Communication Coach Blog
Hello,
This is the Globe and Mail article from today, Monday February 23 2009, in which I was interviewed, along with other experts, on the issue of over-sharing personal information at work. If this topic is relevant to you and your office cohorts, please follow the link by clicking here:
Thanks,
Well it is the season for this topic, at least here in Canada and the northern U.S.
(I have modified these from http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/snow)
To be (as) pure as the driven snow:
Pure and chaste (Often used ironically.)
E.g. Jill: Sue must have gone to bed with every man in town. Jane: And I always thought she was as pure as the driven snow!
A snow bunny:
1. Someone learning to ski.
E.g. This little slope is for snow bunnies. They call it the ‘bunny hill’.
2. A young, attractive female at a skiing lodge.
E.g. Some cute little snow bunny came over and sat beside me. This place is swarming with snow bunnies that have never even seen a ski.
Snowed in:
Trapped (somewhere) because of too much snow, most likely due to a recent snow storm.
E.g. The snow was so deep that we were snowed in for three days. Luckily we had enough food to last us a while.
Snowed under:
Overworked; exceptionally busy.
E.g. Look, I’m really snowed under at the moment. Can this wait?
A snow job:
An attempt to persuade or deceive someone by praising them or not telling the truth.
E.g. Dane will need to do a snow job on his Dad if he’s ever going to borrow the car again, after getting into so many fender-benders (minor car accidents).
Enjoy and stay warm!
Today I was asked to give an interview for Sarah Boesveld, a newspaper reporter with The Globe and Mail’s Life section. She wanted to write an article about over-sharing in the workplace – that is, people offering a little bit too much personal information and how that can affect working performance and working relationships. Great topic!
That article comes out most likely this Monday the 23rd and I’ll post a link to the online article then.
UPDATE FYI – I am a contributor of articles on the Entrepreneur-focused site Evan Carmichael. Here is the link to that article on the same topic – 7 negative results of oversharing personal info at work:
This is no simple question.
Our confidence is greatly affected by our memories, values, previous decisions and environment. I always tell people that competence is the flip-side of confidence. When you get good at (doing) something, your confidence rises. And likewise when you get more confident at something, you perform better, which raises your competence at that task. So it is like the old riddle – “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” The answer is it doesn’t matter, as long as you have both a chicken and an egg, as they are interlinked and there could not be one without the other. So it is with confidence and competence.
Lesson for today: build your competence in your targeted task, job or hobby in small steps to gain more self-trust and positive feedback from others, so that your confidence rises up a few notches. That will in turn show on your face and in your voice and body language, starting off a very positive ripple-effect. After a while of small successes you can look back at your journey and see the great accomplishments, and feel the stronger confidence gained from your personal goal-achievements.
Now go climb a small mountain! (figuratively, of course!)
Hello – just two quick announcements:
ONE – If you have not yet seen it, my January 1st 2009 CBC News TV interview is up right now, where I discuss the G.R.O.W. coaching method. Just go to my Youtube channel video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_CW3Zu0DLk
TWO – For those interested, and who can get the channel (I am not sure how far this broadcast will reach) I will be on a T.V. episode tonight of the W-Network TV show “Save Us From Our House!”, which is on at 9:30pm. For those in Toronto the channel is 27. I have not seen this episode yet, so we will be watching it together for the first time. It is only a half-hour show, and I am not the main host, so my time may be only a minute or so, but that is fine with me. I enjoyed helping the family shop in a peaceful manner and avoid all the conflict that they are so used to having in their daily communications.
Thank you for your support!
UPDATE: Here is the video or the direct Youtube link to the 2-minute segment I’m on from that TV show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYsXFywfFbQ
Hi folks,
This is a great cultural question: Should this country’s national anthem, O Canada, be sung each morning at school, or just once in a while at school ceremonies? Here is an article:
N.B. parents force school to reinstate O Canada, call for others to follow
By Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press
Susan Boyd wants O Canada to be mandatory at the start of the day in elementary schools across the country after she successfully fought for the anthem’s return at her daughter’s tiny school in New Brunswick.
Belleisle Elementary in Springfield, about 40 kilometres northeast of Saint John, played the national anthem Monday morning.
“It’s one step forward, but our job isn’t done yet,” Boyd said in a telephone interview.
“We have to continue and have it legislated that it’s mandatory. Otherwise it could be overturned in another few weeks or even a year or two from now if it’s not written in stone.”
School principal Erik Millett incurred Boyd’s wrath and a torrent of angry calls and emails in recent weeks after a group of parents complained that O Canada wasn’t being played before classes.
Millett, who couldn’t be reached for comment Monday, moved the anthem to monthly assemblies in September 2007, saying it was a more “inclusive” option.
The principal has told the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal that using the anthem at the monthly assemblies would give it “more prominence, more importance.”
Before his decision, one child had been sitting outside class when the anthem was played at the request of the child’s parents, and for reasons that haven’t been publicly released.
A school board spokesman said the child’s situation played a role in Millett’s decision to drop the anthem.
When Boyd’s daughter told her recently that she was forgetting the words to O Canada, the 43-year-old mother of two started a campaign to bring it back.
(to read the rest of this article, please visit this link:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090202/national/no_o_canada )
Hey everyone,
I know this post is not really communication-related, except if you consider that GSP (Georges St.-Pierre) has a thick French-Canadian accent, but I just HAD to write a quick WOO-HOO and congratulations to our home-grown UFC champion (MMA – Mixed Martial Arts) Georges “Rush’ St.-Pierre on defending his title against BJ ‘the Prodigy’ Penn, from Hawaii. BJ is a great fighter, but I am relieved that GSP won and proud that he did it in such a convincing way. When you are THAT good, no one CARES that you have an accent!!!
Don’t ever let an accent slow you down or convince you that you can’t follow your dreams and ambitions. Ever!
Hello,
I hate to so shamelessly promote myself, but I want to provide more credibility to some folks who don’t know me and who want to make sure that I can ‘walk the walk and talk the talk’ when it comes to communication skills.
So if you are interested in seeing the latest TV appearance, I’ve uploaded the January 1st 2009 live interview of me on CBC TV discussing how to apply the coaching G.R.O.W. model to your New Years resolutions and monthly goals.
(Or follow this direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_CW3Zu0DLk )
Thank you!