Speak First Blog | Communication Skills
It's Good to Talk: 5 Practical Steps to Managing Difficult Conversations
There are many different types of difficult conversation that you can have, and what’s considered difficult will be different for each of us. For managers, it could be having to give negative ...
Managing workplace conflict
Psychologist Bruce Tuckman identified four stages of group development: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing.1
How to deliver bad news
In life and in business, at some point you will have to deliver bad news to someone. Perhaps you’re announcing lay-offs, you’ve lost a major client, or the office has to move. Sometimes the news ...
8 steps for effective listening
Humanity has evolved from Neanderthals, who communicated with grunts and points, into having complex systems of language and words that we use to impart information and share ideas with each other. ...
How to Adopt a Marketing Approach to Increase Staff Engagement with your Training
Picture this: You have lost count of the number of hours you spent typing emails, on the phone and in meetings, but you have finally managed to confirm that the world's greatest business coach is ...
How to get your message across in a teleconference
Like a lot of people I now spend much of my business life on teleconference calls. Some of them can be productive, but a lot of them result in frustration as you can’t hear what others say, people ...
10 essential elements to communicating with people from other cultures
Culture is a fascinating thing. We all have one, we’ve all grown up in one and some of us have even grown up in several different ones. The environment, values, experiences that form the basis of ...
Why Conflict is Important
There are three types of conflict (Jehn and Mannix)
10 Essential Steps to Writing Compelling Business Documents
You need to be able to write high-quality emails, reports and other documents. Here’s the secret to producing clear, concise and compelling documents to the highest possible standard.