In this issue
	SEE YOU SOON AT THESE LIVE EVENTS! Lovely to meet you! Forum for HR and Training Managers "Why training doesn't work ... what goes wrong? ... and what can you do about it?" Improve your communication skills And finally ...

Lovely to meet you!

CONFERENCE AT HOTEL NIKKO, KL It was great to meet these lovely ladies from Brunei (and many more lovely ladies and gentlemen too!) at the Asia Business Forum conference at the Hotel Nikko in Kuala Lumpur in August. PRESENTATION TO PJ HILTON KEY CLUB MEMBERS Thanks also to the Hilton Hotel in Petaling Jaya for organising a special session for members of your Key Club. I thoroughly enjoyed my stay at your lovely hotel, and it was great to meet so many lovely, friendly people. I hope you enjoyed my session and will help me in 'my mission' to remove old-fashioned, boring jargon from today's business writing! E-MAIL SKILLS AT YOKOGAWA, SINGAPORE Big thanks to Angeline at Yokogawa in Singapore for inviting me back to do a fourth run of our in-house workshop 'Enhance your E-mail Skills'. It's always a pleasure to visit Yokogawa, and I look forward to the next round! 2-DAY WORKSHOP IN SINGAPORE Thanks to Sam at Learner's Choice for organising another successful public workshop in Singapore. Great to see so many enthusiastic people there. MALAYSIAN EXECUTIVE SECRETARY'S SEMINAR IN KUCHING Thanks to Quest Group in Malaysia for organising this 2-day seminar. It was great to meet a huge crowd of secretaries from Kuching at my one-day session 'Enhanced Communication Skills'. I enjoyed it, and I hope you did too! See more photos of live events with Shirley »

Forum for HR and Training Managers "Why training doesn't work ... what goes wrong? ... and what can you do about it?"

I was pleased to be co-facilitator at a special training forum at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, Singapore this month, organised by Partners Conference & Event Management. Led by my good friend and great trainer Ricky Lien the second run of this training forum was again very successful and thought-provoking. If you are interested in attending a future training forum please e-mail enquiries@partners-conference.com. Please click here to read Ricky's article on how you can enhance training in YOUR company. »

Improve your communication skills

I am grateful to Ricky Lien for contributing my guest article this month. Many people ask me if I can give them some tips on oral communication skills as well as written. Well the answer is, why reinvent the wheel? My friend Ricky is an expert in communication skills so I have asked him to write this article for you on this subject. Thanks Ricky! It has been studied that more than half of a business person's day is oral communication. Thus, it's easy to see the importance of making a good verbal impression. In the organisation, almost all oral communication will involve improving operations, inspiring staff or encouraging sales staff to meet their targets. However, there is also non-verbal communication. We communicate with words, but not with words alone. Studies show that in 100% of communication, 7% is words, 38% is tone and inflection and 55% is facial expression, body position and gesture. Hence our non-verbal messages convey our thoughts with much greater accuracy than most of our selected words. Just take a look at the people around you and observe how their nonverbal communication affects the meaning of their communication. If you want to learn more about oral communication and non-verbal communication, read the rest of this article by Ricky Lien. Find out more about Ricky Lien »

And finally ...

TIP OF THE MONTH Have some RESPECT for your reader! When I receive a message that is full of errors, poor grammar, spelling/punctuation mistakes, I think the writer has no RESPECT for me because he/she couldn't even take one minute to check it through before clicking 'send'. Thanks to Ricky Lien for this TIP OF THE MONTH. If you would like to receive a FREE COPY of one of my books, please send your tips to me at news@shirleytaylor.com. COME ON - put your brain into gear and your fingers to keyboard TODAY! I hope you've enjoyed this issue of Shirley Says. If you have any ideas about what you would like me to include in future issues, please write to me at news@shirleytaylor.com. PS: You may reprint this e-newsletter or forward it to your customers and colleagues. However please keep this copyright and contact information intact: Copyright Shirley Taylor 2003. Shirley Taylor is author of several popular books on effective communication and business writing. She lives in Singapore and works as an international trainer, seminar leader, professional writer and conference speaker.