Want to improve communication skills for yourself or your team?
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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...
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This article was inspired by a question posed by a client in a recent virtual workshop. She asked: If you are part of a virtual meeting and there is a conflict, argument, etc., how does one handle that as a host or an attendee of that meeting? This question is extremely difficult to answer because...
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As you know, companies are spending lots of money to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) among their workforce and in their company culture. There’s been a lot of talk about the need for fundamental cultural shifts in corporate America and deep soul-searching among executives. This is all absolutely worthwhile—if it’s done right and is...
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In other blog posts, we’ve been talking about hybrid meetings: how to lead them successfully, how to practice good participation behaviors, and even how to dress and set up your space to look professional on Zoom. This led us to think about what an organization’s leaders can do to ensure an efficient, effective, and equitable...
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