Presentation Skills

Standard course duration: 16 hours

A great presenter has two unique qualities: appropriate skills and personal confidence. This confidence comes from knowing what you want to say and being comfortable with your communication skills. In this course, participants will master the skills that will make them better speakers and presenters. It’s like preparing every detail of a party. You are prepared and it’s going to be a smashing success!

Learning Objectives:

  • Identify ways to gain rapport with your audience
  • Learn techniques to reduce nervousness and fear
  • Recognize how visual aids can create impact and attention
  • Develop techniques to create a professional presence
  • Use and practice techniques to really prepare

Upon completion of this course participants will have mastered the skills that will make them better speakers and presenters.

Effective Communication Skills

Standard course duration: 16 hours

Communication is often identified as a critical improvement area, and one that is difficult to address because it is such a broad topic. Effective communication is a necessary skill for anyone who must get work done with and through peers and subordinates, and who must share information both upward and downward within the organization. The objective of this course is to provide a thorough understanding of the challenges in sending and receiving messages through participation in role-playing, practical examples and self-assessment.

The course begins with “Ten Principles of Compelling Communication”, presented in a “learn and practice” format. The second topic continues with the same approach to “Seven Communication Competencies”; Empathizing, Receiving the Message, Clarifying, Understanding, “Reading” Non- Verbal Cues, Giving and Receiving Feedback, and Transmitting Your Message. The course ties the lessons learned in the first two topics together in the final topic “Communication Situations”. Ten common business scenarios demanding effective communication are discussed, role-played and reviewed.

Upon completion of the course, participants will have learned and practiced communication skills in typical, sometimes demanding, work situations and will be better prepared to deal effectively with their own communication situations.

Negotiation Skills to Influence

Standard course duration: 8 hours

This course will help you to achieve new personal and professional goals. Negotiating is a fundamental fact of life. Whether you are working on a project or fulfilling normal duties, this course will provide you with a basic comfort level to negotiate with both internal and external clients, customers, suppliers, and others. This interactive workshop includes techniques to promote effective communications, emphasizes problem-solving, and gives you techniques for turning face- to-face confrontation into side-by-side problem solving.

How would you define negotiation? How many times would you guess you negotiate every day with family, friends, colleagues or customers? Are you frequently unsatisfied with the results of your negotiations? When you have scored a negotiating “win” do you sometimes sense that your personal or professional relationship with the other party has been negatively affected?

The objective of the course is to provide an opportunity to develop the skills necessary to be an effective negotiator. The course takes an interactive approach, using participant experience and situations to discuss and assess different negotiating strategies. Practical exercises are included in the course to demonstrate techniques and how they can be effectively used.

Course content includes:

  • What is negotiation?
  • Types of negotiation
  • The negotiation process
  • Human aspects of negotiation
  • My personal tool box

Upon completion of the course, participants will have learned and practiced the skills needed to influence clients, customers, suppliers, and others through successful negotiation and will be prepared to further develop learned skills through practice in their individual work situations.

Better Business Writing

Standard course duration: 8-16 hours

The course consists of 4 modules:

Module 1: Business Writing Basics

This module focuses on the building blocks of clear and readable business writing. Through explanations, discussions and practice activities, participants develop their understanding of grammar, mechanics, and usage as related to business writing. Topics include the following:

  • Proofreading
  • Sentence construction
  • Mechanics: capitalization and punctuation
  • Word choice (homonyms)
  • Concise wording
  • Pronoun use (avoiding sexist language) and other grammar tips

Upon completion of this module, participants will be able to communicate in writing more clearly and correctly, thus reducing confusion and enhancing the image of the organization.

Module 2: Business Writing Beyond the Basics

Targeting the needs of writers who have already mastered the fundamentals of business writing, this module introduces some important aspects of writing style that will lead to improved clarity, precision, and persuasiveness in business documents. Topics include the following:

  • Advanced sentence structure, including parallel construction
  • Advanced punctuation, including colons, semi-colons, and hyphens
  • Active vs. passive voice
  • Clear pronoun reference
  • Correct placement of modifiers
  • Word choice and concise phrasing
  • Coherence: interconnecting sentences within paragraphs and paragraphs within a document

Upon completion of this module, participants will develop writing skills that are essential to management communications as well as correspondence with external customers or partners.

Module 3: Effective E-mail

This segment promotes an easy-to-read, easy-to-write approach to business e-mail, with emphasis on getting to the point, providing the appropriate level of detail, and formatting. In addition, the module will target these skill sets:

  • E-mail etiquette and other practical concerns
  • E-mail conventions: subject heading, salutation, closing, and format
  • Tips on paragraphs, bullet lists, and sub-headings
  • Appropriate tone and level of formality
  • Editing for clarity, conciseness, and correctness
  • Using templates to save time and energy

Participants will be encouraged to share concerns about e-mail writing and to apply newly-learned skills in several brief e-mail memos that will receive feedback during class. This module will enable learners to improve the clarity and professionalism of their e-mail communication.

Module 4: Reports, Proposals, and Presentation Slides

For staff members who are responsible for creating presentation slides or documents more formal than e-mail, this is the module of choice. Participants will get pointers and practice in preparing documents such as reports, proposals, problem-resolution memos, and presentation slides. Some topics to be covered include the following:

  • The writer’s objective: defining your purpose
  • Audience analysis: determining what information is necessary and how it should be presented
  • Organization: blocking information and using sub-headings

Participants will be encouraged to pose questions and suggest solutions to everyday writing problems. In addition, writing practice and feedback will be incorporated into this module. Participants can expect to come away from this training with the ability to produce documents more quickly, easily, and effectively.

Writing Effective Email

Standard course duration: 4 hours

In many businesses, communication is identified as a critical improvement area, and in today’s business environment, a primary form of business communication is email. The objective of this course is to engage participants in a practical look at how email is used in their own environment, the plusses and the minuses, and then provide techniques and guidelines for writing email that is both effective and efficient.

The course starts with the basics of types and purposes of email, when email is the right choice and when it is inappropriate, a discussion of sender/receiver psychology, and some cautions regarding privacy. The balance of the course is “How to”: a series of short topics from Subject line, to Greeting and Closings, to Keeping the Message Focused, Structuring Content , Specifying the Desired Response and Proofreading. A final thought on what it takes to be a good correspondent completes the content. Examples are provided throughout and class participation using company examples is encouraged.

Upon completion of the course, participants will have learned and practiced their email skills, relating the skills and techniques taught to specific email problems/challenges that they have identified. Participants will be better prepared to communicate effectively with email within the rules or guidelines established within their organization.