Did you fight to keep from nodding off during your company’s most recent video call? Or are you leading the meeting and half your group is hiding behind black screens, secretly nodding off to your presentation? Perhaps you strained to understand a speaker with a faulty microphone, or lost connection due to your own tech malfunctions? Video conferencing is your next best … [More]
An American Businessperson in a Global World
In the American business world, there is a generally accepted, and often unspoken, etiquette that most businesspeople follow: Be on time, dress professionally, use a firm handshake, make eye contact, show initiative, be respectful of one’s superiors and so on. Look around the world, however, and there are widely diverse protocols that can quickly lead to cultural barriers, … [More]
Handling Difficult Conversations Remotely
No one could have accurately predicted that one day just about the entire world would go remote. But that’s precisely what happened when the coronavirus hit and pretty much brought everyone to a standstill. Within days of the official announcement of a pandemic, employers shut down their offices and sent workers home, leaving no time to train leaders on how to best manage … [More]
Are We ‘Hear’ for Each Other?
You can observe a lot just by watching. That’s one of the sayings made famous by Yogi Berra, a Hall of Fame baseball catcher perhaps best known for his off-the-wall quotes. While some of his “Yogi-isms” are hilarious, many of them have a deeper meaning if you take a minute to think about it. Here’s a twist on “watching” that might have a useful purpose. You can hear … [More]
Connections Are Business Capital
LinkedIn has more than 575 million users, according to leading WordPress hosting platform Kinsta, and nearly half of those are active every month (meaning they post, comment or “like” on the platform). If that isn’t impressive enough, LinkedIn has its sights on further investments into Latin America. What makes LinkedIn even more powerful is that users update their bios … [More]
Virtual Meetings – Beyond the Camera
Remote work, virtual Zoom meetings, hybrid meetings — it’s all been so sudden, impactful and, to many, intimidating and overwhelming. Few people would likely ever have thought we would all need to master the art of on-camera performance, lighting, sound and virtual presentation. The following are a few tips to help succeed in this new virtual world. Turning the camera on … [More]
No Pain, No Gaines
That’s been true ever since he was a little pint-sized hustler selling candy and Capri Suns down at the public tennis courts in northeast Texas. Deep in his bones he has always known that hard work yields great results. On the cusp of launching into what might be the hardest work he and his wife, Joanna, have ever done — building a network — Gaines realized that none of it … [More]
