The Uncommon Communicator

Come celebrate our conversation with Jennifer lacy! She is the Building forward - lean practice leader for Robins and Morton. Founded in 1946, Robins & Morton is a privately held construction company that is one of the leading healthcare general contractors and healthcare construction management firms in the nation. From new hospitals and renovations to stand alone outpatient centers and facil...

Decision fatigue is a psychological phenomenon surrounding a person's ability or capacity to make decisions. It is also called ego depletion. The theory surrounding decision fatigue is that a human's ability to make decisions can get worse after making many decisions, as their brain will be more fatigued. Whether you're making breakfast or deciding what to wear in the morning, your...

Our Guest today William Bullock,  Negotiator for the UK Police and currently serves as the asset manager for the UK Ministry of Defense. He has spent 13 years as the most experienced and qualified hostage negotiator in the UK and have produced a groundbreaking conflict management training course.   A Hostage Negotiator's specialist art of conflict management in gaining influence and developin...

Mindfulness can be seen as a tool for developing greater self-awareness. By being present and attentive to our inner experience, we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and our motivations. This can help us make more conscious and intentional choices, and lead a more fulfilling and meaningful life. An analogy to explain the relationship between mindfulness and self-awareness is to think of...

Reciprocity in its simplest terms refers to a give-and-take relationship where two or more people exchange information or actions in a balanced and mutually beneficial way. The automatic response that reciprocity creates is a feeling of obligation to return a favor or provide a similar action or information in response to what was given. When someone gives us something, we feel a natural urge to g...

The Yes...And method is an improvisational technique developed by The Second City, a renowned comedy theater and training center in Chicago. The technique is based on the principle of accepting and building on your partner's ideas in an improvised scene. The "Yes" in Yes...And refers to accepting and acknowledging what your scene partner has said or done, rather than denying it or c...

Premature elaboration refers to the tendency of a person to provide excessive or unnecessary detail when communicating information. Here are some tips to avoid and correct this behavior: Plan ahead : Before you communicate information to your direct reports, take a moment to plan out what you want to say. Decide what information is necessary to convey your message and what details can be omitted....

Why do we use the words "brutal" and "honest" together? If we examine the definitions, brutal means “savagely violent,” and honest means “morally correct.” Interesting, right? How two very different things are associated so closely together. In our society, the term “brutally honest” is often accepted as a positive quality. Take a second to pause and think about your dealings w...

An uncomfortable conversation is defined by the difficulty or sensitivity of the topic being discussed and the emotional responses it evokes in the participants. Generally, an uncomfortable conversation involves a topic that is difficult to discuss, such as personal conflicts, taboo subjects, or controversial issues. It may also involve challenging someone's beliefs or actions, discussing sen...

Heuristics  Heuristics are mental shortcuts for solving problems in a quick way that delivers a result that is sufficient enough to be useful given time constraints . Investors and financial professionals use a heuristic approach to speed up analysis and investment decisions. Why do we use heuristics? The human brain and all its processes—including heuristics—Developed over eons. Since mental shor...

This week we welcome our guest Felipe Engineer Manriquez https://www.linkedin.com/in/engineerfelipe?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_miniProfile%3AACoAAADDa68B6mm9VG0gSMmdeJITzyum01TPsf4&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_search_srp_all%3BJwvGHIMiSWa3f71xJZgwxQ%3D%3D Scrum is  a  great framework for communication.  Felipe shares some great stories and nuggets. Make sure you check out the EBFC show...

The Uncommon communicator is the individual that has the enlightenment to recognize in any situation whether communication has occurred. This uncommon communicator takes ownership of the conversation and possess the skills to navigate and facilitate the conversation to mutual understanding. Welcome to the Uncommon Communicator podcast, your host James Gable and Brandon Thompson are here to bring e...

Giving or writing a review is very different from feedback or giving an evaluation. A review is for the masses. Your giving your review to others so you can either enrich them, avise them or plain tell them to look the other way.  This falls clearly into a communication category and requires some skills and tactics.  Here are 8 tips on giving a great review : Provide useful, constructive feedback....

The Why and the how  Why :  1. According to a study by the Harvard Business Review, workers who prioritize their tasks are 90% more likely to be successful in achieving their goals. 2. A study by the American Psychological Association found that people who prioritize their tasks are less likely to experience stress and burnout. 3. According to a survey by the online project management tool, Wrike,...

In this episode The Uncommon Communicator returns to the interview format. WE are still trying to work out the kinks. Our Guest Dan Faucher is a Certified Master Facilitator for Lean Design and Construction, facilitating, training and coaching dozens of companies and agencies in various principles, tools and techniques. He is also the co-author of a new book, Lean Project Delivery: Building Champi...

Giving and receiving feedback is a truly a skill. The results on both ends of the exchange will brings growth, breathes life and trust into the relationship.  Today we will look at: ·      Giving effective feedback ·      Receiving feedback  Top 4 ways to give feedback 1.      Be specific: When giving feedback, make sure it is clear, concise, and specific to the situation. Avoid vague or general s...

Giving good directions requires you to: ·      Understand the listener.  ·      Be skilled at giving directions  Why do some have an issue with following directions? 1.     Limited reading or comprehension skills: Some individuals may struggle with understanding written instructions, due to a lack of literacy skills or difficulty with the language being used. 2.     Cognitive or learning disabilit...

The problem isn’t always the instructions’ fault: ·      Why do some people have difficulty following directions? ·      What are some tools to help us be better at following directions?   1.     Limited reading or comprehension skills: Some individuals may struggle with understanding written instructions, due to a lack of literacy skills or difficulty with the language being used. 2.     Cognitiv...

Decision makers are executive level stakeholders within a company that are responsible for making decisions and managing resources within their scope.    There are so many ways on the internet to get to the decision maker  Here is or summation of some best practices and what to look for in the individual you are chatting with We are really looking at 3 levels  1.    The gatekeeper  2.    The idea...

I. Introduction to ChatGPT Brief overview of what ChatGPT is and how it works ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) [1] is a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3.5 family of large language models , and is fine-tuned with both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques. Reached 1 million subscribers users in a week.  An OpenAI blog post...

Happy New year to all our listeners worldwide. We are taking this moment to thank you and reflect on the last year.  We always end our episodes with the UC Moment. A takeaway from the discussion that you can learn from and share.  Brandon: B-Positive, like my blood type James : Be less of  and call out the passive aggressive.  Much thanks to the faithful Uncommon Communicator Podcast listeners. Ar...

School house rock is a modern take on the instructional hymn  Schoolhouse Rock! is an American interstitial programming series of animated musical educational short films (and later, videos) that aired during the Saturday morning children's programming block on the U.S. television network ABC . The themes covered included grammar , science , economics , history , mathematics , and civics . Th...

Welcome to Part 4 of our 5 part series on Communication Evolution where we have been looking into forgotten forms of communication that still have relevance in our life  The Drum Beat Based on natural languages and speech patterns, drum beats have been used as a means of communication by many civilizations throughout the history of the world.  For ceremonies and rituals, drum rhythms can get the a...

Welcome to Part 3 of our 5 part series on Communication Evolution                                                                        The heliograph A heliograph (from Ancient Greek ἥλιος ( hḗlios ) 'sun', and γράφειν ( gráphein ) 'to write') is a semaphore system that signals by flashes of sunlight (generally using Morse code ) reflected by a mirror . The flashes are produc...

The Semaphore Flag Signaling System A fascinating way of disseminating information, the semaphore tower was first implemented in 1792 at 556 stations over France for the primary source of communication for military and national applications.  The structure’s design had two large towers with a single crossbar between them on which were two pivoting arms. The combination of positions between the cro...