Category: Communication

Enjoy Ron Culberson's insights on a variety of topics

Would You Like a Little Feedback?

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Has anyone ever come up to you and said, “Would you like a little feedback?” As a speaker, it happens to me with some regularity. And my knee-jerk, unfiltered, slightly exaggerated response is always the same. “Hell, no!” Luckily, I only say this in my head and not out loud. But my reaction is based […]

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Black, White or Gray?

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When you look at the world, do you see black, white or gray? Seems pretty black and white to me – it’s gray. Whenever we get together with family, friends or colleagues, inevitably, we talk about current events. And when we talk about current events, we temporarily lose the ability to see the gray. It’s […]

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Questions Make Good Connections

Ron’s latest Huffington Post Blog: What is the capital of Pennsylvania? It’s a good question designed to get a specific answer — an answer, by the way, that I remember using the mnemonic “Harry’s Pennies.” But it’s not the kind of question that necessarily leads to a good personal connection with others. And yet, questions […]

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Tsunami Motorcycle Story Was Important

A recent article in Harley Davidson’s Hog magazine reported that a Harley Davidson motorcycle washed ashore, still in the container, on the west coast of Canada months after the tsunami that struck Japan. The motorcycle was taken to the Harley museum but the curators were not sure how to handle the bike that had been […]

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What to Do When Conflict Happens

Ron’s latest Huffington Post Blog: Whenever I encounter conflict, something in the pit of my stomach turns and I feel a burst of adrenaline shoot through my body. It’s that instinctual fight-or-flight mechanism preparing me for battle… or to run. If the conflict occurs in a dark alley and involves more than a dozen people, […]

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Bias, Civility and Discourse in a Highly Connected World

As I’ve said before, I can be a pretty judgmental person. I don’t like being that way but I find that it’s almost automatic. And the outcome of my judgmentalism is usually a criticism, whether internally thought or externally spoken, of another person’s behavior or words. And almost always, this judgmentalism comes from my biases. […]

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Good Communication is as Simple as Paying Attention

Ron’s newest Huffington Post blog: The Democratic and Republican conventions are a fascinating study in communication. While most of the speakers are communicators, they’re also saying what their constituents want to hear. There’s a lot of “he said, she said, we all want some ice cream” (or something like that). The challenge with political speeches […]

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Tide Responds Well With Fun to The Onion

Last week, the satirical news source The Onion posted an article parodying viral online videos and randomly chose Tide as the focus of a mythical video that was out of control.  You can read the article here:  Detergent Video Article In an unexpected stroke of genius, the folks at Tide responded with their own satirical […]

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Much Public Discourse is Discouraging

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Rush Limbaugh recently called a female law student a “slut” because of her stand on abortion and health insurance. Jon Hamm called Kim Kardashian an “idiot” because of her role in reality television. And many people routinely refer to the President of the United States by less than complimentary terms. I don’t mind when people […]

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