soft skills

Our lives are all about the ratings.  We look to Yelp or Travel Advisor or Google when selecting a restaurant, hotel or other venue of entertainment.  We look to sites like Angies' List or Home Advisor or HealthGrades to find the highest rated professionals to...

Pointing is confrontational, aggressive and belittling.   The person who is pointed at will become defensive and further conversation is unlikely to be positive.   There are many companies which hold high standards for customer service and expectation that their employees will follow through on executing those...

Certain words and phrases block connections cold and at the same time can make people steaming mad.  Here are some tips on language, words and phrases to avoid: You - If you tell someone "You did this" or "You did that" people get defensive. This is especially...

The foundation for building rapport is based on the exchange of a few basic communication signals. Here are 4 key ways to build instant rapport. This is based on the book, Get Along With Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere by Arnold Sanow and Sandra Strauss. 1. Smile. A...

[caption id="attachment_1872" align="alignright" width="293" caption="Stuart Bradford"][/caption] I am sharing this article because the author makes important points about our society today and the expectation of courtesy even though we are taught by the media and other sources that courtesy is unimportant.  Please let us know what your thoughts are on this subject.

By Kathleen Baines, Columnist on November 1, 2010 Our generation has lost most forms of etiquette — it’s a bold claim, albeit a true one. I have my own theories as to why this decline happened — the substitution of old-fashioned methods of child-rearing with the...