Building Leadership Communication Skills

a program for

McAlinden programs build the communication skills Aon’s Strategic Advisory team needs to be seen as trusted advisors who recommend integrated, client-led solutions that draw on best practices from across the full human capital space.

This program will strengthen your ability to consistently:

• Lead effective meetings, presentations, and conversations

  • Prepare clear, concise, and compelling communications

  • Use presence to engage listeners and project credibility

  • Respond to questions with confident, focused answers

  • Approach — highly personalized experiential learning
    

• Simplify complex content and build commitment to action

  • Craft storylines that are easy to understand solutions to a client’s needs

  • Convince a range of stakeholders at a client with varied perspectives

  • Write well-structured, persuasive PowerPoint decks
    

• Manage projects to build more productive client relationships

  • Personalize content to make it relevant for specific stakeholders

  • Handle resistance, being put on the spot, and other challenging situations

  • Motivate people to think and act differently

The program is in two parts — Part One is three days and Part Two is two days. You will build your skills in highly interactive and practice-intensive sessions.

• Small working groups will ensure you have a very personalized experience. You will practice with two colleagues from Aon 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

• Each day, you will have one or two 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 Part One and provides an overview of those sessions.

Choose material

You will practice your own real communication situations. Pick two meetings or presentations that will happen after Part One and bring any slides or notes you may have. Piotr has suggested client pitches and report outs are a couple of good examples. If you have questions about the best material to practice, he has offered to discuss this with you directly.

Both 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 laptop to prepare content during the program and adjust it based on feedback.

The first situation you practice should be a presentation or meeting.

• 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.

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 / challenges about your presentation.

The second situation you practice should include complex content and / or be a controversial situation.

• Ideally it will be an interactive sales or project management meeting where you need to persuade.

• Don’t pick an easy situation. Think of a meeting where the other participants do not understand the issue being discussed or the solution you are proposing — or a meeting where some people prefer sticking with the status quo instead of your solution, or implementing a different solution.

• You can 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.

• You will need 3-10 minutes of content. If you want to practice more interaction, you will not get through as much content.

• Bring a draft PowerPoint deck, which can be a pre-read, a presentation, backup slides to answer difficult questions, or a summary to be sent afterwards.

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.

Part 1

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Session 5

Part 2

After several months of workplace application, Part 2 will reinforce the skills you gain in Part 1 and add new skills to further enhance your working relationships.

Questions?

Email us goals@mcalinden.com or call us +1 212 986 4950

About us

Visit our main website McAlinden Associates