The risk of letting others do your work: Loss of connection

When I let others do my cooking, I hand over control.  And, in handing over that control, I sacrifice connection.  When I choose to go fast food over home cooking, I’ve removed myself from the connection between food ‘au naturel’ and finished product.  There is risk-reward in letting others do your work.    No human, […]

Effective Communications: Adding Verbal and Non-Verbal Capacity in Virtual Contexts

Working virtually can put the squeeze on our full range of verbal and nonverbal communication skills. This is a given with it comes to nonverbal. When we’re in the same physical space together, the success of our communication effort  is mightily influenced by our nonverbal, visual, actions.  Where is body language, and tone of voice, […]

Effective Communications: Align virtual channel with feedback requirements

If you’ve ever fired off an email, and mistakenly thought your communication work was done, raise your hand.  Mine’s up; both of them! Feedback loops are about working with the effect of your actions, on the other person. Feedback loops get even more complicated, in the virtual arena. Here’s a two-minute screencast I created; explaining […]

Effective communications: High-context in a low-context virtual world

Keeping communications high-context in the virtual world can be a frustrating exercise.  Virtual interactions tend to favour low-context, direct and impersonal, forms of communication.  If you’re from a high-context culture, beware. Here’s a two-minute screencast I created to look at the high/low context conundrum, and what you can do about it: (Update: This screencast is […]

A Lesson from a Golf Champion: Separate Process and Outcome

Rory Mcllroy won last week’s British Open golf tourney.  The British Open (aka “The Open”) is considered one of the 4 majors; i.e., global golf’s most influential competitions.   Mcllory’s assessment of his triumph was revealing, and included some insights, on letting go, and detaching oneself from the outcome.  Zen-like. Only 25, Mcllroy is golf’s current […]