Before diving into this post, ask yourself: Where do you need to be more influential? Is it at work, with your manager, stakeholders, or direct reports? Is it at home, with your spouse, partner, or kids? Or is it in your community, with your friends, neighbors, or fellow members of an organization? No matter where you need to be influential, it's important to know who you're trying to influence and what matters to them . You, like my father, may get all jazzed up about

In every conversation, there is a WHAT and a HOW . The WHAT is the content, or the topics being discussed or decided in the conversation....

What happens to you when you've had a rough day, you sit down to process it with another person, and that person starts jumping in with...

The other day, my older daughter was mad at my younger one because she told her to take her plate to the kitchen. "YOU'RE NOT MY...

I recently facilitated two separate conversations between teammates (at two different organizations) where trust had been broken. I...

I work with a fabulous organization called Wildfire Strategies , and our fearless leader, Steve Salee , has written an article that has...

Brene Brown put it well: “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” I've experienced this firsthand: Many years ago, my boss gave me feedback...

I've been working on a webinar about boundaries and how important it is to set boundaries both at work and at home. There are seven...

How often have you been a few minutes into a conversation before you even knew what it was about? Or been deep in a talk with someone,...

If you're anything like two of my favorite people in the world, you may be stymied by a confident, emotional, successful person needing a...

I spent a lot of last year calling my insurance company about a large sum of money they owed me. And every time I called them, the...

In last week's post, The Judge in Your Head , I talked about the universal Saboteur that afflicts us all, the Judge. The Judge spends...

Tip number eight of eight - use a predictable template when giving feedback. I've learned and taught a lot about feedback over the...

Tip number seven (of the eight ideas I originally shared ) is to prep your feedback before you give it. Now you might be saying, "Kate,...

Tip number six (out of the eight I originally outlined ) is that to make feedback useful, it has to be delivered while there's still time...

Tip number five (out of the eight originally shared ) is to make sure that giving feedback is not a rare occurrence. When we think about...

Imagine you're about to give some unpleasant critical feedback to someone who is definitely going to have a hard time taking it. What's...

Tip number three (out of the eight I originally outlined ) is that to make feedback useful, it needs to be specific and not a vague or...

Let's say that you want to give your direct report some feedback on the meeting they just ran. You have the idea of the behavior you...

When I was acting, I got a lot of feedback that really wasn't helpful. "You're too tall for this role." "We need someone older." "We...