Our entire team has been cranking hard as we push deeper into the second quarter of the year. I’m in denial that it’s almost June, but I can speak for everyone in our office when I say we’re ready for summer.

Back to DHC though, and a few thoughts, observations and stories from the front.

Trends in Training

First, we’ve been facilitating quite a few Communications Leadership Trainings over the past six months and they’re only picking up more steam. Many of our larger clients, in particular, have a need to ensure that it isn’t just their executives connecting with audiences internally and externally. Managers and even line employees are integral in making that connection.

Why? Thanks to a stack of trends (social media, a craving for face-to-face interaction, distrust of purely “corporate messages”, etc.) organizations now rely on a broader set of people to answer questions and carry company messages. From the grocery store to Rotary groups, and family reunions to volunteer work, company representatives often field difficult questions about their company. Understanding the best way to speak to what they do, and to provide more compelling answers, is a huge confidence booster. It can create a team of ambassadors from a team of employees.

We’re also seeing a disconnect between information that’s given to managers and what gets absorbed by their employees. Employees (generally) say they want more face to face interaction, yet also say they mostly hear from supervisors in the form of email or forwarded corporate communications. Few managers are given formal training in how to communicate effectively with their teams.

There’s a lot more to the trends we’ve seen that I’d love to share. Send me an email or comment below if you’re interested.

Send Whiskey and Fresh Horses.

This hokey sign of Cher Desautel’s used to hang in our first office. It always cracked me up—an Ol’ West plaque from a Canadian.

But recently, that hokey saying has ringed true—we’ve made an addition to the DHC team. The interview process was fantastic, mostly because of the fantastic pool of talent. You could jump to conclusions about a lousy job market, but this would be unfair. Most of the candidates were right out of college, and damn if they didn’t have their stuff together. Sophisticated. Polished. Up on news and world events. They brought it in a big way.

If someone had asked me a version of, “If early during their crisis, the Susan G. Komen Foundation called you, how would you go about creating a plan and giving counsel about what to do,” I’m not sure I would have been entirely comfortable.

But a pretty broad set of candidates answered this, and many other questions with great insight and maturity.

Anyway, that’s a long introduction to the good news that Hayley Graham, a soon to be graduate of Gonzaga University will be joining the team. Look for a full introduction to Hayley in our next blog.

Please stop it!

If you’re reading this blog, you likely are familiar with the concept of Death by PowerPoint. In short, it’s using bad slides, bad (or no) presentation format, and too many bullets and words.

Example:

Actually this was a pretty good speech, but awful, awful slides. If you can’t read the words it’s not because of my poor iPhone photo--I couldn’t read themeither, and I was in the room.

If you find yourself wanting to use a slide that looks like this, you MUST DO ONE OF TWO THINGS.

1)      Go on vacation and clear your head.

2)      Call us. Please. We can help you.