Holly Weeks Communications
hollyweeks.com

Holly Weeks publishes, teaches, and consults on communications issues. She is Adjunct Lecturer in Management Leadership and Decision Sciences teaching the Arts of Communication at the Harvard Kennedy School and Adjunct Lecturer in Communication and the Vision Speech at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

As principal of Holly Weeks Communication, she consults and coaches on negotiation, presentation, and written and conversational communications issues, with a special emphasis on sensitive and difficult problems. Her book Failure to Communicate: How Conversations Go Wrong and What You Can Do to Right Them (Harvard Business Publishing, 2008) emphasizes handling difficult conversations well.

She has given her advice, strategies, and techniques for difficult communications in publications and broadcasts ranging from Harvard Business Review to O, the Oprah Magazine to ESPN Radio and CBS News Sunday. Her article, “Taking the Stress Out of Stressful Conversations,” appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 2001; her columns on “The Art of the Apology” in Harvard Management Update in 2003, “Staying with No” in Harvard Management Communications Letter in 2004, “The Best Memo You’ll Ever Write” also in Harvard Management Communications Letter in Spring 2005 and lead chapter in The Harvard Business School Publishing Guide to Better Business Writing (HBSP 2005), and “How to Disarm Combative Conversations” in Harvard Management Update in 2009. She is an advising expert on difficult communications for Harvard ManageMentor, a Conversation Starter on the HarvardBusiness.org blog, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Harvard Management Communication Letter.

Holly is a keynote speaker, presenter, and workshop leader at national and international conferences with groups interested in increasing their skill and expertise in communications.

Holly was previously an Associate in Communications in the Harvard Business School MBA Program. As a Distinguished Instructor, she taught Management Communication, and Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, at the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University. And she taught Expository Writing at Harvard College.

Holly has a master’s diploma in literature from the University of Edinburgh and an AB cum laude in English language and literature from Harvard University.