So far this year, we have discussed several aspects of the importance of communication in every day life. Where most people only think of communication as speech-making, we discussed that the most important communication is in our relationships. Well, so far, we have only discussed this in general terms. Starting this month, I'm going to begin our discussions on specific areas of life. This is a discussion so I encourage you to share your thoughts and feelings on the issues I'll post the rest of this year. This month is Business Communication Month here at Communication FUNdamentals, as is this month's AoE Seminar Panel with Jill Hart from CWAHM.com (Christian Work at Home Moms) and her readers. So to start...
On Monday, I talked about the need to be specific, even oddly specific. Today, I'd like to talk about when it's necessary to be "specifically general." While being specific can help you avoid confusion and frustration, being general has the advantage of not ruffling feathers and allowing you not to discuss personal issues if you don't want to. 1. Say you get a phone call from a distant relative asking you to fill her in on all the details of a personal family matter. She is not directly involved and is just being nosy. You don't want to give her any details, but you feel trapped as she has you on the phone. What do you do? There is no...
Welcome back to "Other than Speech Month" here at Communication FUNdamentals. All this month, I've been talking about how important communication is for things other than speech making. So far this month, I've talked about spam, how babies actually cry with an accent, overactive exclamatory punctuation and leadership. This week, I'd like to talk about when it's important to be "oddly specific" and "specifically general." I'll talk about the latter on Wednesday, but today, let's get specific. Most of the time, being specific helps avoid confusion. 1. Telling someone you'll meet them in the morning leaves them unsure if they should be at Starbucks at 7am or 11am. Further, it causes them to have to reconnect with you prior...
Every day we use the internet to connect and communicate with folks all over the world. How we type our messages can make a huge difference in how they are perceived. On February 24th, I'm going to be sharing more about everyday communication with a panel of guests over on TalkShoe. There are several things we do every day that hinder our ability to say what we mean. Today, I'd like to bring the exclamation point to your attention. The use, or overuse, of the exclamation point can create a vastly different meaning to your email and social networking communication. It can alter your message or it can just as easily give you less credibility. Let's look at the different...
I had an experience on Facebook last week that got me thinking about how important it is to be careful that our communication doesn't resemble something that people could take the wrong way. It isn't enough to be genuine, we have to communicate that we are. If you use the language of scammers and spammers, people will wonder if you are. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, people will naturally conclude that it's a duck. Here's what I mean and what we can all learn from Pst Spence. Last week, I received a friend request from someone with an odd sounding name: Pst Spence. We had several mutual friends, his page looked normal and he...
