Speak at Your Peak
One of the most important leadership and sales skills is being able to communicate ideas face-to-face. You can become more persuasive and credible with clients, employees, and in formal speeches before the public. Learn to think on your feet in stressful situations. Learn to control the important "other half" of face-to-face communication - body language.
This intensive workshop uses hands-on practical exercises to help people learn how to be more persuasive.Most people are aware of the old saying: "It's not what you say, it's how you say it." Little differences make a big difference - and people can quickly learn which small changes will help them project their leadership qualities more effectively. Anyone can learn to be more credible in various professional speaking situations - from formal speeches before the public to meetings with peers or employee groups, from sessions with clients or government groups to media interviews.
Participants in this workshop are videotaped to allow for review of communication strengths and growth
needs. This teaching tool accelerates the learning process and helps people immediately put into practice the new skills they learn in the workshop. Works best as a two- or three-day workshop limited to 10 people or less. The program can be adapted to fit client needs.
Program Objective: To make leaders more convincing and believable manner in presentations, staff meetings and one-on-one
Program Content:
- Learn to control your fear of speaking in front of groups
- Project confidence even when feeling nervous or unsure
- Understand how nonverbal signals help or hinder communication
- Shape messages more clearly, stressing key ideas for impact
- Establish rapport with audiences
- Use personal experiences to make presentations more believable and convincing
- Develop your own natural speaking style
- See yourself as others see them
- Develop ongoing self-improvement tactics
Listening for Results
Listening is very important if you want to get results when working with other people. Discover the art and skill of not only hearing, but understanding the feelings of others and the content of their messages. Find out about the magic of feedback in building relationships.
Researchers have identified listening as the most used form of communication, followed by speaking, reading and writing. Yet in school, listening is the least taught of the communication skills. Surveys have asked workers to describe the characteristics of a good boss. They typically say a good boss is someone who listens to them.
Discover the art and skill of not only hearing, but understanding the feelings of others and the content of their messages. This half-day workshop helps people understand how their normal responses tend to poison relationships at work and at home. It helps people understand the magic of feedback in building trust.
Program Objective: Getting better results when working with other people by improving listening skills
Program Content:
- Four keys that open the door to listening
- How to "tune in" to the feelings of others
- The importance of giving full attention when listening
- How to show you are listening
- What to do to encourage others to talk
- Mirroring and reflecting techniques
- How to be assertive when you don't have time to listen--and then recover credibility by making time later
- What not to say when listening
- The magic of feedback
People Wise
Learning about people's basic behavioral styles helps leaders and teams communicate and work together better. Using the Professional Dynametrics System or DiSC, individuals learn to understand themselves and others, recognizing that differences between people need not cause conflict or misunderstandings. This program helps people learn how to adapt their communication to fit the styles of others, which improves individual and group results.
Success is a journey. It begins with self-awareness and an understanding of others. With this kind of knowledge, you can build better relationships and reduce conflicts at work and at home.
Millions of people throughout the world have used the Professional Dynametrics System or DiSC
build better and more productive communication and relationships. The
behavior-style learning approach has been used many years to help people learn about themselves and develop strategies for working more effectively with others.
Program Objective: Understand yourself and others to achieve better results working together
Program Content:
- Discovering your own strengths and growth areas
- Learning about strengths and growth areas of others
- How to cooperate and work effectively with people who behave differently than you
- How to lead people of diverse behavioral styles
- Valuing others who are different
- How to develop communication strategies for different people
- Reducing conflict and stress
- Improving customer relations
- Improving teamwork
Use Face-to-Face to Build Support for your Organization
Gain insights about how to change attitudes and behaviors using the magic of relationship building and word-of-mouth. Decades of behavioral science research show that about 10 percent of the group has a major impact on the opinions of others. Learn to harness the power of that 10 percent by creating a program of two-way, face-to-face communication designed to influence key leaders one at a time and build long-term relationships.
Decades of behavioral science research show that about 10 percent of the community has a major impact on the opinions of others. Learn to harness the power of that 10 percent by creating a program of two-way, face-to-face communication designed to influence key community leaders one at a time and build long-term relationships.
Building trust and gaining community support is accomplished by:
- Thorough planning
- Getting staff or member volunteers involved
- Continuous training and support for volunteers
- Each volunteer building relationships one-on-one with opinion leaders
Program Objective: Teach leaders to understand an effective and relatively inexpensive way to increase community understanding and support
Participants will learn:
- How to make personal communication an important overall strategy for organization success
- Diffusion process: a 60-year-old idea from behavioral science that is mostly unknown to organization leaders
- A step-by-step action plan for building community support
How to use board, staff and volunteers as community ambassadors for the organization
Conflict Management
Understand new concepts of conflict and discover how to communicate with others when feelings are tense. Boost your confidence and ability to handle stressful situations involving disagreement and difficult people. Gain tips on how to be more assertive and to disagree diplomatically.
This workshop gives people a new outlook on how to respond to conflicts - how to take action to resolve problems. It is well known that people can manage conflicts when they know specific coping skills. This program teaches people how to communicate to achieve a positive resolution to stressful situations.
Common assumptions about conflict make it difficult for individuals and organizations to solve problems. Here are typical assumptions:
- Harmony is normal - conflict is abnormal
- Conflict should be reduced/avoided, never escalated
- Conflict is caused by personality clashes that cannot be resolved
New views of conflict help people to realize conflict is a natural process, a normal part of all relationships. Conflict is healthy for relationships and organizations because it reveals areas that need work and adjustments.
Program Objective: Aid participants in understanding conflict and how to use listening and win-win negotiating skills to resolve problems
Program Content:
- Learn how negative attitudes toward conflict make it difficult to manage problems
- Recognize that conflict can be creative and bring positive growth to people and organizations
- Learn how to change the conditions that cause conflict
- Discover five different styles people use in response to conflict
- Understand your own conflict style responses and how to respond in new ways to reduce or resolve problems
- Four steps to good listening skills
- Win-win negotiation as a problem-solving skill
Stress Reduction
Stress can be good. It is distress that is harmful. Stress is not caused by what happens to us. Stress and distress are caused by our response to what happens to us. We can control how we think, and this workshop focuses on the incredible role that thinking plays in creation or reduction of distress.
The cost of stress to business is increasing dramatically. More than 20% of all workers compensation claims are related to stress. Payroll losses from stress-related absenteeism exceed $30 billion annually. Most stress management programs do not work, except temporarily. One program has been proven to work. The following results were documented in a three-year study of a $2 billion food wholesaler:
- 55% reduction in physical and psychological symptoms associated with stress--meaning healthier, happier, more productive employees
- Frequency of work days missed was reduced by 60%
- For every dollar invested in training, there was a return of $10.32
The one-and-a-half day SCOPE program (System for Creating Organizational and Personal Effectiveness) is based on an easy-to-use diagnostic system developed more than 25 years ago by psychologist J. Clayton Lafferty, Ph.D. The basis of the SCOPE program is the fact that tensions and anxiety are not caused by events, but by the way people choose to think about the events.
Program Objective: Reduce stress and related health care and absenteeism costs
Program Content:
- The vital role thinking plays in the cause and reduction of distress
- Understanding the psychological and physical impact of distress
- New action steps to take during stress for better outcomes
- The Stress Processing Report is used as a diagnostic tool to give people valuable insights into their individual thinking patterns and behavior. The profile allows people to pinpoint specific barriers that prevent them from functioning effectively and cause distress.
A 71-page Self Development Guide helps people better understand their strengths and weaknesses, then formulate personalized action plans for reducing and managing stress. Break-out sessions are a key element of the learning process. Participants work in groups of three during breakouts to provoke insights and self-understanding.
Meet the Media with Confidence
Learn the keys to success when dealing with news reporters. Find out how to use a proactive approach that helps to make you more confident and compelling when you are interviewed. Using a few simple techniques, you can become more effective in every interview.
Talking with reporters can be very stressful for people who are unprepared. The results of a bad interview can hurt an organization's image and credibility with its key audiences for a long time. This two-day workshop is designed to help executives, managers and key professionals to be well prepared for interviews on a variety of subjects. Each workshop is custom designed to meet the individual need of clients.
Audience: Staff who must talk with news people
Program Objective: Prepare executives and managers to be more successful when being interviewed by reporters
Participants will learn to:
- Know the needs of reporters and editorial slant of various media
- Prepare brief key points to make during an interview
- Use nonverbal techniques to emphasize key points
- Make key points even when the right questions are not asked
- Avoid technical words and jargon
- Communicate
Team-building
Some of the basic skills teams need to be more effective as a team are listening, understanding behavior styles, conflict response and management, meeting participation and problem solving.
Objective: Reduce stress and related health and absenteeism problems
Audience: All employees
Interpersonal communication skills are essential for improving teamwork. This team building workshop combines training in listening, conflict resolution, win-win negotiating, understanding diversity and problem solving to help people work together better. The workshop is customized to fits the needs of an organization.
Dialogue about the learning is an important part of the training follow-up. Training is conducted in 2-3 hour segments where people learn a basic skill. Then they use the new skill in the workplace for 2-3 weeks before talking about it with the rest of the group in a dialogue session. Additional reinforcement training is available if needed.
Team building is a continuous process, if it is to be effective. Training and reinforcement is continued until behaviors change and results improve.
Participants will learn:
- Listening skills and problem-solving skills
- Appreciation for the different ways that people get work done
- How to respond to conflict and manage it better
