Talk Ain't Cheap

    Great writing isn't just for the profound thinker or creative author.  Great writing has as much to do with competence in writing and being able to express what you want to say in the written word as it does in how you verbalize your thoughts.  It doesn't require that you have an expansive vocabulary or that you have to be prolific in how many ways you can tell the same story.  Oftentimes, it's just knowing how to make subject and verb agree, using appropriate grammar, and spelling correctly.  People who may not know you well will assume your level of intelligence by how you write if that's all they have to go on.  If you write like a fourth-grader, people will assume you're only as smart as a fourth grader.  To be taken seriously, you must present yourself as one who is knowledgeable.  Making simple mistakes like choosing the wrong version of a word (e.g. "your" instead of "you're" or "their" instead of "they're...

     Strong leaders have a commanding presence because of the way they carry themselves.  They exude confidence in the way they walk, talk, stand, and look.  Everything about them says, "I got this."  They make the people around them feel like they can trust their knowledge and their decisions.  Strong leaders are authoritative and earn the respect of the people who report to them.  They've managed to accomplish this by showing themselves to be reliable and wise.  If you've ever had the opportunity to experience this kind of leader in action especially in a crisis, you may remember yourself feeling a little relieved and a bit more relaxed when they took charge.  It was something about the way they spoke that let you know everything was going to be all right.  What did they do?  Let's explore their speech specifically.      1)  The leader who speaks with authority tends to state facts with accuracy...

     Ever been in a conversation with someone, and they started talking while you were right in the middle of what you were saying?  It was as if you weren't speaking at all.  Or how about when you're speaking to someone and another person walks up and interjects as if they had been invited into your conversation.  We've all been there.  And some of us are guilty of doing the same to others.  For whatever reason, we feel like it's okay to butt-in where we have not been invited.  We don't recognize the rudeness of our interruption, and we take for granted that the person we're speaking to is okay with it.  Well listen up.  It's not okay.      Like so much in life today, we are impatient in our conversations.  It's almost as if we can't control ourselves.  If a thought is on our minds, we have to immediately express it.  Usually without a lot of forethought which gets a lot of people in trou...