Pam Harper & Scott Harper’s News & Views

How Buzzwords and Jargon Can Actually Be Valuable

Call them “corporate speak”, “buzzwords”, “jargon”, or something else. The conventional wisdom is that we should banish this language from our vocabulary in favor of speaking more plainly. But now we just saw an article in the Harvard Business Review that challenges this belief: Why Business Jargon Isn’t Bad.

As a matter of fact, for years we’ve been saying that there are legitimate reasons why every company culture reinforces all kinds of acronyms, buzzwords, and jargon. We came up with three theories for this: Read More

Why Connection is a Strategic Advantage in 2019

Happy New Year! I (Pam) started out the year by returning to The Small Business Advocate Radio Show^® with host Jim Blasingame to speak about the power of connections.

Find out why the more we depend upon digital technology for processing information, the more we need the wisdom and art of nuance that comes from connecting personally with each other. Look for this to become a recurring theme during the year.

To listen to our conversation in three segments, click on the “Listen Now” buttons for each segment below.
Read More

Juggling Life At The Holidays?

For many CEOs and C-Suite executives, holidays can be particularly stressful. Many people tell us that although they may be on vacation at some point during this time, they never feel like they can completely go offline and relax.

Yes, you know that it’s important to shut off devices and tune out so you can restore your mental and spiritual reserves. But there are always competing demands for your time and attention. You don’t want to miss out on opportunities, but burning out is not a good option either.

So how do you balance everything and truly refresh over the holidays? One way that we’ve found to juggle all the “balls” of our lives, including downtime, is to… Read More

In Memory of Judith E. Glaser, A Game-Changer in Leadership

We are sad to share news of the recent passing of our friend and colleague, Judith E. Glaser, Founder and CEO of Benchmark Communications, Inc. and Chairman of The CreatingWE® Institute. She was widely acknowledged as one of the most pioneering and innovative change agents, consultants and executive coaches in the consulting and coaching industry.

Judith was the world’s leading authority on Conversational Intelligence® (C-IQ). Her transformational approaches use neuroscience and anthropology to enable leaders to raise their Conversational Intelligence and build agile and higher performing individuals and teams. She was the author of 7 best-selling business books, including her most recent best-seller, Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results.

Over the years, Scott and I have been powerfully impacted by Judith’s research and framework for Conversational Intelligence®, which makes complex scientific concepts simple to understand and apply. As described on her website, “Conversational Intelligence is a framework for knowing which kind of conversations trigger the lower, more primitive brain and which conversations activate higher-level intelligences such as trust, integrity, empathy, and good judgment.”

Judith definitely lived into her philosophy. We enjoyed our conversations with her so much that she held the honor of being our most frequent guest on Growth Igniters® Radio over the past three+ years. She was willing to discuss anything that would be helpful to us and our top executive listeners, no matter what was happening in her own life. In fact, she was always so bright and engaged in our conversations that during one of our recording sessions Read More

Overcome obstacles through the power of improvisation

While there are many things we can’t predict about innovation and growth, we can confidently predict that we all will encounter obstacles of various sizes at some point along the journey.

Sometimes obstacles appear in the form of everyday problems such as misunderstandings. Other times, obstacles show up as life-changing events such as disasters. However, no matter the challenge, one thing that can help us all find our way to new solutions is using the power of improvisation.

While many people think of improvisation as it relates to comedy sketches, we’ve found that there are many other valuable uses for this type of communication. Read More

Pam Harper & Scott Harper’s News & Views

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