Have you been in a meeting when someone interrupted or stopped you talking by putting their hand up towards you / your face? Did you feel so shocked, you stopped talking and let them take over? Did you beat yourself up later for letting them do this and not standing your ground? You are not the only one! Most people (so far, it’s only been women) with whom I work experience this (usually from male colleagues) on a weekly, if not daily basis.

Your leader asks you to give “an update to the new team” or “share with us what you’ve been working on”. You are told you have 20 minutes and yet they interrupt you just after 5. Their question is answered later on in your 20 Min presentation, at slide 17, but clearly they couldn’t wait that long. You jump to slide 17 and the meeting spirals out of control and now they’ve turned facing and talking to one of your colleagues, fully ignoring you, despite you standing in front of the room with your slides feeling steam rolled and vulnerable.

This is a genuine email I received out of the blue from an engineering exec in a tech company in Cambridge which had “HR” as the subject line: “If you ever wonder what I have against HR (I doubt you ever wonder that!) this is an article (link to article…

Feedback is a sore topic for most people. No one likes to receive feedback which criticises (especially negatively) their work. This is why I would like to showcase here a perfect example of what superbly constructive feedback looks like and why I loved it so much. I recently submitted a…

If the title of this article sounds harsh to you, you probably already use the techniques within. :-) Do you give honest, useful feedback in meetings yet you have been pulled aside and told that people found you “aggressive” or “abrasive”? Have you been criticised for giving your opinion to colleagues on their initiative? Perhaps you found out later that people don’t ask you for help, even though you are the one with the experience to help them, because they are concerned about the directness of…

Article for: engineers, developers, scientists. You want to get management to adopt a new tool or drop a process that no longer works. You do not expect senior leadership to understand all the technical details, but still want to ensure it is adopted. Or perhaps you presented your ideas in the past and they got rejected, so now you feel worried to speak up or always ask someone…

You are a line manager and people from your own team as well as other departments start telling you that your reportee Mary is difficult to work with. Her performance in terms of targets hit is outstanding and you don’t want to demotivate her. You want Mary to become more…

This is a story I have head over and over again when I do communication training with people in tech companies. Your Line Manager sits you own in a one to one appraisal meeting. They tell you your targets have been achieved and your delivery has been marked as “outstanding”. “Unfortunately however”, they say, “you have received negative feedback from colleagues saying you are difficult to work with and have been marked down on communication, collaboration skills and team work.”