Leadership Communication Skills

Customized program for the Next Gen Finance & SCM Leaders Mentoring Program with Alex Barsk

For over twenty years, Yum has partnered with McAlinden Associates to help its leaders and high potential talent develop excellent communication skills. These skills are essential to being seen as a credible leader and trusted advisor, to building long-term productive relationships with internal and external stakeholders, and ultimately to career progression.

They are also important in day-to-day meetings — from convincing an executive to approve your proposal, to conducting a performance review or difficult conversation, to inspiring a team to accept change and commit to action.

This program will strengthen your ability to:

Prepare compelling, well-structured communications that capture people’s attention
Present and lead meetings with confidence

Experienced coaches from McAlinden Associates — who regularly work with leaders from a wide variety of companies around the world — will conduct this highly interactive and practice-intensive program.

Small working groups will ensure you have a very personalized experience. You will practice with two colleagues from Yum and an experienced coach from McAlinden
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
You will have several one-to-one coaching sessions, during which you will watch 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 to bring to the program

You will practice with your own real communication situation. Pick a meeting or presentation that will happen after the program to work with, and bring any slides or notes you may have.

The situation 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.

Your meeting or presentation can be to a group or individual.
Ideally it should get across a point of view or a recommendation, rather than simply inform.
You will present 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.

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.

Name

First Name

Last Name

Role

What would you like to improve about the way you prepare for in-person and remote meetings and presentations?

What would you like to improve about the way you conduct in-person and remote meetings and presentations?

Which types of interactions are most difficult for you?

What three skill areas would you like to improve during the program?

Tell us about the material you are bringing to practice — what is the topic and why is it important for you to practice?

Basic requirements above and session descriptions below

Overview of the sessions

Session 1

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.

Create compelling messages

You use our preparation tools to work on the presentation you plan to practice. You analyze your listeners and then create an outline with a clear opening, compelling messages, and an action-oriented close.

One-to-one coaching

You review the recording of your story privately with the coach.

Session 2

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 presentations & meetings

You present a ten-minute version of the material you prepared in Session 1. You practice and receive feedback on your ability to be persuasive and engaging. We record your presentation.

One-to-one coaching

You review the recording of your presentation privately with the 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