Dianna Booher's Blog, page 29

How to Handle a Hostile Question With Poise—Part 1

Whether delivering a presentation, meeting with a client in the heat of a crisis, or battling with your teen over curfews, how you respond to a hostile question can make or break your credibility for everything else you have to say.

Once, when a newspaper reporter called me, he opened with this line: “I’m calling for your reaction to a story about to run. . . .” (long pause) “I’m doing a story on Mr. X [he called the name of a CEO whom I’d helped write his memoirs].  I’ve just talked to th...

Start an Elevator Conversation; Forget the Elevator Speech

The elevator speech is dead. That was my pronouncement in last week’s blog. The reasons: Elevator speeches are too vague, too canned, too boring.

Hearing an elevator speech, people feel that you’ve tossed them “bait.” They resist “being hooked.” They push back just like you resist the salesperson who approaches you as you walk in a store and asks, “May I help you?” Your unthinking response: ”No, I’m just looking.”

Worse, elevator speeches are filled with clichés and platitudes. Often, you...

Why the Elevator Speech Is Dead—And What to Do Instead

Ten years ago, clients asked me to help their sales teams to perfect their elevator speech. Not anymore. It’s dead. Nobody has time to listen to your elevator “speech.” How often do you hear a TV anchor say to a guest, “I’ve just 10 seconds left; give me your reaction to X.” Impatience has quashed the elevator speech.

That’s not a bad thing. I see it as a forward step for all concerned.

 

Elevator Speeches: Too Similar, Too Vague, Too Memorized

A month ago I had occasion to sit at a round...

The Pet Peeve That Zaps Productivity and Sours Attitudes

You rush into your office early at 7:30 to get a jump on the day. Your overflowing inbox shows several emails marked urgent. But they’ll need to wait because you know what needs to be a priority: getting that report out to the client by noon to include in his afternoon presentation. You promised. Your company’s reputation rests on that deadline.

“Did you get the word?” A colleague sticks her head in your doorway. “Casey just called a meeting for 8:30. Conference room 2100. Check your email...

10 Tiny Things That Create Big First Impressions

Whether it takes 7 seconds or 17 minutes to make a first impression, people always seem astonished at what idiosyncrasy causes the gut reaction. That reaction may be positive or negative, but it pays to know how others perceive you.

After more than 30 years of personal coaching and studying the topics of interpersonal skills, body language, interviewing, and career advancement, these issues are mentioned most frequently as those that make someone memorable—typically for negative reasons. O...

6 Ways Salespeople Irritate Customers and Lose Sales

Salespeople are typically the nicest people in the room. They ask about your family. They laugh at your stories. They empathize with your hard luck.

But occasionally, you run into someone in sales who just needs a paycheck, someone who’s a technical expert but has the personality of a duffle bag, someone who has been on the job awhile and forgotten the fundamentals.

If you know of a salesperson who falls into this last group, you may want to pass this post along.

 

How Salespeople Irritate...

How to Skip Small Talk and Get to Know Someone

Noticing the time on a text message (3:04 a.m.) that came in from a Millennial one morning, I asked if he had been working that late. “No, I went out to meet someone at a coffee shop about midnight. Just thought I’d answer your earlier text as I walked home.”

“Out to meet someone after midnight? Must be a good friend.”

“Not yet. But I wanted to get to know her better. And she needed someone to listen. When there are so many people around at a party, you can’t really talk about important st...

5 Communication Practices Touted As Effective—That Really Aren’t

No matter the topic, there’s always the flipside. Politics? The liberal view versus the conservative view. Religion? Scores of interpretations. How to build the better app? Fee versus free, with imbedded links.

So when it comes to communication, the same is true. What you’ve always heard as conventional wisdom may not be “best practice” after all. Take a closer look at the flipside.

 

5 Communication Practices to Reconsider

 

Practice #1: Lead with clear directives:

While no one would arg...

5 Mistakes Leaders Make in Responding to Questions

Whether delivering a presentation to clients or your own executive team, delegating, or passing someone in the hallway, leaders get questions. Some challenging, some trivial. But all responses leave an impression: As a leader, you know that people either trust you for the truth—or think less of you than before they asked.

What makes the difference?

 

How to Avoid 5 Mistakes When Responding to Questions

 

Mistake #1: Designating a Q&A Period

Remember that not all briefings, presentations, o...

How Real Leaders Inspire, Build Culture, Stay Happy, Make Money

Given a half hour to kill in a shopping mall, I prefer to spend it reading greeting cards or books of essays. Not silly or trite sayings and philosophies, but those astute observations that slap you upside the head and make you think: “Hmmm. That’s squares with my experience. I’ll tuck that away for future reference.”

That feeling was the case when I picked up John Addison’s book, Real Leadership: 9 Simple Practices for Leading and Living With Purpose. The author states that his goal was t...