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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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,...
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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...
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In recent posts, we’ve talked a lot about what to do when you’re the central speaker in a business situation. But there’s another role you take on when you lead a meeting, deliver a presentation, or lead a training session: facilitator. Too often, business communicators think of facilitation as simply a matter of fielding questions...
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Not long ago, we were working with a group of highly technical professionals who had recently moved into a sales role. While these folks are excellent in their technical work, their ability to be persuasive when talking with clients was lacking. One of the topics we discussed was the need to lead with benefits. That...
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You may have heard the adage that people fear public speaking more than death. In their 2012 study,¹ Karen Kangas Dwyer and Marlina M. Davidson proved that this is true. More than sickness, financial problems, or, yes, even death, we really don’t want to get up in front of our peers to speak. Nervous speakers...
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We’ve all been meeting virtually for a long time now, and there is no shortage of articles, videos, webinars, and books on how to do it “right.” Most of those resources focus on the technical stuff. This article will focus on the human side of the equation and what we’ve learned while providing virtual presentation...
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Inclusiveness and Interactivity The first article in this two-part series focused on the planning required for successful team collaboration. It focused on framing meetings to feel relevant, focused, and efficient for participants. This article will look at what meeting facilitators can do to encourage collaboration during the meeting. Successful collaboration serves both the team involved...
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Maximize the Benefits and Reduce the Snags of Team Projects and Presentations In the first of a two-part series on team collaboration, we discuss the importance of having a framing strategy. When you were in school, you probably heard the words “group project” and groaned internally. You anticipated days or weeks of miscommunication, differing...
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With the pandemic came several disruptions, from remote work to virtual conferences. HR conferences were also affected. While virtual conferences came with flexibility and enabled global reach, there was something about in-person conferences that could not be replicated—the human connection. In-person HR conferences provide the opportunity to network and share professional experiences. Thankfully, the world...
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