Building Leadership Communication Skills
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For over twenty-five 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 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
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
The program is divided into four parts — Parts One and Three will be in-person in Irvine, and Parts Two and Four will be on Zoom. 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 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 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. Later in the program, you will practice responding to questions / 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 the sessions in Part One
Session One
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 meeting or 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 Two
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 during 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.
Session Three
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 the coach.
Parts Two, Three, and Four
There will be three follow-up sessions over several months — two virtual and one in-person. Each follow-up will reinforce the skills from the previous sessions and add more advanced skills, including:
Adapting to different types of content, stakeholders, and situations
Managing interruption, challenge, and resistance
Structuring storylines for complex material and controversial situations
Motivating people to think and act differently
Communicating on short notice
Questions?
Email us goals@mcalinden.com or call us +1 212 986 4950
About us
Visit our main website McAlinden Associates