my clients. And I'm doing research for my own book....
Trust me, I’m a communicator – Part 3
We are the Lens As professional communicators, we stand between people and information and give it shape and form. We are the lens through which information is filtered. In most cases, whether we are journalists or organizational commuicators, our intention is to make...
Trust me, I’m a communicator – Part 2
Did they ever trust us? That's the question IABC Chair Warren Bickford asks in response to my blog post, March 20, about the Léger poll that suggests more than half the people in Canada don't trust professional communicators. Of the 22 professions measured, PR folk...
Trust me, I’m a communicator
Once again, professional communicators have scored near the bottom of the heap in Canada's "Who Do You Trust?" sweepstakes. Produced by Léger Marketing for The Canadian Press, the survey, done in February and released today, polled a representative sample of 1,500...
What’s with this coaching business?
On Saturday and Sunday, I’ll be one of an estimated five gazillion women - and fourteen men - who’ll be at the National Women’s Show (www.nationalwomenshow.com) at the Ottawa Congress Centre. I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ll have a chair when I need it. Six of us,...