Doing It The Old-Fashioned Way

When was the last time you wrote a letter? I don’t mean an email or a text or a tweet. I mean an honest-to-goodness, put-pen-to-paper, slide-it-into-an-envelope letter involving a stamp and a trip to the Post Office. I’ve been pondering this question since I unearthed a folder full of letters in my desk. This might…

I stand corrected

What kind of conversation makes you uncomfortable? For me, it’s asking for…well, for just about anything. This came up at Erin Marcus’s workshop on difficult conversations the other day. Why is it so hard to ask for help? Because people will say no. They’ll think less of me for asking. They won’t like me! Specific…

Your first clue that I’m a woman!!!!!!

Yes, the exclamation points are a dead give-away, aren’t they? It’s not new news that men and women communicate differently. Way back when I was a baby talk show host, one of my first guests was linguist Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. The way all of us…

How to Give Your Stories More Impact

You’ve heard me say the way to engage people with your talk or your writing is to make it about them instead of you. But how does that jibe with the gurus’ advice to tell stories, especially personal stories, when you’re speaking or selling or writing an article? This question came up at On the…

Writing to Get Results

Whether you write blog posts or sales letters or essays about your political passion, your writing will have the most impact if you actually show up on the page or the screen. It’s always been that way; it’s even more so today because we’re all inundated with things to read. The challenge for each of…