Communications Skills

Communications Training

Presentation Skills, including Sales Presentations

  • Identify audience needs, sensitivities, objections
  • Frame your action objective so you ask for what you need
  • Organize and structure for attention and retention
  • Use anecdotes, examples, humor to enliven
  • Manage non-verbal communication professionally and cross culturally; deliver with credibility and responsiveness
  • Manage the message; the art of persuasion
  • Use media to enhance and support
  • Control group dynamics, field question/answer
  • Work with small and large groups
  • Provide video, written and verbal feedback

Influence:

  • Assess your individual capacity for influence
  • Master the three influential moves
  • Use a script to demonstrate how to frame your influential objective and interact to support and achieve it
  • Use logic, emotion and authority to support your objective
  • Get feedback on the effectiveness of your personal style

Facilitation Skills

  • Learn to gain the confidence of the group
  • Learn to conduct needs assessment
  • Create meeting and event agendas that use time to keep things vibrant and meet the objectives
  • Learn to facilitate high participation events using professional group processes that foster group ownership
  • Ensure capture of information during the process
  • Create succinct actionable reports
  • Follow up with the stakeholder team

Managing Media Interviews

  • Master the right preparation
  • Decide how you need to be perceived to be effective
  • Package your sound bites
  • Distinguish how to prepare and deliver for print, radio, and television interviews
  • Control your message when the questions are challenging
  • Respond: in an information vacuum, in an office crisis, for damage control, to combat disinformation
  • Develop a positive to neutral relationship with the interviewer
  • Manage the camera; manage your appearance

Writing: Financial/Technical/Business

  • Define your audience; tune into national, regional, cultural biases
  • Define the objective of the communication
  • Determine what your key messages are
  • Structure in one of three important ways
  • Craft press releases, correspondence, email, minutes of meetings, reports, proposals, speeches, PowerPoint, articles, talking points, etc. and get to use great templates
  • Get feedback on your own writing effectiveness

Conflict Management

  • Identify the real interests of the other side
  • Expand the pie and add more options to negotiate resolution
  • Learn to frame your objective as a win/win proposition; learn how not to respond to an ultimatum
  • Use the DESC script to avoid judging, whining, accusing, or making sweeping generalities
  • Solve cases in manager-employee conflict; employee-employee conflict; conflict with vendors, contractors, consultants, board members and community activists
  • Role play persistence and dodging pressure tactics
  • Illustrate creative problem solving techniques
  • Create alternatives and options to get past impasses

Communicating for Results

  • This comprehensive communications program provides training in all the interpersonal skills described in the workshops above.

Executive Presence

  • Build self confidence and manage self-consciousness when speaking impromptu
  • Demonstrate key verbal and non-verbal management of executive presence
  • Simulate best practices of speaking at meetings, on conference calls, and interpersonally; demonstrate how to promote identification with your audience and leave an enduring positive impression
  • Use 3 hooks in the art of persuasion
  • Identify the action objective you must accomplish
  • Listen and respond to challenges and objections while maintaining win/win, civility and control
  • Provide video, written and verbal feedback