Communication Skills Workshop

for

 
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Objectives

This program 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

Participants in previous programs for The Trevor Project have said:

“This program has given me skills that will help me handle meetings and public speaking events more effectively, as well as stepping into leadership roles.”

“I will leverage these skills (especially eye contact, pauses, how to answer questions) in all my conversations going forward!”

“Leading with a message, prep, and implementing feedback…gave me more credibility to improve my impact”

“It will help me in presenting my creative concepts to a variety of stakeholders and having difficult feedback conversations.”

How does it work?

You will build these skills in a couple of highly interactive and practice-intensive sessions.

  • You will attend two Zoom sessions with two colleagues from The Trevor Project and an experienced coach from McAlinden. As soon as your group has been scheduled, you will receive a calendar invite to hold those times. You will receive a Zoom link a day or two before the session.

  • Each session will be four hours, divided into practice time, one-to-one coaching, preparation periods, and short breaks.

  • During the one-to-ones, 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 small working groups will ensure you have a very personalized experience. 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.

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 3-5 minutes of your own real material, so either pick:

  • An upcoming meeting or presentation

  • A conversation where you explain the overall Trevor story and your role in it

If you have several upcoming meetings to choose from, pick one that is important to you, is likely to be a challenge, or one where you think trying a new approach might result in a better outcome. This is an opportunity to get your colleagues’ and coach’s suggestions to improve the content as well as your skills. Internal meetings and external meetings work equally well.

If you are going to work with the overall Trevor story, choose a specific person or type of person you would be speaking to and what you might want them to do afterwards:

  • Are they a potential corporate sponsor or individual donor who might contribute?

  • Are they a journalist who might write a story about Trevor?

  • Are they an influencer or politician who might support an advocacy campaign?

  • Are they someone you would like to encourage to apply for a job at Trevor?

We encourage you to bring work-in-progress. You will use your computer to prepare content during the program and adjust it based on feedback. Do not script yourself or over-prepare.

If the actual material is longer than 5 minutes, you can condense it before the program or during the preparation period. You have the option to use a few slides, but they are not required. Draft slides are okay.

You will be asked to try different approaches to the messages and structure of the content, so join the session ready to experiment.

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

Session 1

Opening

We start with a brief discussion of the challenging communication situations you and your colleagues face. Then we talk through a high-level agenda.

 

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, presentation, or conversation you plan to practice. You analyze your listener(s) and then create an outline with a clear opening, compelling messages, and an action-oriented close. You talk through your preparation and get feedback from your colleagues and coach to improve it.

 

One-to-one coaching

You review the recording of your brief story privately with your 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 — particularly in remote meetings. We discuss some simple techniques to design and use them well.

 

Engage your listeners &
answer questions

You practice your meeting, presentation, or conversation — talking through 3-5 minutes of the material you prepared in the first session — and answer questions about it. You receive feedback and try different approaches to the material and your skills on the spot. We record your practice.

 

One-to-one coaching

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

 

Questions?

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

About us

Visit our main website McAlinden Associates