Remember my laryngitis?

It resulted in a number of epiphanies! I wrote about what I learned about communication by not speaking, just published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Here's an excerpt:

Losing my voice for several days was a fascinating exercise. I gleaned empathy for people who cannot speak, express themselves immediately, or yell for help. My biggest epiphany was around questions: I was distressed that I could not ask my husband about his day, what he was reading, or what he was telling me. I thought a lot about how questions express interest and how they also influence conversation. I realized that questions are about helping the person questioned be heard and better understood; they can also be about selfishly amplifying the voice of the questioner.

And here's the full link.

Be Confident.

My most recent post at the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog explores the difference between confidence and certainty in communication. 

Here's an excerpt:

Confidence allows for fallibility and flexibility, and therefore helps you to develop trust with your audience. Think of the sometimes off-putting perfectionism and certainty of Martha Stewart, versus the humility and benevolent confidence of Oprah Winfrey....

Madeline Albright said, "Certainty comes from believing we have learned all there is to know. Confidence comes from the effort to learn all we can."

And here's a link to the entire short piece.

Be confident!

Why Story Matters

"Communication is more than transactional. Communication can be transformative."

Stanford Social Innovation Review just published an excerpt from a lecture I recently delivered at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University (my alma mater).

Click here to see my advice to future professional communicators, including:

• Why focus on storysharing, as opposed to storytelling
• The importance of story elicitation in business communication
• The transformational power of story