Effective communication skills are critical for gaining recognition in the workplace, building strong work relationships, and achieving a high level of success.  This session will provide you with practical strategies that can be adapted to a variety of situations in the workplace to inform and influence others.

Learn How-to: 

• Gain recognition by showing managerial effectiveness, leadership, and creativity
•  Create new organizational opportunities
•  Break down the barriers between team cooperation and organizational effectiveness
•  Reduce frustration by building cooperation between groups
•  Enhance productivity by gaining support and commitment
•  Build productive workplace relationships

You Will Benefit By: 

• Acquiring confidence, self-esteem, and self-concept to project a positive external image
•  Creating messages that address listeners’ needs, wants, and priorities
•  Using listening skills to create high impact messages
•  Communicating ideas in terms listeners care about
•  Adapting messages to others’ communication and learning styles
•  Shaping others’ responses using direct and indirect messages

Who Should Attend:
Those who want to build the communication skills that encourage dialogue throughout the organization and among different departments and levels.

Whether we are facing long-standing problems or new, unexpected ones, we can sometimes benefit from combining a practical, analytical approach with the use of a whole-brain, creative lens through which to view the situation and the circumstances surrounding it.

It often helps to look at a situation using a variety of problem-solving tools, whether you are dealing with an emerging crisis or considering long-term process improvements. In this highly interactive session, which includes small group practice exercises, you will learn:

• How to tap into the creative thinking abilities you and your team already have
• Which steps to take when you are faced with a new or recurring problem
• What tools you can use to help find the real problem and generate potential solutions
• How to assess a potential solution for effectiveness and risk

Good intentions are not enough to solve significant business and strategic problems. Wanting to solve a problem must be combined with specific skills for analysis and a confidence to know when to take action. In this session you will learn a common-sense approach to solving problems that will help you see things from a different angle whether you are dealing with an urgent crisis situation or considering long-term process improvements. In this session, you will learn:

• How to tap into the creative thinking abilities you already have.
• What steps to take when you are faced with a problem.
• What tools you can use to help find the real problem.
• How to decide what solution to implement.
  

Whether we are dealing with an underperforming employee, negotiating with a difficult client, or simply saying "no", we attempt or avoid difficult conversations every day.  This workshop walks you through a step-by-step approach for how to have your toughest conversations with less stress and more success. The approach is based on 15 years of research at the Harvard Negotiation Project.

 You'll learn how to:

• Sort out the three conversations present in any difficult conversation
  • The "What Happened?" Conversation
  • The Feelings Conversation
  • The Identity Conversation
   
• Practice a difficult conversation you need to have a with a workshop partner

Even the best communicators can use a brush-up on stylistic and grammatical guidelines. Fine-tune your knowledge of standard business English; learn key strategies to effectively communicate with clarity, conciseness and professionalism, and reduce embarrassing errors and miscommunications as you master the art of simplicity in this interactive workshop.

Practice exercises will help you to:

• Construct sentences of appropriate length and clarity
• Avoid common grammatical, usage and stylistic errors
• Eliminate excess verbiage, awkward phrasing, and redundancies
• Learn techniques for proofing, editing, and checking for tone
• Use punctuation marks accurately every time

Studies indicate that, even among professional communicators, many conversations and emails are necessary to avoid and/or correct miscommunications. This workshop provides participants with tools to minimize the time we spend in ineffective conversations, emails and reports.

Attendees will learn to:

• Identify our basic communication styles and those of colleagues and customers
• Recognize the perceptions and filters we use that cloud or bias communication
• Prevent emotions from causing lapses in professional interactions
• Understand the importance in active listening techniques in conversation
• Respond assertively without retreating into passivity or escalating conflict

Email allows us to work more productively by providing an effective and quick way to communicate, but email also creates a constant source of interruption and distraction, often with useless or non-critical pieces of information.  The key to getting the most from email is to develop a system that helps you stay on top of tasks properly and also filters out the non-important items that may provide frequent distractions.

Learn How-to: 

• Cut info/email overload by 20% and save 15 days a year
•  Write clear, concise, legally appropriate email
•  When to use email, voicemail, IM, or blog, etc.
•  Reduce inbox clutter, stress, and liability
•  Effectively share best practices with colleagues

You Will Benefit By: 

• Learning five critical information secrets for storing electronic and hard copy documents
•  Learning to better label and prioritize email for rapid retrieval
•  Receiving technology tips that speed access to your information
•  Learning to store URLs and passwords more effectively
•  Developing techniques for storing team information on a shared storage site

Who Should Attend:
Email users who want to dramatically boost email quality while cutting their email processing time by 20%.

 

Covers common barriers to meeting effectiveness, as well as guidelines to maximizing five stages of the meeting process:

 

• Planning - developing an agenda, determining who will attend, etc.
• Opening - starting, ground rules, gate keeping
• Facilitating - techniques for dealing with conflict, impasse, problem- solving, decision-making
• Focusing - minimizing tangential distractions, tabling items for future meetings
• Concluding - reviewing decisions, assigning roles/tasks, gaining consensus

Good intentions are not enough to solve significant and business and strategic problems. Wanting to solve a problem must be combined with specific skills for analysis and a confidence to know when to take action. This common-sense approach to solving problems will help you see things from a different angle whether you are dealing with an urgent crisis situation or considering long-term process improvements. Hands-on demonstrations of techniques will help you clarify problems, identify causes, generate solutions, and make decisions.

You will learn:

• How to tap into the creative thinking abilities you already have
• How to encourage creative thinking in your team
• Valuable tips on keeping your cool in a crisis
• Dealing with stalemates
• Reaching consensus

hich House of Hogwarts would you be sorted into?  Are you an Artisan, Guardian, Idealist or Rational?  Did you know that the lay-out of Disney World actually appeals to different type preferences?  These questions and others will be answered in this third part of the MBTI Workshop Series.  In this session, we will look at type preference as characterized by Temperaments.  This fun and educational session offers a more simplistic approach to understanding type preference and how it can be seen in everyday life.  Type preference and their impact on career choices will also be covered as an added bonus.

This session is designed for individuals who have already completed the first two parts of the MBTI Workshop Series OR have completed a similar course in the past and know their MBTI type preference.

Do you gravitate towards certain people or tasks, find interest in certain jobs or activities but just can't put your finger on why?  In this introductory session of a multi-part workshop series, you will learn how the use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator© (MBTI) can help you answer these questions and open the door for an increased self-understanding of what makes you tick, and you might just have a little fun along the way.

*Future sessions will take these concepts and apply them to other aspects of your professional and personal life including communication, ethics, time management, stress management, and learning styles, just to name a few.  This session is designed for individuals who have never taken the MBTI assessment or for ones that have taken it in the past and are either not sure of their type preference or would like to take it again for a refresher.

Gain confidence in participating in or leading meetings and learn how to strengthen your presentation style.

• How to build rapport
• Dynamic delivery
• Posture and gestures
• Movement and energy
• Your purpose
• Deliver for your audience
• How to structure your presentation
• Design a strong opening

This interactive workshop is appropriate for presenters, speakers, and trainers who wish to learn and/or review techniques for giving talks that establish rapport with the audience and effectively communicate information in an engaging, professional manner. Topics covered include:

• Self-Evaluation: four stages of speaker readiness
• Dealing with anxiety through preparation and stress management
• Knowing your audience: assessing needs, values, and restraints
• Image components: effective speaker behaviors
• Optimal use of audio-visuals - general tips for placement
• Verbal, Vocal, and Visual aspects of speaker presence
• Dealing with questions from an audience

More and more associates, managers and executives are expected to deliver presentations. And in order to advance in your organization, speaking and presenting is a must. In this course, you will learn the "insider" tricks-of-the-trade necessary to make winning presentations! Whether you have a fear of speaking in public or you just want to fine-tune your presentation skills…this class is for you!

This interactive workshop will provide participants with valuable tips on how to: 

• Overcome anxiety
• Organize and develop an outline
• Communicate effectively as presenters
• Make use of audio-visual equipment
• Deal with questions from an audience
  

Often times the most difficult part about solving problems is identifying the problem.  This class examines ways to identify problems and provides methods to solve problems.  Individuals are encouraged to use both logical and creative problem solving techniques.  Activities focus on when and how to use different methods.

Learn how to enhance your social media on Facebook and twitter. Get your message out for free by texting students. Come up with creative advertising ideas to increase your attendance and lower your cost per student without needing an increased budget!

Learning Outcomes:  

• Enhance your social media skills
• Develop creative ways to advertise
• Increase your attendance at events
   

In today’s workplace environment, productive collaboration calls for employees to excel in communicating, planning, organizing, negotiating, and participating in decision making with their peers and their bosses. This seminar will provide strategic skills for employees at all stages of their careers in successfully partnering with their bosses. After participating in this seminar, you will be better equipped to support your organization’s/boss’s goals, adapt to various communication styles to successfully influence and work with your boss and others, establish trust, credibility, and authority.

What You Will Cover 

• Defining Your Strategic Partnership - Identify the characteristics of effective partnering and use these features to create a positive partnership
• Developing a Trusting Relationship with Your Boss - Adapt methods to complement your boss’s preferences by completing a self-evaluation exercise and creating a blueprint for change
• Planning Skills to Anticipate and Proactively Support Your Boss - Choose and apply the active listening skills that will allow you to anticipate your boss’s needs by completing a communication assessment and enacting a listening skills role play
• Extending the Partnership - Define and integrate your personal power bases by revisiting trust and by completing a “power-base planner”
• Aligning and Expanding Your Partnering Relationship - Use influencing and persuasive communication skills in planning and delivering a business case presentation

How You Will benefit 

• Consistently anticipate your boss’s needs
• Gain the respect of your boss and be taken seriously
• Get what you need from others to accomplish your job and achieve your boss’s goals
• Have the authority to make and act on decisions
• Confidently represent your boss
• Be seen by your boss and by others as a valuable professional resource
• Develop a trusting relationship with your boss
• Partner with multiple bosses and other office professionals\Effectively use time and get more things done in a day