life and relationships
Communication is not only a work skill. It is how you comfort a friend, disagree with a partner, talk to in-laws in a second language and give a toast your brother remembers. Pieces for the life outside the office.
Family, partners, friends, listening and the hard talks at home.
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moving abroad: phone calls, neighbours, doctors and a new workplace culture
You passed the tests, packed the pressure cooker and found a flat. Then the real exam starts: a bank's phone line, a doctor who asks quick questions, a neighbour who says "alright?" and walks on, and colleagues who call the director by her first name. Here is how to handle the everyday conversations of a new country.
Voice and deliverythe wedding toast: three minutes, one story, no notes
Your brother is getting married, or your closest friend, or your daughter. Someone hands you a microphone at the reception and four hundred guests turn around. A good toast is short, personal and warm. Here is a structure that fits on a napkin, and the words to start.
Life and relationshipslistening so people feel heard: ten lines that show you were listening
You can listen carefully and still leave someone feeling unheard. The difference is usually not attention. It is what you say back. Here are ten lines for work, a partner, a teenager, a grieving friend and an upset customer, and why each one works.
Case studiesCase studythe nurse who moved to Leeds
Eight years of nursing in Kottayam and Kochi, a new job on a busy medical ward in Leeds, and a voice that kept getting lost in fast handovers, broad Yorkshire vowels and phone lines. What the coaching worked on, conversation by conversation.
Life and relationshipstalking with family across languages: parents, partners and in-laws
India is a country of mixed homes: a Malayali and a Punjabi under one roof, children who answer in English, a partner from another country, grandparents on a WhatsApp video call. Family conversations across languages are not tests of grammar. They are about being close. Here is how to talk, and listen, when the words do not line up.
Leadership and presencethe conversation you keep postponing
Saying no to a senior. Telling a good colleague their work is slipping. Asking for the raise. Apologising to someone you hurt. Most of us know exactly which conversation we are avoiding. Here is a simple shape for having it, and the words to start.
Landmark MomentsMadras and PepsiCo, from 2006the gift of your child: Indra Nooyi's letters to her executives' parents
When Indra Nooyi became chief executive of PepsiCo, relatives who came to see her family in India congratulated her mother, not her. That small scene, as she tells it, led her to write to the parents of her senior executives. It is a story about a very old form of communication: the specific, handwritten kind of thanks.
Landmark MomentsKerala, August 2018when the water rose: how Kerala communicated through the 2018 floods
In August 2018, Kerala had its worst floods in close to a century. Hundreds of people died and well over a million had to leave their homes. Alongside the soldiers, sailors and rescue teams, the response ran on words: official statements, volunteer websites, WhatsApp groups, fishermen calling to each other across flooded lanes, and a running fight against rumours.
The ExperimentsMixed evidencethe photocopier study: what the word because really does
A famous 1978 experiment at a university photocopier is often summed up as "just say because and people will comply". The real result was more interesting, and more useful. The empty reason worked only for a tiny favour. When the ask got bigger, people wanted an actual reason.
The ExperimentsReplicated, with limitsthe Pygmalion effect: what other people's expectations really do to performance
In the 1960s, a Harvard psychologist told teachers that certain children were about to blossom. The children had been picked at random. A year later, some of them had gained more on an IQ test than their classmates. The story is famous. The evidence behind it is weaker, and more interesting, than the legend.
Thought StudiesEssayif you could only say three sentences a day
Imagine waking up tomorrow with a strange allowance: three spoken sentences, no more, until you sleep. No typing to get round it. What would you cut first, and what would you protect? We have been asking our coaches this question for a while, and their answers say a lot about what talk is for.
Thought StudiesEssaysilence as a sentence
We coach people to speak. And yet some of the most important things our learners ever communicate are said with no words at all: the pause before a price, the question left hanging, the quiet that follows bad news. Silence is not the absence of a message. It is a sentence in its own right, and like any sentence, it can be clear or confusing.
Thought StudiesEssaytranslating yourself: thinking in one language, speaking in another
Millions of professionals in India and the Gulf do a quiet piece of work every day. They think in Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi or Arabic, and they speak in English. Something is lost in that crossing, and something, surprisingly, is gained. This essay is about both, and about the person who makes the crossing.
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