If 55% of the impact of a communication is determined by the visual aspects, how do staff members who work with our customers on the phone build trust and confidence in our products and services?  Only 7% of the impact of their communication  is the actual words, the content or the verbal message. Yet that is what we spend so much time carefully crafting!  

For phone personnel that makes that 38% impact of voice quality very, very important. Voice quality includes tone, softness or loudness, accents, grammar, volume, tempo, rhythm, inflections–in other words how we say it.  These figures come from a study done in 1983 by Dr. Albert Mehrabian of UCLA.  

It makes sense to spend some of our training time for 

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Tags: Communication, Management Skills, New Employees, Performance Expectations, Training, Coaching by Norma Smith Davis
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According to a recent Gallop Poll only 6% of men wear a tie to work every day.  Sales of men’s ties have dropped to a record low of 677 million as opposed to 1.3 billion in 1995. This and other  facts about ties was the subject of an article in my local paper, The Press Democrat. 

To Tie or Not To Tie!

Not many years ago ties were required in most fine restaurants. Now you see men with baseball caps on backwards and even gang attire. The only men who seem to consistently wear a tie are funeral directors, talk show hosts, news anchors and lawyers when they are in court. And why do talk show hosts wear a suit and tie anyway?  I would laugh just as loud at Jay, David and Craig if they were wearing dress casual. Wouldn’t you? 

On the other hand those comedians 

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Tags: Communication, New News, Performance Expectations by Norma Smith Davis
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 Does it seem to you that you revisit the same decisions over and over?  Do you make decisions only to have them fumble and die of apathy?  Having meetings that are as effective, tight and productive as a good girdle is great.  But if the decisions made at those meetings do not have buy-in from everyone at the table, or are not formalized, the decisions may be sabotaged and rendered useless and toothless.  What are some signs that a decision is being undermined?  See if any of these sounds familiar: 

1. 1.  The supervisor or manager goes back to his department or unit and announces the decision that has been made, rolls       his/her eyes and says, “ I didn’t agree with this decision, but I got out voted”.  Well there’s a resounding endorsement!  How studious do you think that manager will be at implementing the decision?
2. 2.  The supervisor/manager fails to even report the decision to the appropriate people!  Weeks later his/her staff hear about it from other departments.  
3. As soon as the decision is made some of the participants involved in the meeting and the decisions that were made, start buzzing about the decision, criticizing it, complaining about it, saying how it won’t work. This creates doubt in the ones who did agree wholeheartedly.  People don’t start implementing the decision because it is obvious it isn’t going anywhere.  And who can blame them? 

Here’s one way to get commitment about a decision.  Ask each person, individually, to 

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Tags: Decision-Making, Effective Meetings, Management Skills by Norma Smith Davis
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