Training

Communication Skills

• Communicating Effectively with Impact
• Presentation Skills
• Getting Results Through Effective Listening
• Impromptu Speaking
• Designing Presentations with Impact
• Communication Skills for Leaders
• Strategic Management Communication
• Making Email Matter

Work Management Skills

• Time Management
  ~ Additional Modules Available: Delegation, Prioritization Plus, Time Management – The Conversation
• Maximizing Your Meetings
• How to Network Powerfully
• Stepping Up to Accountability

Professional Skills

• Conflict Management
• Making and Managing Agreements
• Fundamentals of Customer Service
  ~ Additional Module Available: Service Recovery
• Negotiating with Confidence
• Influencing Without Authority
• Emotional Intelligence
• Making Better Decisions
• Creative Thinking and Problem Solving
• Preparing and Presenting Solutions (Finding and Communicating Effective Problem Resolution)

Team Skills

• Working With Different Behavior Styles Using DiSC or PACE
• Building Our Strengths with StrengthsFinder 2.0
• Developing Effective Working Relationships – Managing Up, Down and Laterally
• Team Development Session

Performance Management

• Goal Setting
• Writing and Delivering Effective Performance Appraisals
• Fundamentals of Feedback
• Delivering Difficult Performance Feedback

Additional Management Skills

• So You’re A Manager Now?
• Coaching for Development
• Interviewing Skills
• Strategic Thinking
• Recognize and Reward Staff for Peak Performance 

• Analyze the audience and use the information to best structure their content
• Use a simple speaking structure to effectively answer impromptu questions
• Improve posture, hand gestures and facial expressions to better accentuate their message
• Avoid fillers like “um” and replace them with stronger vocal techniques
• Handle nervousness about speaking by turning it into positive energy

• Prepare and organize a presentation for maximum effectiveness
• Use strong non-verbal techniques to enhance delivery
• Turn nervousness into positive energy
• Analyze, involve and adapt to any type of audience
• Handle any type of question or objection

Notes:  Videotaping option is available and recommended; course is often followed up with one-on-one coaching 

• Learn how to use strong body language and vocalizations as part of listening
• Take an in-depth look at the skill of reflecting to understand what it is, how to do it and why it is helpful
• Identify ineffective listening behaviors and how to avoid them
• See how to apply these effective listening skills to achieve better results in any conversation 

• Learn an easy model for impromptu speaking that they can apply in any situation
• See how mastering body language and tone of voice is half the battle
• Practice impromptu speaking in three key situations:
  ~ Speaking without preparation
  ~ Responding to questions
  ~ Dealing with pushback 

• Clarify the goal of their presentation
• Assess the needs of their audience in advance
• Craft a powerful opening and memorable close
• Determine their main points for impact and weave these together using persuasive language and relevant examples
• Create effective PowerPoint slides 

• The business case for effective communication
• Non-verbal factors of executive presence
• A model for leader messaging
• Communicating persuasively
• Answering questions and delivering bad news
• Dealing with pushback
• Special challenges for leadership communication 

• Think strategically for your team and effectively present your ideas
• Work successfully with and motivate employees with different styles and needs
• Communicate tough messages to the team
• Facilitate meetings to achieve goals
• Manage conflict between employees
• Onboard employees so they can hit the ground running 

• Decide when to use email to communicate (and when not to)
• Look for common email mistakes and how to avoid them
• Format emails to increase chances they are read and responded to appropriately
• Deal with a perceived negative tone in email
• Review and decide on best practices for email replies
• Manage email overload 

• Establish the link between goal setting and successful time management
• Discover where your time goes
• Explore the “5 Phases of Mastering Workflow”
• Receive tools and tips on how to get organized and set priorities
• Learn how to handle distractions and avoid procrastination

Notes:
Delegation module can be added for manager population and/or run separately;
Prioritization module can also be taught separately;
Time Management: The Conversation is available to focus on communications around time 

• Prepare for a meeting in advance by setting clear objectives, agendas and logistics
• Effectively open and close the meeting
• Encourage participation and at the same time keep people on topic
• Deal with difficult or disruptive behaviors

• Examine the top challenges to powerful networking (in general, and specifically at Columbia)
• Explore best practice techniques and create goals to address these networking challenges
• Learn key concepts for structuring your “elevator pitch” designed to be used in powerful networking
• Create and practice delivering your elevator pitches

• Participate successfully in the cycle of accountability of responsibility, empowerment and answerability
• Increase the chances of accountability success through clear agreements
• Handle specific challenges to accountability, including procrastination, defensiveness and the fear of failure
• Make an accountability plan for a real issue in their world 

• Understand what difficult situations are, where they come from and why they are important to manage
• Be able to use the two main skills in managing difficult situations: empathy and assertiveness
• Learn different conflict management styles and be able to adapt your style based on the situation
• Learn a process for handling difficult situations using collaboration 

• Establish clear agreements with anyone from employees to team members to customers
• Follow up on agreements in ways that increase commitment and results
• Appropriately recognize fulfilled agreements
• Firmly and fairly confront broken agreements with the goal of recommitment 

• Identify customers’ needs and set expectations
• Make customers feel good, even when the answer to a request is “no”
• Address problems and handle difficult customers
• Turn regular customers into long-term fans

Note:  Service Recovery module can be added and/or run separately 

• Increase awareness of negotiation dynamics and why usual methods often fail
• Learn and practice a systematic framework for preparing for and conducting effective negotiations
• Identify common difficult tactics in negotiations and discuss how to deal with them 

• The law of reciprocity and how it forms the basis of all successful influence
• When to influence and how to overcome barriers to success
• The model of ‘Influencing Without Authority’ and how to be effective in its 6 elements; emphasis will be placed on learning how to:
  ~ Diagnose the other person’s world
  ~ Identify relevant currencies
  ~ Conduct influence through exchange 

• Define emotional intelligence (EI) and how it links with ‘regular’ intelligence
• Break down EI into usable skills
• Use emotional intelligence to better:
  ~ Read and interact with others
  ~ Manage difficult situations 

• Define decision making – what it is, how it is usually done and problems with the typical method
• Learn a model for strategic decision making
• Identify specific techniques that result in making better decisions
• Make a plan for applying strategic decision making to a real decision 

• Learn the benefits of creative thinking and what gets in the way
• Understand a simple model of creative thinking
• Practice the key technique of brainstorming and apply it to solving problems or disputes
• Expand the application of creativity in the workplace 

• Utilize effective communication skills to uncover issues and target delivery to the audience
• Breakthrough road blocks that hold back effective problem solving
• Utilize problem solving models to effectively extract, propose, and act on solutions
• Reduce inefficiency by acting on well thought out solutions
• Learn skills to solicit information, influence others and propose solutions in order to get buy in 

• Learn more about themselves and others by exploring different behavior styles
• Increase effectiveness of communications and work interactions by learning how to adapt to different styles
• Discuss how to work well with other styles and to understand the need for all four styles on a team
• Examine how different styles play out in teams 

• Understand the business case behind learning about and building on strengths
• Learn the key traits of each strength
• Identify their unique strengths and plan how to develop them
• Identify how to how to leverage their strengths for higher team performance 

• Complete an analysis of working relationships, analyzing needs and interests of each
• Learn the key skills for managing relationships from three perspectives: understanding the other side, understanding your own perspective and charting a path between the two
• Apply these skills to specific application areas such as making agreements, saying no and giving feedback
• Practice skills on real world case studies, with a focus on managing up where appropriate 

• Learn the definition of a team and how it differs from a group
• Explore the benefits and risks of working as a team
• Learn the 4 stages of team development and where their team currently falls
• Experience a team assessment to highlight key areas of strength and challenges
• Examine a chosen aspect of team dynamics and work to improve in that area (options include: team decision making, problem solving, visioning, branding or communication) 

• Understand the role of goal setting in the performance management process
• Learn tips and tools for setting effective goals
• Practice setting meaningful goals for yourself and your employees (if applicable) 

• Understand the big picture of performance management – what it is and why we need it
• Learn how to write effective performance reviews including:
  ~ Completing effective ratings
  ~ Crafting impactful comments
  ~ Compiling all data for an accurate overall message
• Learn how to deliver effective performance reviews including:
  ~ Preparing for the meeting
  ~ Using a painless feedback model
  ~ Delivering difficult feedback
  ~ Closing the meeting and going forward 

• How feedback fits into the broader picture of performance management
• The key concepts of feedback – what it is, why we need it and mistakes to avoid
• Specific tips and tools on how to prepare, deliver and follow up on feedback
• How to handle different feedback situations 

• Review a roadmap for the difficult feedback meeting
• Recognize mistakes to avoid when delivering difficult feedback
• Gain an easy model to follow when writing and delivering the tough messages
• Learn how to handle defensive reactions
• Learn how to follow up the feedback to make sure behavior change is maintained  

• The role of the manager and how it differs from a leader
• The first 90 days – what to do and not do
• Learning and adapting your management style
• The manager toolkit – skills and behaviors for success in your new world 

• The role of the manager as coach and the benefits/risks of the coaching process
• What needs to be done before coaching begins
• Four key skills for coaching, including: listening, setting objectives, giving feedback and the “cheerleader” skills
• The GROW model as a roadmap for the coaching meeting  

• The importance of effective interviewing
• Competencies – what they are and why we interview to find them
• Creating the Job/Candidate Profile
• Interview Road Maps: a) the big picture process and b) the interview meeting
• Questions menu for interviewers
• Keeping it legal
• Making the decision
• The biggest mistakes and how to avoid them 

• Defining what strategic thinking really is
• Identifying key behaviors of strategic thinking
• Making clear differentiations between strategic and tactical thinking
• Examining the tools for strategic thinking with a special emphasis on SWOT analyses
• Applying a SWOT analysis to a current issue for the group 

• Defining incentives and why they matter
• Making the links between rewards, recognition and motivation
• Identifying different types of incentives (it’s not all about money!) and which are best for your people/teams
• Avoiding the main traps of ineffective reward programs
• Discussing the special case of the disengaged employee