High-Impact Communications
Regardless of your title, your role or your responsibilities, there’s one thing all leaders have in common: you are professional communicators. Whether in meetings, on calls, or staring into another Zoom session, you’re constantly communicating. Even when you’re not speaking—maybe especially when you’re not speaking—you’re communicating. So why not do it with impact? This series will show you how.
The Essential Triad
There are many different kinds of conversations for you to master, and many tools for communicating effectively. But they all have this basic Triad at their core: the essential connections between the audience you’re communicating with, the outcome you’re trying to achieve and the message you’re delivering. The first program in the HIC Series ensures you have a solid grounding before applying it in specific conditions.
You’ll learn…
how to identify and analyze your audience quickly and clearly,
how to craft a clear and measurable outcome, and
how to structure a message that dramatically improves your ability to achieve your outcome.
Inspire
In case you didn’t already know it, the pandemic is teaching all of us that people need to be inspired. They need encouragement. They need to see and feel that they are working toward a vision, a destination, a purpose. In this program, you’ll become the kind of communicator who can truly inspire.
You’ll learn…
how to connect daily tasks to a higher purpose, and
how to articulate that purpose in a way that is meaningful to your audience.
Persuade
You can always order people around. Or at least you can try. But in a world where people have more to do than time to do it, with multiple lines of matrixed authority and unclear priorities, ordering people around just doesn’t work anymore. Not only that, but when people are really with you—when they understand not just the what, but also the why—they will go beyond your expectations because they want to give their best. That happens when they are persuaded that what you want is also what’s right for them.
You’ll learn…
how to understand your audience’s interests, needs, fears and goals more deeply,
how to connect your people to your idea, and
how to move them to “yes.”
Deliver Bad News
Nobody loves being the bearer of bad news, but every leader has to do it from time to time. Most of them don’t do it very well, maybe because they want to soften the news, maybe because they don’t want to be the “bad guy,” or maybe because they don’t think their people can handle it.
You’ll learn…
how to make the message as simple and clear as possible,
how to balance supportiveness and honesty, and
how to move smoothly from bad news to next steps.
Difficult Conversations
Lots of conversations can be difficult, but in this session, we’re targeting a specific “genre” of tough conversations: the conversation that’s more than just feedback, more than just bad news. It’s the conversation where something’s really wrong, and it’s going to take two of you to work it out. It’s the kind that makes you feel a little sick; the kind that you’ve known you need to have for a long time, but have frankly been too scared to have. You know the one. (In fact, you’re probably thinking of one right now, aren’t you?)
You’ll learn…
how to prepare yourself for the conversation,
how to begin (usually the hardest part of all), and
how to work with your conversation partner to solve the situation together.
Presence
Even if you’ve mastered all these different types of conversations, without presence, without the ability to deliver your message and present yourself with assurance, clarity and warmth, all the other work is, at best, just part of the solution. Presence is learned. Presence is a skill you practice and master over time. And presence is something you cannot do without.
You’ll learn…
how to use your body to express your message in a way that is in harmony with the message itself,
how to manage your mindset to experience and express greater confidence, and
how to direct your energy to inspire others and yourself.