Communication Articles

Business » Communication | By maureen collins @ Friday, 21st November 2008

I doubt whether you have ever opened a conversation with the words: I know that I am more to blame for this than you are; I know I do not have all the facts; and I know that what I am about to say makes no sense at all! One of the hardest parts of planning for a difficult conversation [more...]

Business » Communication | By maureen collins @ Friday, 21st November 2008

We face difficult conversations every day. They can be with our children, our parents, family members and spouses; with colleagues, employees and with the boss; with friends and neighbors; with tenants, landlords, business partners, and in the sports team. Sometimes these conversations are about the big issues of race, religion, gender and politics. More often than not they are about [more...]

Business » Communication | By maureen collins @ Friday, 21st November 2008

Most people have experienced change in their working lives in recent years. It may have been a major restructuring of your department or your organisation, or something as apparently straight forward as moving from your own private office into an open plan environment. Either way, it is common to find yourself working closely with a new group of people [more...]

Business » Communication | By Brad Semp @ Friday, 21st November 2008

A recent announcement by Google came with much fanfare and excitement from most Gmail users. The introduction of voice and video chat capabilities is viewed by most as an exciting step forward for the already \"feature-rich\" Google e-mail interface. Slowly but consistently, Google is creating a centralized portal for users to communicate with the world through a multitude [more...]

Business » Communication | By maureen collins @ Thursday, 20th November 2008

In any conversation where you speak up on something that is upsetting you it is important that you get your facts straight and that you use them to open the conversation. This is not as easy as it might sound. When your emotions run strongly, it is difficult to separate facts from feelings and you are likely to open the [more...]

Business » Communication | By Robyn Collins @ Wednesday, 19th November 2008

If as a school we want to develop relationships with stakeholders that encourage genuine input to the schools strategic direction we, first, have to learn to listen. When another person speaks, we are usually listening at one of four levels: Ignoring, not really listening at all; Pretending, Yeah, Uh,huh. Right; Selective listening, hearing only certain [more...]

Business » Communication | By maureen collins @ Wednesday, 19th November 2008

There are difficult conversations in our lives; and then there are the really difficult ones! Conversations between a manager and employee about poor performance at least have the advantages that roles are clear, and that performance can be measured and recorded. Conversations become a lot more difficult, and require a lot more skill, when you are talking about issues of [more...]

Business » Communication | By maureen collins @ Wednesday, 19th November 2008

How often have you made decisions only to find out that you were missing critical information? Have you ever jumped to the wrong conclusion because you did not have all the facts? How many times have you thought you had commitment to a plan only to be told, much later, that everyone else had reservations? Poor decisions, incorrect assumptions and action [more...]

Business » Communication | By David Poulos @ Wednesday, 19th November 2008

Everybody likes something for nothing, but most business people have become spoiled by attending meetings and conferences on the company\'s dime. Well, based on current economic conditions, some of your members\' companies may have precious few dimes to spare for sending their employees to meetings, even though they will be the first to admit the value is there and that [more...]

Business » Communication | By Shaun Parker @ Tuesday, 18th November 2008

Look it up in any telephone directory but you won\'t find an area code for 0845 numbers. This is because they are non-geographical. That means that they are an established prefix that can be used with any phone number and means that a flat rate is charged from wherever you may be calling from. This is a service open to UK [more...]

Business » Communication | By Dominic Donaldson @ Tuesday, 18th November 2008

If your business includes networks of employees in different locations of close proximity, currently communicating to each other using mobile phones, you may be wise to swap them for two way radios and save yourself a bundle. In an era where half of the entire human population owns a mobile phone, it\'s hard to imagine the days where we didn\'t [more...]

Business » Communication | By Sharon Alexander @ Tuesday, 18th November 2008

One of the biggest challenges most businesses face is ancommunicating effectively with employees, clients, vendors, and others. This is because those communicating information often have one meaning while those receiving the communication interpret it in a different way. The best way to communicate effectively is by taking your time to create an effective message whether by phone, email, or face-to-face and [more...]

Business » Communication | By Shaun Parker @ Monday, 17th November 2008

There is a popular opinion that is the great minds of businessmen that make or break a company. There is a philosophy that suggests that these great thinkers and great problem solvers are the answer to a successful career, that they carry ideas forward and project them into the minds of followers and bring about great changes in the world [more...]

Business » Communication | By Ron Subs @ Sunday, 16th November 2008

If you are looking for a new way to go about making your phone calls to your customers, you should really look into an auto dialer. This is a technology that will allow you to build your own call list that will fit to what kind of phone calls you are making. Such as if you where a [more...]

Business » Communication | By Robyn Collins @ Saturday, 15th November 2008

In our fast changing world, concentrating on strategic planning every three or five years is simply not enough. In the 21st century school principals and school boards must be constantly aware of education trends and grasp opportunities for their schools quickly. This is why providing time for strategic thinking is so important. Here are some ways school management can encourage [more...]

Business » Communication | By maureen collins @ Saturday, 1st November 2008

When you have really good working relationships with your colleagues, you can move mountains. You trust and support one another; you can anticipate problems. Communication is open, easy and often unspoken. It is easy to discuss problems or mistakes and to give and receive feedback. Conversations become creative problem solving sessions and productivity soars. You feel energised just by being [more...]

Business » Communication | By maureen collins @ Saturday, 1st November 2008

Talking is easy when people see the world in much the same way, when they know they can trust each other, when they have the best interests of each other at heart and when there is time to agree on exactly what has happened. It is all the other times that are the problem: when there is disagreement, when people [more...]

Business » Communication | By maureen collins @ Friday, 31st October 2008

Ask yourself how many of your current problems; the ones that haunt you, the ones you feel most guilty about, the ones that make your blood boil; were problems last year too. How many are issues that you have been scared to confront in case you made things worse? I am not sure that our high level of stress comes [more...]

Business » Communication | By Christine Harrell @ Friday, 31st October 2008

The nation\'s small businesses are always looking for cost-effective ways to manage their operations. Many of these organizations are abandoning traditional office phone systems in favor of small business VoIP networks. What Is VoIP? Most people have heard of small business VoIP but may not know exactly what it is. They know it\'s some kind of digital phone system but don\'t understand [more...]

Business » Communication | By maureen collins @ Friday, 31st October 2008

How often have you smiled thinly at an unsavory joke, withheld a critical opinion, or kept silent instead of pointing out a mistake a colleague has made? There are many situations in which we choose not to speak up, or at least not to speak up with the truth, fearful that we will suffer, or cause, embarrassment. We hold our [more...]