Leadership Communication Skills
for
This program will help you prepare and deliver effective communications for a broad range of situations:
Team talks and all hands calls
In-person and remote meetings
One-to-ones and difficult conversations
You will strengthen your ability to:
Create clear, concise, and compelling communications
Use presence and tailored messages to engage and influence listeners
Respond to questions with convincing and confident answers
This is a highly interactive and practice-intensive program:
The first session starts at 1 pm on Monday December 11th, and the last sessions ends at Noon on Wednesday December 13th.
You will always practice in a small working group — you, two of your colleagues, and an experienced coach — to ensure you have a very personalized experience and enough time to try different approaches. We don’t think there is one right way for everyone to communicate to all listeners. Instead, we will help you strengthen your skills while remaining true to your own personality.
After each practice, you will have a one-to-one coaching session, which will include watching recordings of your practice, so you get a clear picture of your strengths and areas for work, as well as concrete suggestions for how to improve.
The rest of this page explains how to prepare for the program and provides an overview of the sessions.
Choose material
You will practice with your own real communication situations, so bring in the content for two meetings that will happen after the program.
The situations you practice should be important to you because you will improve the content as well as your skills.
Do not script yourself or over-prepare. You can bring work-in-progress. You will use your computer to prepare content during the program and adjust it based on feedback.
The first situation you practice should be a talk or all hands.
Ideally it should get across a point of view or a recommendation, rather than simply inform.
You will talk through up to ten-minutes of content. If the actual material is longer, you can condense it before the program or during the preparation period.
You have the option to use four or five slides. You can bring draft slides / work-in-progress.
You will be asked to try different approaches to the messages and structure of the content.
At first, you will not practice taking questions or challenges, even if the real meeting will be interactive. Later in the program, you will practice responding to questions and challenges about your topic.
The second situation you practice will bring together many of the skills you have built through the program, so it can be almost any kind of verbal communication, but popular choices are interactive meetings and difficult one-to-one discussions.
You will need 3-10 minutes of content. If you want to practice more interaction, you will not get through as much content.
You have the option to use a few slides.
You can use the second situation to practice responding to challenges, interruptions, and difficult personalities, if any of those dynamics might be part of your real meeting, or you want to build those skills.
Tell us who you are and what your goals are
If you would like to use a self-evaluation to think about your skills before answering these questions, click here. Many people also seek input from a few colleagues whose opinions they value.
Overview of the sessions
Day 1 afternoon
Opening
Discuss the challenging communication situations you face and link the agenda to them.
Set goals
You set personal goals within our intellectual, emotional, and physical communication skills framework.
Increase presence
You practice telling a brief story — expanding your use of eye contact, voice and body language — to increase your presence, confidence and impact. We record your story. Together, we begin the process of giving and receiving feedback.
One-to-one coaching
You review the recording of your story privately with your coach.
Create compelling messages
You use our preparation tools to work on the first talk, all hands or meeting you plan to practice. You analyze your listeners and then create an outline with a clear opening, compelling messages, and an action-oriented close.
Day 2 morning
Discuss visuals
Visual aids can be powerful tools to support your messages, but they also can draw you into low-level details and make some listeners disengage. We discuss some simple techniques to design and use them well.
Deliver engaging talks, all hands, and meetings
You present a ten-minute version of the material you prepared during the previous session. You practice and receive feedback on your ability to be persuasive and engaging. We record you.
One-to-one coaching
You review the recording of your talk, all hands, or meeting privately with your coach.
Day 2 afternoon
Concise executive summaries
You practice delivering the same material as a 2-3 minute executive summary, without visuals, to strengthen your ability to be concise and get across a memorable message. We record your executive summary.
Answer questions confidently
You practice answering questions and responding to challenges on your executive summary — with credibility, confidence and empathy. We record your Q&A practice.
One-to-one coaching
You review the recording of your executive summary and responses privately with your coach.
Day 3 morning
Lead productive meetings & discussions
You role-play a second situation — usually an interactive meeting or a difficult one-to-one discussion — that will happen soon. You continue to build your skills, adapt them to a different environment, and walk away with specific ideas that will contribute to the success of that situation. We record your role play.
One-to-one coaching
You review the recording of your role play privately with your coach.
Plan actions
You identify a few meetings over the next couple of weeks and plan the skills you will apply in each one to increase your chances of success.
Questions?
Email us goals@mcalinden.com or call us +1 212 986 4950
About us
Visit our main website McAlinden Associates