A simple airport moment reveals a powerful truth: communication fails when it’s not designed for the listener. Anneli Blundell shares how to make messages land.
When one lift breaks down, human behavior powers up. Communication expert Anneli Blundell explores leadership, fairness, and what we do when rules are tested.
Discover why everyday conversations feel risky at work. Learn how leaders can shift from Dangerous Dialogue to Deliberate Dialogue and build safer team cultures.
Discover how leaders can overcome silence in meetings, build trust, and boost engagement with the Dangerous Dialogue Audit communication guide.
To be known as someone who does valuable work, we need to be seen as someone who does valuable work. When Executives and CEOs look to their talent pipelines for the next generation of leaders, the people who grab their attention are people who are known to them, or known to others who then bring them to their attention. They stand out not just because of the good work they are doing, but because they are known to be doing good work – their efforts are visible.
No-one likes a bragger, (you know, someone who incessantly toots their own horn), so when we’re given advice that we need to be more visible, share our accomplishments more and generally put ourselves forward a little more assertively to get ahead in our career, it’s hard not to feel a little sick at the thought.
Great leaders build engagement. Engagement in meetings requires contribution and involvement. Many leaders I work with complain of a lack of engagement from their team members during meetings, despite their best efforts. This is not always about their leadership or their teams’ engagement; often there are other factors at play.
Getting the best out of others is not an easy task. Helping your team members to be more effective, more productive, and more engaged is not always as simple as asking them to be so, or equipping them with the skills or support to be so. In fact, sometimes it’s not even about the very problem that’s causing the problem. To be an effective leader of people requires us to be flexible in the way we approach and support our people. Sometimes it even calls on us to allow the problem to get worse before it gets better.
The ability to think quickly is a highly valued skill in the workplace. People who respond to questions off the cuff, who make coherent contributions when called upon (without warning) or who always seem to know the right thing to say in the right moment to say it, are admired by many of us. Especially those of us who need more time to gather our thoughts.
