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.
Over the last several decades, our economy has shifted from one with lots of rote work, whether blue-collar or white-collar, to one in which routine tasks are automated. This means that tasks still dependent on human input are more complex and nuanced, requiring employees with excellent social skills, agility in responding to new situations, and...
read more
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
Communication style evolves over generations. In the 1930s, you may have heard something along the lines of “Oh, yes, rather. I mean, it’s jolly good of you. Of course, absolutely—must be in on the jolly old sweep, what?” This is the reply Lord Peter Wimsey gives in Dorothy Sayers’s 1933 novel, Murder Must Advertise, when...
read more
It’s such a tired old saw: “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” Tired or not, there’s wisdom in it, but the idea only works if ambitious employees take it beyond just how they dress and think of it also in terms of how they communicate, explain, and express professionalism. As...
read more
We’ve been talking recently about our collective experience with communication challenges in the various places we’ve all worked. One topic that keeps coming up is how often what seems like a problem with process, productivity, or achieving benchmarks ultimately turns out to be a communication issue. We’ve put together a list for leadership to think...
read more
A while back, I wrote a blog post about what learners really want trainers to know about their experience and expectations in a learning environment, especially when it comes to the instructor setting ground rules. We thought that since virtual learning seems to be here for the foreseeable future, we should update that post to...
read more
Back in December 2015, a few of us at Turpin Communication, along with a few friends, assembled 10 care packages for homeless people in Chicago. Each package included a few ready-to-eat food items and a hand-knit hat and scarf. We handed them out to people on the streets who looked like they could use one....
read more
Greg, Turpin Communication’s VP, has written a couple of great blog posts on preparing yourself to deliver presentations and training sessions. Don’t Overlook These Steps When Preparing Your Presentation Dry Runs: The Key to Training Readiness in the Virtual World Among the things he talks about is how we recommend dry runs rather than rehearsal....
read more
In addition to being a Turpin trainer and coach, I also teach at a couple of different colleges in the Chicago area, and I was asked to teach a class just before the start of the semester—in person. I was elated. Since the start of lockdown last year, I’d had four sets of students that...
read more
What We Assume An episode of This American Life from several years ago featured “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap, the CEO who was brought in to restore the Sunbeam corporation back to profitability in the 1990s. While he’s now on several “Worst CEOs Ever” lists, at the time, he had his admirers. This got me thinking about...
read more