leadership | The Better Communicator Blog

Conflict in the workplace? Consider it an opportunity

by David Folkerson on August 16, 2016 , No comments

Cram a bunch of people with different personalities into a confined space, get their responsibilities to overlap, mix in some emotional baggage and deadlines, and whoop, there it is: conflict.

A visual reminder to help you think strategically

by David Folkerson on October 23, 2015 , No comments

It’s easy to think of communications as purely a supportive role. We’re not usually the ones charting the course for our organizations. We’re not driving the business. So it’s easy to understand how we can become quite reactive to the work that is requested of us. However, it is incumbent on us to constantly question the “why” of our work, however responsive we are to the “what” and the “how”, in order to be able to provide strategic guidance, and maximum value, to those we are supporting.

Stop after three strikes when meeting resistance from above

by David Folkerson on June 19, 2015 , No comments

Have you ever heard someone say: “This isn’t the hill I’m going to die on”? It was something an old manager of mine used to say fairly frequently. When she said it, it meant that she disagreed about something our CEO was asking us to do, but she didn’t feel strongly enough about the argument to fight about it until the bitter end. In other words, it wasn’t a disagreement she was going to lose her job over.

Frank Underwood and the power of reciprocity

by David Folkerson on March 9, 2015 , No comments

In Netflix’s House of Cards, Frank Underwood is a conniving, calculating and ruthless politician who has sights fixed firmly on power. He understands that favours lead to personal indebtedness, and those under his thumb often find themselves doing things that they would never otherwise do. How does this happen? How can the burden of personal debt cause otherwise intelligent people to go against their own better judgement? It has to do with the power of reciprocity.[1] This is how it works.

9 tips for the shortest and most productive meetings possible

by David Folkerson on February 28, 2015 , No comments

I have a friend who told me he regularly has to sit through two-hour long weekly team meetings. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry with him. Such a massive investment in time and money. Put your typical team of 10 into a boardroom for two hours, and that meeting has just cost the company about $1,000 in wages. Keep it up for a year, and the company is down about $50K. And that’s just one team. It is unlikely that this company generates sufficient return from these team pow-wows to merit such frivolousness with employee time. Conducting good meetings is an important skill. Here are some tips for keeping them as short and as productive as possible.

Discover a magic word that increases influence by more than 30%

by David Folkerson on January 25, 2015 , No comments

Decisions are tiring. It takes a lot of energy to ponder the pros and cons of the thousands of choices we make on a daily basis. Thankfully, our subconscious has developed tools to help us make all these tiresome decisions quickly and efficiently. According to studies, one of these subconscious tools is a trigger word we can take advantage of to influence the decision-making process.