Author: Emma Mcvearry

“Communication is at the very core of our society. That’s what makes us human.” – Jan Koum
We couldn’t agree more with the co-founder of WhatsApp, who went from a life on food stamps to selling his company to Facebook for $19 billion.

How can I make the not-fun parts of my job (or life) a little better? Have you ever heard Wilt Chamberlain’s bellhop story? You may know who Wilt is. Famous basketball player, two meters tall, crazy strong, averaged 50 points a game one year.

The past few years disrupted our lives and the workplace experienced a shift – opportunities suddenly decreased, competition became more intense, and there was time for reflection on your career path. This year, the workforce is slowly improving and many companies are posting job openings and beginning to recruit new people.

“What do you need right now?” While we’ve been providing online communication training to a lot of leaders lately, we’re focusing on how we stay aligned with our teams when we’re all so spread out. We’re all moving so fast that even when we take the time to check in, we tend to rush through the process. We might ask to see how folks are doing, but the way we do it is hurried, with our questions eliciting the barest of replies (“You have what you need?” “Yeah, I’m good.”)

Think about that when you use bullets in your presentations. Rather than using too many of them, target them carefully. Even better, why not try to win without shooting. In 1950s, overhead projectors became widely used, maybe you still remember them or you have utilized them yourselves.

A few years ago I was asked to coach a CEO (we’ll call her Sally) for a speech she was giving at a conference, reporting on important medical research she and her team had completed. Sally confided in me that “I’m not a good speaker. I get really nervous and I hate it. My co-worker is a GREAT speaker, a rock star, and there is no way I could ever be as good as she is.”

I recently saw a speech that stayed with me and moved me. I’ve told many people about this speech because it did everything we believe at Own the Room makes a great speech. The speaker likes to be different and used a visual image—a photograph—as part of her talk. It was a moving photograph, the kind that stays with you long after you’ve seen it.

What Would You Do With An Extra Hour In Your Day?​ I’m guessing your answer wasn’t, “I’d love to spend it in a meeting.” All of us have many important things vying for our time. That’s one reason it can feel so frustrating when our time gets eaten up in required meetings – especially meetings that weren’t productive, or that we shouldn’t have been in, in the first place.

Imagine you’re sitting in a conference room and the speaker arrives at the podium holding a huge stack of papers and immediately starts showing endless power point slides. Each slide is dense with so many bullet points, sentences and graphs—you can barely take any of it in. It’s a barrage of information. How do you feel at that moment? Bored? Frustrated? Angry? What are you thinking about? How can you escape? What’s for lunch? If you fall asleep, will anyone notice?

Daniel was brilliant. A data analyst at a rapidly growing startup, he had swiftly proven himself to be a keen thinker who could quickly find patterns amidst rows of data. There was just one problem.