Blogs

Want to improve communication skills for yourself or your team?
Read our Blogs and download our Infographics for helpful tips, techniques, and advice you can put to use today.

Adapting to Your Default Approach for Better Business Presentations

Dale Ludwig
August 15, 2023
You man giving a Business presentations

One of the benefits of defining business presentations as Orderly Conversations® is that we can guide learners’ improvement based on their individual responses to the tensions involved. Fundamentally, this tension is between what’s required to make a presentation an orderly process and what makes it a spontaneous interaction. Let’s break that down. Presentations Require Order ...

read more

Leadership Development Through Communication Training for Emerging Leaders

Greg Owen-Boger
August 14, 2023
Leadership development

When people participate in Turpin workshops, individual members and teams enjoy a host of secondary benefits beyond greater comfort with their own communication skills. Managers and leaders are often pleasantly surprised by how team meetings become more efficient, leadership skills start to emerge, relationships blossom, and so on. We often hear that teams “Turpinize” their...

read more

When Sales Leaders Need to Demonstrate “Cause in the Matter”

Greg Owen-Boger
July 18, 2023
Women sitting in front of monitors during virtual meeting in this Case Study

When people participate in Turpin workshops, individual members and teams enjoy a host of secondary benefits beyond greater comfort with their own communication skills. Managers and leaders are often pleasantly surprised by how team meetings become more efficient, leadership skills start to emerge, relationships blossom, and so on. We often hear that teams “Turpinize” their...

read more

Adapting to a Presentation Space That’s Way Too Big

Dale Ludwig
July 17, 2023
Picture illustrates a presentation space that is too big.

Question: What do you do when delivering a presentation in an entirely inappropriate room for your needs? Recently, I received a couple of questions about this topic. The issues involved are common enough (and at times frustrating enough) to warrant attention. “I’m going to be delivering a presentation in a room twice as wide as it...

read more

Your Business Communication Motto: Make it Easy!  

Barbara Egel
June 15, 2023
Executive director woman using business communication during a conference meeting

In addition to being a trainer for Turpin, I’ve spent many years teaching communication to undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals. In the course of teaching everything from Composition 101 to complex ideas, I finally hit on one simple goal that can act as a guiding light for everything from emails to keynotes: Make It Easy....

read more

When Your B2B Sales Team Isn’t a Well-Oiled Machine

Greg Owen-Boger
June 13, 2023
business people in a meeting.

When people participate in Turpin workshops, individual members and teams enjoy a host of secondary benefits beyond greater comfort with their own communication skills. Managers and leaders are often pleasantly surprised by how team meetings become more efficient, leadership skills start to emerge, relationships blossom, and so on. We often hear that teams “Turpinize” their...

read more

Shifting Gears

Dale Ludwig
June 10, 2023
shifting gears in a car as an analogy to effective time management

A wise learner once said, “Sometimes you just have to shift gears.”  This advice came from a leader participating in a presentation skills workshop with members of his team. The client was in the financial services industry. Their presentations to clients included a LOT of highly complex, technical information.   They faced two challenges. First,...

read more

Anyone Can Be More Effective with Time

Dale Ludwig
May 3, 2023
The Thinker statue illustrates taking time to collect your thoughts

We learn a lot from the people we work with. Recently, on the last day of a workshop, one of our learners said that the most important thing he took from the class was that “Anyone can be more effective with time.” When he made this comment, he was talking about pausing long enough to...

read more

Be Yourself—Even If It’s Awkward 

Dale Ludwig
April 19, 2023
Business man using a presentation persona during a meeting.

The Turpin tagline—Find your focus. Be yourself. Only better.—is really simple, and we’ve been using it for years. But we keep finding new resonance in it. In this post, I’m going to talk about the “be yourself” part. Recently, we were comparing notes and discovered that we’ve each had a few learners who put on...

read more

Is Nervousness Limiting Your Career?

Greg Owen-Boger
April 17, 2023
Managing presentation nervousness

For some business presenters, nervousness is a temporary condition. When they’ve moved past the first few minutes, their nerves seem to float away. For other presenters, nervousness is long-lasting and debilitating. It never goes away, even when the presentation is going well. We’ve heard this described as having an out-of-body experience or experiencing an eleven...

read more