Professor of Communication at the University of Waterloo. Host of "Now We're Talking" a podcast about how to improve Communication Skills.
In Episode 105 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the inner voice and how to improve intrapersonal communication.
In Episode 104 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the difference between support responses and shift responses in social interactions, and how we all might benefit from practicing support responses as we return to face-to-face social interactions.
In Episode 103 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the "feel, felt, found" technique for persuasion and for overcoming strong objections.
In Episode 102 of Now We're Talking, we learn the dangers of the cycle of mindless reciprocation and how to avoid it.
In Episode 101, we discuss the conditions that are necessary for engaging in the kind of conflict that will bring is closer together.
In Episode 100 of Now We're Talking we discuss the neutral inner voice as an important form of intrapersonal communication. Master the neutral inner voice and improve all of your communicative interactions.
In Episode 099 of Now We're Talking, we review the 10-20-30 rule for making presentations and why that rule helps us to be more persuasive.
In Episode 098 of Now We're Talking, we discuss rapport, and how the HEAR technique can build rapport and lead to cooperation.
In Episode 097 of Now We're Talking, we discuss rhetorical vision, and how to have a vision and why a vision is inspiring and persuasive and important.
In Episode 096 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the steel man technique for arguing and why it works better than the straw man technique or the hollow man technique.
In Episode 095 of Now We're Talking we compare communication practices that attempt to gain compliance through force (like threats, intimidation, and aggression) with communication that aims at cooperation in order to persuade.
In Episode 094 of Now We're Talking we discuss the process of motivational interviewing and how that process can be used to persuade people to change their minds or adopt new behaviors.
In Episode 093 of Now We're Talking we discuss the difference between compliance and persuasion, why compliance is a red flag for communication, and why persuasion is a better choice for effective communication.
In Episode 092 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the five communication practices that we know can lead to violence - how to spot them and what to do about them.
In Episode 091 of Now We're Talking we discuss the primal communication circuit and how it can bias our thinking.
In Episode 090 of Now We're Talking, we discuss why calling someone "crazy" is really ineffective and what to do instead in order to be persuasive.
In Episode 089 of Now We're Talking, we discuss bear trap questions, questions that are designed to trip you up and make you look bad, and what to do about them.
In Episode 088 of Now We're Talking, we discuss why people still might not be wearing a mask and how meaning gets constructed when we introduce a new thing like a mask into our culture.
In Episode 087 of Now We're Talking we discuss "deep canvassing," or the only way to persuade someone that holds a radically different political view from you.
In Episode 086 of Now We're Talking we review the psychological phenomenon of reactance and how it might contribute to miscommunication or failed persuasion and what we can do to avoid reactance through specific communication practices.
In Episode 085 of Now We're Talking, we discuss paraverbal communication, why it's important and how to make it a more reflective part of your communication practices.
In Episode 084 of Now We're Talking we discuss the art of asking strategic questions and how strategic questions can transform confrontation into collaboration.
In Episode 083 of Now We're Talking, we discuss why it's important to respond to people instead of reacting to them and how you might be responsive and not reactive.
In Episode 082 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the practice of emotional labeling and how to make it a reflective communication practice.
In Episode 081 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the simple and extremely effective practice of mirroring, and how to use mirroring as a reflective practice.
In Episode 080 of Now We're Talking, we review the difference between pre-reflective communication practices and reflective communication practices and why it's so important to engage in reflective practices of communication.
In Episode 079 of Now We're Talking we discuss switch-tracking and how it leads to conflict.
In Episode 078 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the effects of stonewalling on organizational cultures and why leaders that stonewall drive poor decision-making processes.
In Episode 077 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the importance of a high degree of self-awareness for those in leadership positions and how to communicate accurate self-awareness to others.
In Episode 076 of Now We're Talking, we discuss strategic thinking and strategic communication, both essential abilities for anyone in a leadership position.
In Episode 075 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the use of a specific question for mitigating people's emotional, anxious responses to change or uncertainty.
In Episode 074 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the importance of absorbing and diffusing emotions, especially in group work, and how we can suspend discussions to allow spaces for emotions to be heard and felt and understood, and the transformative impact of these practices on relationships.
In Episode 073 of Now We're Talking we discuss a four-step process for persuading a difficult audience that is likely to resist your requests.
In Episode 072 of Now We're Talking we discuss the four main tasks for anyone in a managerial or supervisory position: Building through a vision; Responding to crises; Repairing, improving, maintaining, and sustaining decision-making processes; and Building and maintaining strong interpersonal bonds.
In Episode 071 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the importance of diffusing negative feelings in communicative interactions, particularly through face-saving, repair attempts, and de-escalation.
In Episode 070 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the importance of helping others improve their communication skills by asking them one important questions - "What did you get out of that?" - to help them reflect on and improve their strategic ability to produce effects on others.
In Episode 069 of Now We're Talking we discuss why and how emotions always bias reasoning, and how master communicators always act in response to emotions instead of ignoring them.
In Episode 068 of Now We're Talking we talk about how the word "we" maps the world and creates forms of identification and division that can influence our communicative interactions.
In Episode 067 of Now We're Talking we discuss authenticity and how authentic and inauthentic communication affects our interactions.
In Episode 066 of Now We're Talking we discuss the difference between not-at-issue content in a statement and at-issue-content, and the ways in which the social meanings of not-at-issue content help create meaning.
In Episode 065 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the difference between transmitting information and creating meaning, and why good communicators focus more on meaning and less on information.
In Episode 064 of Now We're Talking we discuss the damage done by forms of emotional invalidation, and how to recognize when invalidation is happening and why we should try validation instead.
In Episode 063 of Now We're Talking we discuss the importance of balancing warmth and directness in our embodied communicative interactions and why balancing warmth and directness will have profound effects on others.
In Episode 062 of Now We're Talking, we offer a composite picture of effective leadership by showing how a leader can balance five main relational communication practices with five main functional communication practices.
In Episode 061 of Now We're Talking, we discuss how a leader can catalyze an effective deliberation and how important that skill is.
In Episode 060 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the importance of listening for and living in uncertainty. Leaders that seek out closure often make bad decisions, and leaders that are able to calmly live with ambiguity often make better decisions.
In Episode 059 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the opposite of making distinctions - affirming or acknowledging a person's view of the world and how powerful those acts can be.
In Episode 058 of Now We're Talking, we discuss the importance and the power of making careful distinctions, and how distinctions can produce effects on audiences and reframe conversations.
In Episode 057 of Now We're Talking we discuss the three main modes of producing trust, and how critical trust is to persuasion.
In Episode 056 of Now We're Talking we discuss the basic structure of an effective apology, and why apologies that pivot to intentions don't work. We also discuss how to produce trust after you've hurt someone.
In Episode 055 of Now We're Talking we discuss how and why repetition works so effectively as a practice of persuasion.