Month: November 2026

East&West Dialogue with Peter Cox and Mary Jane Esplen: Two Medical Professors & Beyond

At our East&West Dialogues, guest speakers volunteer their time to share life experience, expertise, thought, and have a dialogue with our audience.

This month, please join the conversation between two exceptional doctors and medical professors of University of Toronto – one was adopted and grew up on a farm in Ontario, and the other spent his youth in South Africa during Apartheid. What are their personal reflections of their journeys, and the importance of relationships along the way? How creating and taking opportunities has led them to where they are today? Continue reading “East&West Dialogue with Peter Cox and Mary Jane Esplen: Two Medical Professors & Beyond”

Notes for the 2026 Lunch Coaching Hour on Business Communication

October: How to ask for, provide, and respond to feedback

As usual, Ric started with the psychological side of things. Mentally, can we stripe away the emotions around asking, providing, and especially receiving feedback and simply consider that feedback is just “data”, and it is meant to be helpful?

There are quite a few moments I wanted to take note. The first was a question about a service provider who doesn’t take customer feedback. My first reaction would be that they don’t care. But Ric broke it down to a few possible explanations: perhaps they are not aware of the need for improvement, or perhaps they lack the resources to act on it, or perhaps they don’t care.

To me, this is a great example of keeping an open mind and not jumping to conclusions, and it’s worth exploring the possibilities before making a judgement. We also learned quite a few useful go-to phrases for asking for, providing, and responding to feedbacks.

Watch the video or take a quick peek at the slides to learn more.

Continue reading “Notes for the 2026 Lunch Coaching Hour on Business Communication”