Often, our image of how an event will play out is overly idealistic. Holiday events are a good example of reality not measuring up to expectations. We imagine a picture-perfect Norman Rockwell scene and get something closer to Home Alone chaos instead. Our expectations exceed what our resources of time, energy, patience, and finances can bear. In an attempt to recreate old memories or the feelings of holidays long ago, we may not realize that our memories have deleted the mi

Imagine sitting in your office concentrating on completing your latest project when the phone rings. It is the producer for your local...

If you want to learn something, what do you do? Do you… Look it up online? Watch a YouTube video? Go to the library and check out a book?...

Think back to the last product you purchased. For me, it was a new planner from someone on social media. Did I truly need another fancy...

On the first day of class, when I asked the students in our Nutrition Communication course at Purdue to share why they had picked their...

Social media allows businesses, organizations, and individuals to share content and make connections with a wide audience using nothing...

Recently, my husband had a medical test in which the result read: “The trachea bronchial tree and esophagus are grossly unremarkable.” In...

Who is Mr. E and why shouldn’t I be him? Good question. He is the guest contestant in the “ Miss Communication ” pageant. In this...

When I ask audiences to select their top challenge in creating effective messages, what do you think they pick? Being more...

An audience needs to feel a connection with the communicator before they are ready to attend, listen, learn, and act on a message. They need to feel understood. They need to feel like they share common ground with you. They must believe that you are going to meet a need or solve a problem they have.

Communicating effectively is a challenge. Miscommunication is rampant – we misunderstand, misinterpret, misspell, mispronounce, and more....

Meet Miss Aligned, also known as “not speaking the same language, even when it is all English.” She is another contestant in the Mis(s)...

When I was young, a favorite feature in newspapers and magazines was “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” fun fact cartoon. It was fascinating to...

How well do you remember something? Research shows that over time, not so well. This phenomenon was described by Hermann Ebbinghaus in...

Have you ever attended a presentation in which the audience was NOT engaged and became disruptive, or at best, was simply not paying...

This is my 52nd blog post since launching NutritionCommunicator.com last July. Yay! I met my goal of creating and posting a weekly blog....

How many things are you doing right now? Are you reading this blog while having lunch, checking emails, replying to a text, fixing a...

When we block the ideas of others we stop the flow of ideas. When we accept the ideas of others we keep the ideas flowing and agree to save the evaluation for later. In improv this is called “accepting offers.” It enhances collaboration and problem solving.

Teams with these 6 characteristics will succeed.