Fine-tuning communication skills and habits

A soft start is just the ticket.

Don’t go it alone. Take these questions with you.

The signal sent may not be the signal received.

When your mouth gets ahead of good judgment.

Move away from that keyboard.

Some debates, arguments, and bickering go on and on, without leading anywhere (except to more frustration). If you find yourself in this kind of debate, or are trying to stop others caught in one, here’s a single question that’s almost magical in its power to help.

Our solutions are only as good as our understanding of the problem. There’s a good question we can use to help discover a problem’s roots. And we can turn it into an even better question by employing it liberally — more liberally than most of us naturally do. Legendary Toyota executive Taiichi Ohno wanted employees […]

One reason apologies feel hard to offer is that they’re colored by fear — fear of feeling shame, fear of feeling judged, fear of offering an olive branch that is not returned. To apologize, we must find ways to anticipate not only what will go wrong, but what also what could go right.