You thought you nailed that interview but then you get the news that the company “went another way.” Don’t tear up your résumé and eat a gallon of ice cream yet. Forbes Contributor and career coach Adunola Adeshola says there are several types of interviewees who struggle to get a job offer (https://bit.ly/2M8rHUZ):
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1. The Overqualified – If you more than meet the qualifications and experience needed, the interviewer may think you won’t be fulfilled – and may fear they cannot compensate you fairly or that you might leave for a more fulfilling offer.
2. The Rambler – Irrelevant stories and unnecessary details won't help you. Interviewers want a concise account of how you can meet their needs and fit into their culture.
3. The Ill-Prepared – Being qualified is not enough if you have not also done your research. Instead of winging it, know your potential employer and identify the specific strengths, qualities and experiences that make you the right candidate.
4. The Almost Perfect – Despite checking all the boxes, perhaps you did not express enough enthusiasm for the job or organization. Employers want people who want them. (Tweet it!)

Do you feel you might have missed the mark in any of the above ways? What can you do to remedy the situation? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs. 

Being praised for a job well done can boost our brain with a feel-good surge and help us accomplish more (https://bit.ly/2DsinLa). But for many of us, accepting a compliment can feel awkward.
 
Research shows that we tend to dwell on failures more than compliments (https://bit.ly/2BVmxIk). Perhaps there is survival value in this, says Dr Kristin Neff, an educational psychologist at the University of Texas, Austin. According to Dr. Neff, “ancestors who were negative worrywarts were more likely to survive.” Compounding our squeamishness in the face of compliments is: 1) we don't want to seem like we’re egotistical or arrogant; and 2) our skills may come so naturally to us that we underestimate their value. (Tweet it!)
 
But compliments can be rich sources of information, giving us valuable feedback, and they have the capacity to create stronger relationships. So how can we accept complements graciously? Keep it short and positive with no self-deprecating comments. Try responses like: “Thank you, I’m glad you said that,” or “I appreciate your noticing,” or “Thanks for letting me know.” If you’re still afraid of looking swellheaded, or if you’re genuinely interested in more input, ask a follow-up question to show you value the compliment giver’s opinion and acknowledge there’s always room for improvement (https://nyti.ms/2rwoWnb),
 
How did you respond the last time someone paid you a compliment?  Did you try to deflect it, or did you accept it? Were you successful, and how did you do it? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.
 
If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our  online learning programs. 

When researchers surveyed almost 2,000 American girls, they found that the confidence levels of girls falls about 30 percent between the ages of 8 and 14 (https://nyti.ms/2RGgtZW). Since personal confidence can have profound outcomes for people of any age and gender, it’s important to consider ways to boost it. (Tweet it!)
 
Speaking to The New York Times (https://nyti.ms/2RObV3u), tennis star and entrepreneur Venus Williams, who credits self-confidence as crucial to her success in many endeavors, offered three essential actions to magnify self-assurance.
 

1. Be honest about your feelings: When something doesn’t work, ask why. When you are feeling unsure, admit it to yourself. Then remind yourself that while you might not feel confident right now, you remain committed to your goals.
2. Create a map of the path you’ll follow toward your goals: If you can see yourself achieving your goals, you are more likely to do so. Once you clarify your goals, create an action plan to get there, whatever your temporary confidence level might be.
3. Use failure to your advantage: Failure can make you stronger and wiser, but it also means you have to work harder. “In sports…if you cannot correct yourself, you will lose.”

 
“We all face challenges at some point in our lives,” says Williams, “but making a decision based on low self-esteem is a short-term play…The more we learn to make decisions based on self-confidence the more we are empowered to keep striving for our dreams.”
 
Do you have a strategy you use for boosting self-confidence? In what situations does it work best? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.
 
If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our  online learning programs. 

Have you ever been frustrated by people who don’t seem open to changing their mind? Now think about it: Have you ever been such a person? If you can’t recall the last time you admitted you were wrong or altered your opinion, it might be useful to work on developing intellectual humility.
 
According to Shane Snow, award-winning journalist, celebrated entrepreneur, and author of Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking, “Gallup’s list of Most Admired People is populated with people who have changed, repented, evolved, and grown.” And those who are intellectually humble make the most effective leaders and teammates (https://bit.ly/2QFDgb4).
 
Like any skill, intellectual humility can be cultivated through practice:
 

• Respect the viewpoints of others: Listen without interrupting and watch out for the human tendency to discount opinions of people who do not look, act, think or behave like you. (Tweet it!) 
• Resist intellectual arrogance: Too much adherence to our own way of thinking makes us unlikely to learn and change.
• Separate ego from intellect: Don't make ideas about you. If you view ideas as neutral, you’re less likely to feel threatened by disagreements or dissonance.
• Know when to revise your viewpoint: Give yourself permission to explore, travel, read and research. Look for opportunities to reach a new conclusion.

 
What is the last topic you changed your mind about, and what caused the change? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.
 
If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs. 

Ron Ashkenas and Brook Manville, coauthors of the Harvard Business Review Leader’s Handbook, are often asked for the newest guidance for leaders. Clearly the “leadership industry” is booming, with hundreds of books written about the subject every year, new assessment tools based on neuroscience, computer aided algorithms for decision-making, virtual reality simulations, and online courses with university affiliations. 

But is there really an essentially new way to think about leadership? Writing in The Harvard Business Review, Ashkenas and Manville remind us that although there are a lot of new and interesting ideas, some of which may prove helpful, outstanding leadership has not really changed over the years. (Tweet it!) “It is still about mobilizing people in an organization around common goals to achieve impact, at scale.”

According to the authors, leaders with the greatest impact almost always deploy these six classic, fundamental practices:

1. uniting people around an exciting, aspirational vision;
2. building a strategy for achieving the vision;
3. attracting and developing the best possible talent;
4. relentlessly focusing on results in the context of the strategy;
5. creating ongoing innovation to help reinvent the vision and strategy; and
6. “leading yourself” by knowing and growing yourself so you can most effectively lead others and carry out these practices.

“Sometimes the starting point is different, or one of the six areas requires more heavy lifting than another,” say Ashkenas and Manville, “…but the same handful of practices are always present.”

What do you think about these leadership fundamentals? Do you think that one is most important? Are there any missing? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.
 
If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs. 

This New Year, consider making a resolution to practice 12 months of conscious, healthy communication. Most people navigate through important moments of communication on automatic pilot, reacting from emotion rather than intention (Tweet it!). But we can transform our relationships by getting off autopilot and being proactive with positive communication.

As communication researchers and partners in work and marriage for decades, we’ve experienced both the joy and challenge of personal and business communication and we’ve found some simple steps to resolving conflict and building trust in relationships:

• Listen when your impulse is to argue
• Edit accusations that might make someone feel put down, and instead describe your feelings.
• If you have a grievance, pinpoint details with specific examples.
• Acknowledge your role in any problem
• Reach explicit, collaborative solutions that specify what each person will do differently in the future.

Confronting issues is never an easy matter, but avoidance can be hazardous not just to our relationships, but also to our own health.

Here’s wishing you a happy, healthy, communicative 2019!

We want to hear. Do you have a New Year’s resolution that could lead to stronger communication? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs. 

As holiday vacations approach, it’s time for friends, family, feasts, and…out of office auto replies. Is there a good way to say, “Hey, I’m trying to unplug; so don’t expect a prompt reply?” (Tweet it!)
 
Writing for The New York Times “Smarter Living” column , Tom Herrera asked readers to suggest ways of saying ”Sorry, I’m outta here.” Of course there is the generic, “I’ll be back next week, meanwhile call so-and-so”, or the no-frills “Back on Tuesday, January 1,” but consider these:

Tembi Secrist, who works in exporting, writes, “Thank you for your email! I am on vacation. Vacations are not for checking email, so I won’t be doing that. Fortunately, we rarely encounter life and death situations in the world of exporting, and aren’t we all glad for that?”

Stephanie Grace, who Herrera says “wins for cutest auto-reply” brought a smile to all with the irresistible…“I’m out of office enjoying a weeklong backpacking trip in the Wallowas with the best adventure pup in the world, Lucy: https://www.instagram.com/luseatosky/”

What's your favorite out of office auto reply? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

Sweaty palms, rapid heartbeat, flushed cheeks, and trembling extremities. Anxiety can be a showstopper. Or it can be something else entirely. For many years we’ve been teaching our clients to reframe their relationship with anxiety—thinking of it as the “juice”-- extra energy that can power public speaking, job interviews, and other high-pressure situations. Recent research, cited in The New York Times  by psychologist Alicia Clark, author of Hack Your Anxiety, continues to show how “anxiety can be a pathway to our best selves.”
 
It is actually our fear of anxiety that makes it so powerful. The more we try to suppress it, the more it debilitates us. A large-scale study from the University of Wisconsin (https://bit.ly/2zHjFge) demonstrated that how we think about anxiety and stress can change the way those feelings affect us. Regardless of actual stress levels, the less detrimental we believe the feeling is, the less so it will be. (Tweet it!) So, Clark advises:
 

• Label the feeling – and then re-label it: Re-appraise it as something that can be helpful. Instead of calling it anxiety, stress, nervousness or fear switch to excitement, exhilaration, energy, juice.
• Aim for the sweet spot:  While an overload of anxiety can be harmful, it’s also problematic to have none. Anxiety about giving a presentation, for example, can power the focus and energy we need to be our best.

 
How do you cope with anxiety, especially in a performance situation? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.
 
If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs. 

Ad Vingerhoets, author of Why Humans Weep: Unravelling the Mysteries of Tears, says that crying is a product of evolution, serving to alert parents to their offspring’s location and discomfort. But of course adults cry too. And according to Dr. Vingerhoets, speaking to The New York Times, the two major consistent triggers for adult crying are “helplessness and powerlessness,” and “separation and loss.” (https://nyti.ms/2RHDZoY)
 
Although crying is natural, we might find ourselves in certain situations where we don't want to cry in public—perhaps in a difficult meeting or during an emotionally fraught conversation. If so, psychologists and body language specialists suggest these techniques:
 

• Cry before you face conflict. If you allow yourself to cry it out beforehand, you’ll be more likely to keep your composure.
• Rehearse how to handle the worst-case scenario. The worst might not happen, but that way you’re prepared to face anything. (Tweet it!)
• Practice keeping the conversation on track. Avoid escalating the emotional stakes. Think about what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.

If you start to cry, and want to stop, there are some physical tricks you can try: relax your facial muscles, breathe deeply, give yourself a pinch.  Or, as  Janine Driver, chief executive of the Body Language Institute in Washington, advises, “Simply push your tongue to the roof of your mouth and you will instantly stop crying.”

Have you ever attempted to avert tears?  Were you successful, and how did you do it? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.
 
If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs. 

The hardest part about delegating a task is trusting that someone will do it as well as you can, and so many managers are reluctant to turn over key responsibilities. But, says Dr. Art Markman, Professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin, “The problem with this style of delegation is that it sets your employees up for failure. A coach wouldn’t let an athlete go into a big game without practicing extensively beforehand. Managers should share this same mentality.” (https://bit.ly/2NPnlRN)
 
Markman maintains that when you assign someone a task for the first time just because you’re unavailable, their chances of success are low – if you haven’t been teaching and preparing them. And the risk of damaging morale is high. “As a manager, a central part of your job is to train and develop people…take on the mindset of a trainer — instead of a manager delegating work.”
 
Effective training, of course, takes thought and effort, stresses Markman. (Tweet it!) Here are his recommendations:

• To start, assess who on your team genuinely wants to move up, and identify their main areas of interest.
• Create a development plan for them and include the skills they will need in order to reach their goals.
• Focus on giving them assignments that require those skills, and teaching them what they need to know to succeed.
• Structure the experience so that your employees are able to work their way up to more challenging tasks.  

Do you consider yourself eager or reluctant to delegate, and why? What's your strategy for teaching skills to those to whom you delegate? To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum
 
If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs. 

The quality of child-parent relations is critical not just for emotional bonding, but also for learning of all types. (Tweet it!)  So problems arise, says Erika Christakis, author of The Importance of Being Little, “when the emotionally resonant adult–child cueing system so essential to early learning is interrupted—by a text or a quick check-in on Instagram (https://bit.ly/2KsE7sm).”
 
In one experiment that tested the impact of parental cellphone use on children’s language learning, thirty-eight mothers and their 2-year-olds were brought into a room. The mothers were told that they would need to teach their children two new words (blicking, which was to mean “bouncing,” and frepping, which was to mean “shaking”) and were given a phone so that investigators could contact them from another room. When the mothers were interrupted by a call, the children did not learn the word, but otherwise they did. Other experiments have shown similar results.
 
Occasional parental inattention is not catastrophic, says Christakis, “…but chronic distraction is another story. Smartphone use has been associated with a familiar sign of addiction: Distracted adults grow irritable when their phone use is interrupted; they not only miss emotional cues but actually misread them.”
 
Fixing the problem won't be easy, but Christakis offers a piece of good news: children are prewired to get what they need from adults, and young children will do a lot to get a distracted adult’s attention. Meanwhile, her advice: “Parents should give themselves permission to back off from the suffocating pressure to be all things to all people. Ditch that soccer-game appearance if you feel like it. Your kid will be fine. But when you are with your child, put down your damned phone.”
 
What do you do when both your child and your phone are competing for your attention? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.
 
If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs. 

Saying “thank you” is the ultimate win/win. Research shows that expressing gratitude increases feelings of personal well-being. (Tweet it!) As Americans approach our official day of giving thanks, perhaps all of us can take a moment to consider how we might make gratitude an ongoing part of our lives.

If you are looking for someone to practice your “thank you” on, start close to home. John Gottman, Executive Director of the Relationship Research Institute of Seattle says: “Masters of relationships have a habit of scanning the world for things they can thank their partner for. People whose relationships go down the tubes scan the world for their partner’s mistakes.”

What happened when you upped the level of thanks you expressed to people around you? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.

 With holiday dinners around the corner, many are dreading conversations about loaded—possibly political—topics. At times avoidance is the best policy, and perhaps you can just let someone else sit next to Uncle Ned or Aunt Matilda. But, if the relationship is such that you really want to have a calm and respectful exchange of ideas, Eben Weitzman, graduate program director of conflict resolution at University of Massachusetts Boston, has some advice (https://bit.ly/2RmFuJG). “If what you want to do is get to a mutual understanding, really inquire to understand,” he says. “Listen with interest, and without judgment.”

Some things you could say:

• Can you tell me more?
• What makes this important to you?
• What led you to feel this way?

Some things you should definitely not say:

• How could you ever think that would work?
• Don’t you realize that...
• You clearly haven’t thought this through…

If things get heated despite your best efforts, take a break. Withdraw for a while, until your adrenaline stops pumping. Deep listening is the only way out of deep conflict. And listening is too often the first casualty during contentious conversations. (Tweet it!) So, try listening until you can tell their story better than they did.

What holiday conversation are you dreading and how do you plan to handle it? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

Studies show that high-quality friendships provide positive health benefits, including lower incidences of chronic illnesses, higher levels of happiness and lower mortality rates (https://bit.ly/2PBqFle). Strong social support networks can also be a hedge against stress, depression and anxiety, say researchers (https://bit.ly/2PBqFle). Many of us are reflecting fondly on old friendships and wondering if they can be revived. (Tweet it!) In our electronic world, friends are often just a click, a text, or an email away—but what’s the best way to reach out, if at all?
 
Writing in The New York Times, Anna Goldfarb consulted with experts, who offered these tips:
 

• Take Inventory – Ask yourself why the friendship ended (was it a falling out or just a fading away?) and what bonded you in the past.
• Manage Expectations – Things change for everyone. Don't overwhelm a long-lost pal with prying questions. Let them disclose at their own comfort level.
• State Your Purpose – Be honest about your reasons for reaching out.
• Test the Waters – Start with small, low stakes gestures. Maybe congratulate them on a milestone. This can set the stage for more meaningful conversations.
• Go Slow – Make sure you're on solid ground before introducing (or reintroducing) your spouse, kids or others of significance.

 
Finally, be prepared for all outcomes. It takes two to keep a relationship going, so the goal of renewal has to work for you both.
 
Have you ever reached out to an old friend? How did you initiate and what was the outcome? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

It goes without saying that good teachers are good communicators—or does it? (Tweet it!) Many universities and business schools rely on “expert” teachers who are tops in their field, but not necessarily skilled at transferring their knowledge to other people.
 

Writing in The New York Times , organizational psychologist Adam Grant points out that experts in any given field might have mastered basic material so long ago that they are especially challenged in conveying it to novices. In addition, the skills that got them where they are—e.g. research brilliance or entrepreneurial success—may not have prepared them to teach what they know to others.

“I’ve come to believe that if you want to learn something new, there are three factors that you should keep in mind when choosing a teacher — whether it’s a professor or mentor or soccer coach,” writes Grant. To quote…

1.  How long has it been since the teacher studied the material?
2. How challenging was it for the educator to initially master the material? The best teachers are often people who accomplish the most with less natural talent and opportunity.
3. How clearly does the teacher communicate the material? Evidence (http://www.nber.org/papers/w19406) shows that when college students take an introductory class from a lecturer who’s not on the tenure track, they go on to get higher grades in a more advanced class.

 
Tell us about the best teacher you ever had. How did this person communicate material in a way that resonated with you? Have you ever had an “expert” teacher who was hard to understand and learn from? If you are a teacher, what are your communication best practices? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.
 
If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication,
check out our online learning series.