Setting Priorities: The Holiday Season and You

Are you overwhelmed right now with work, family, home, hobby and holidays?

Many people have difficulty setting priorities; everything seems important.

Is that what you are feeling?

Sit down for a moment and think about what really is important to you- and what else takes lower priorities in terms of urgency.  If you have trouble with this, ask yourself, "If I have only one day left to live, how would I spend it?"

For me, safety comes first, followed by general health and family issues.

Holidays can be a special time, but their celebration can be cranked up, or ramped down. If you are feeling stressed, what aspects of the celebration can be reduced, such as attending fewer parties, giving the same gift to several people, sending holiday cards online or decorating more simply?

Setting priorities applies to work, as well. Many times an employee answers to a variety of supervisors, who all assign work with overlapping deadlines.

If you are that employee, it may be wise to explain to each supervisor that you have several people giving you projects, and ask each to tell you the priority and deadline for it.

Communication skills are essential for today's employees, especially for those who are supervisors. Learn the 18 critical communication skills for managers, whether you are one right now, or aspire to  be one in the future! From appreciation and persuasion to listening and asking critical questions

(and some of these are listed), get the skills you need for your workforce!

Visit www.BusinessSpeechImprovement.com/exec-techniques now to get your copy!

Non-verbal business communication skills

Only 7% of your business communication is conveyed through your words, according to a famous study by Albert Mehrabian, PhD. The rest is conveyed through a combination of your eye contact, facial expressions, and tone of voice. 

Do you have trouble making consistent eye contact, smiling and sounding friendly at  appropriate times, and using gestures to improve your communication, when necessary? Is your voice loud enough, but not too loud?

Start by asking your colleagues and friends for feedback on these issues,  as they are aware of your verbal image most likely. Choose one  goal at the time to work on. Decide when the behavior is done best, and when it is most difficult to achieve. 

These behaviors can be affected by certain cultural beliefs. Ask people who are of your culture, and of the majority culture, to judge whether your behaviors are appropriate.

Business Speech Improvement provides coaching in business communication, including non-verbal skills, accent modification, presentation skills, diction, and more. Click here to learn more about these services!

ADHD in the Workplace and Communication Challenges

Do you struggle with ADHD at work and notice you have some communication challenges, or do you have employees with ADHD?

Here are some common challenges relating to communication experienced by adults (including professionals) who have ADHD.

The first is impaired executive functioning: the ability to plan and implement actions. This ability, found in the frontal lobe, allows people to prioritize and

handle complex actions, such as scheduling and much more. More information can be found at http://www.help4adhd.org/living/workplace/wwk16.

Corporate speech pathologists and others now work with people who have difficulty with executive functioning. For example, if getting out of the house on time is the issue, clients can be taught how to develop a more effective schedule and consider the most common reasons they can side-tracked or delayed.

Distractibility, due to noises or visual stimuli, is another issue, and can affect planning and implementing. What distractions can you eliminate or cover up, with a white noise machine or headphones, for example?

Speech rates can be rapid in some people, to the point where others have difficulty understanding them. Some medications also increase speech rate as a side effect, so if your speech rate changes significantly during the day, check the side effects of any medication you are on. If you think the medication is causing the rapid rate of speech, talk to your physician.

Other speech and language issues may co-exist, but not be directly caused by ADHD. For example, central auditory processing impairments may  make understanding messages more difficult even though there is no hearing loss.

Pragmatics, or social language skills, such as knowing how to engage in small talk, start a conversation or end one, may also be difficult for some people.

Business Speech Improvement provides intensive, customized coaching  on communication improvement in the workplace. E-books are available as well. Great speech makes business sense!

Verbal mistake: The message is right, but something's missing!

Have you ever sent an e-mail, and found it was totally misinterpreted? The reason may have been that when you speak, your tone of voice conveys emotion, sarcasm, and interest (or lack of it). When you write, you choose a formal or an informal tone, active or passive voice, and assume your reader knows how you feel.

This can be easily misinterpreted. A formal note can seem to the reader like the writer has no interest. An informal note, meant to be sarcastic, can be interpreted literally.

The right choice of vocabulary can show your level of emotion and enthusiasm. Instead of saying you are looking forward to meeting the other person, try adding "eagerly" looking forward to meeting him.  Add other powerful words as appropriate.  Avoid sarcasm in a short note or text.

The true test of a well-written note is that it conveys the message you want, with the appropriate tone included. Is it to be formal, boring-but-have-to-write-something, or warm and caring?

In verbal and non-verbal communication, we also work to convey the proper attitude, whether eager, respectful but casual,   formal, etc. Our tone of voice,  use of slang, and choice of vocabulary can make or break this attitude.

Non-verbally, we use eye contact, giving full or distracted attention, and positioning (such as facing the other person directly or at a side angle) to also convey our attitude.

An example of this going wrong at work is when a manager uses a computer to answer routine e-mails during an appointment with an employee, telling the employee, "I can multi-task." The employee may feel the manager doesn't care about the appointment or the employee, due to his lack of full attention and eye contact.

Business Speech Improvement provides individual and small group coaching on communication skills. Visit us online!

"Get your act together": Executive function

       "Get Your Act Together": Executive Function

Do you know someone who has difficulty planning, sequencing  and implementing actions? For example, if he is an adult, he knows he has to go somewhere, but consistently forgets to take the things he needs for the trip? Maybe he has trouble getting steps of a project, or several errands, done in the best order.  Does he have trouble with time management and multi-tasking? This is a consistent pattern of difficulty, not just once or twice.

If the person is a student, he may forget to write the assignment down, bring it and the necessary materials home, do the assignment, bring it back to school, and hand it in to the instructor.

The person may be showing signs of executive function impairment. People who have had head injuries, ADHD/ADD, Aspergers or autism, non-verbal learning disorders, learning disorders,  or Tourette's Syndrome may be more likely to have this, but it can happen to others as well.

Executive function impairment is caused by problems in the pre-frontal and frontal lobes of the brain; other brain regions may also be involved.

What can be done about it? First, it helps to get the problem properly assessed, so the recommendations and training can be more specific and effective. Neuro-psychologists and some general psychologists can test for this.  Some speech-language pathologists also can give tests for this.

Strategies to improve executive functioning can  be provided by some speech-language pathologists, neuro-psychologists and psychologists. Ask before making the appointment if they provide this specific type of assistance.

If the person is a student in public school, ask if the school psychologist can test for this. While waiting for the lengthy process before testing can be done, you may want to read some books on the subject.

Three excellent books for executive functioning in children are: Late, Lost and Unprepared, by Joyce Cooper-Kahn, PhD and Laurie Dietzel, PhD,  Organizing the Disorganized Child, by Martin L Kutscher and Marcella Moran, and  Smart but Scattered by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare.

There are many websites that talk about executive functioning disorder. Three to check out are http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/7051.html, http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/executive-function,     http://www.ldonline.org/article/24880/, and one YouTube video on it, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR1IZJXc6d8 . One specifically on executive function in the workplace is http://www.tsa-usa.org/news/2012ConfPresentations/ExecutiveDysfunctionintheWorkplace.pdf

Tomorrow's blog post from Business Speech Improvement is on www.BusinessSpeechImprovement.com/more/blog today! It will appear here tomorrow. Check it out now!

While you are here, also check out our many archived articles!

How to remember more of what you hear or see

The next time you sit in a boring presentation, lecture or meeting, try some of these techniques to help you get more out of the experience.

1. Repeat the fact in your mind. Imagine you are saying them.
2. Visualize the facts or situation. Pretend you see them on a movie or computer screen.
3. Ask yourself questions about the information. Think of ones that begin with "wh", such as who, what, when, etc.Try to answer them by the end of the talk.
4. Write out 5 important words used in the concept. Using the first letter of each word, come up with a sentence to help you remember them all.
5. If someone is trying to persuade the group, think about why this action is being recommended. Who or what benfits from this course of action?

Following Up: Establishing Trust

As professional persuaders, one of your most important skills is establishing trust with prospects, employees, and internal/external customers. After all, as one wag phrased it, "I don't care how much you know, if I don't know much you care." One way to establish that caring is by following up on your promises to get back to them on time, especially in the beginning. After all, why destroy a promising relationship that has barely begun?

If getting back to people on time is tough, write reminders to yourself on your planner or scheduler. You can also write notes on the back of their business cards about precisely what you promised to do.

Business Speech Improvement (www.BusinessSpeechImprovement.com) provides intensive coaching on sales and executive communication skills. Individual and group classes can be scheduled on request, and can include training for the "organizationally challenged".

What comes after college applications?

Many high school seniors and their parents are rejoicing now that their college applications are done. Then the parents start to think about what skills and knowledge their children still need to learn to be successful in college, such as time and money management, tips on doing laundry and making friends, even on how to lengthen a paper - but the students don't want to listen now. Portable Parent (www.portableparent.com) is a wonderful solution to this problem.

Portable Parent is a unique online e-book. Parents download it, add their own insights to selected chapters, and upload it on their children's computers. When the students need the information - even at 1 AM, it's waiting for them, and they keep their treasured independence! Parents, meanwhile, can relax knowing the information is waiting for their children.

Always Late?

Many people are habitually late to meetings and appointments. It can be a sign of poor "executive function" skills. "Executive function" means having the ability to plan and implement (or "execute") actions. People with ADHD, Asperger's Syndrome or who have had right-sided strokes or head trauma (from accidents) may have poor skills in this. Other people can, as well.

Regardless of the cause of the problem, others may interpret habitual lateness as disrespect for their time. It's as if the person with habitual lateness does not care about anyone else's time but his own. "Only my own time is important" is what the person seems be saying. In fact, the person is often totally unaware of the impact he is having on others; he never considers the fact that his lateness has any impact on others.

Ways to address it include showing the person (often in writing) how the lateness affected others,
and helping the person plan his schedule appropriately.