Building Leadership Communication Skills

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This program will help you prepare and deliver effective communications for a broad range of situations.

• In-person and remote meetings and presentations

• Calls, one-to-ones, and difficult conversations

• Town halls, webinars, and other public speaking opportunities

The program is divided into three parts:

• Part One will be conducted at the Brinker Restaurant Support Center on November 12-13 and 13-14. Please check your calendar and contact Lima.Akid@Brinker.com if you do not see your assigned sessions on one of those sets of dates.

• Part Two will be a half-day on Zoom. You will attend one morning or afternoon during December 16-19. Groups are to be determined. Please indicate your availability on this form.

• Part Three will be conducted at the Brinker Restaurant Support Center. You will attend four half-day sessions during February 3-6. Groups are to be determined.

During Part One, 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

During Part Two, you will reinforce the skills from Part One after application at work and add skills to:

• Lead productive meetings

• Adapt to different content & stakeholders

• Manage interruption & challenge

During Part Three, you will reinforce the skills from Parts One and Two after application at work and add skills to:

• Simplify complex and controversial material

• Write well-structured decks and reports

• Persuade and build commitment to action

This program focuses on skills you need for your current role and helps prepare you for future growth. These are valuable skills that will help you communicate more effectively to audiences at every level, whether you’re dedicated to a brand team or support the whole enterprise.

The skills this program builds 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.

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 and an experienced coach from McAlinden

• Your coaches 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

You will practice with your own real communication situation. Pick a meeting or presentation that will happen after the program 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. If you have questions about the best topic to pick, please discuss it with your manager and/or ELT Member.

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 situation you practice should be a meeting or presentation 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.

At first, you will not practice taking questions or challenges, even if the real meeting will be interactive. On the second day, you will practice responding to questions and challenges about your presentation.

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 Part One

Session One – the first half-day

Session Two – the second half-day

Session Three – the third half-day

Questions?

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

About us

Visit our main website McAlinden Associates