Developing Persuasive Communications
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This program will strengthen your executive leadership communication skills 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
We will help you build skills to:
Create clear, concise, and compelling communications
Storyline complex and controversial material
Convince people and build commitment to action
Write well-structured decks and reports
Use presence and tailored messages to engage and influence listeners
Respond to questions with convincing and confident answers
The rest of this page explains how to prepare for the program and provides an overview of the sessions.
Choose material
You will practice your own real communication situations. Pick three meetings or presentations that will happen after the program to work with. Bring any slides or notes you may have.
The situations 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 computer to prepare content during the program and adjust it based on feedback.
The first situation you practice should be a presentation.
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 can be almost any kind of verbal communication, but popular choices are interactive meetings and difficult one-to-one discussions.
You will need 3-10 minutes of content. If you want to practice more interaction, you will not get through as much content.
You have the option to use a few slides.
You can use the second situation to 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.
The third situation should be a meeting that involves some degree of complexity — for example, the topic might be difficult to explain, there might be very different points of view on it, or both the content and the people make it complex. We will introduce a practical and creative way to structure your material and test the strength of your storyline. You will apply our preparation tools to your material and then role play the meeting. Here are a few examples that often work well:
A meeting where the other participants do not understand the issue being discussed, they have decided there are different reasons for a problem or solutions to it, or there is not consensus about the importance, urgency or risks involved
A meeting where you are likely to face skepticism, active resistance, or passive resistance
A cross-functional team meeting where you need to influence without authority
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
Part One
Day One Morning
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.
One-to-one coaching
You review the recording of your story privately with the coach.
Create compelling messages
You use our preparation tools to work on the first situation you plan to practice. You analyze your listeners and then create an outline for your presentation, with a compelling opening, clear messages and an action-oriented close.
Day One Afternoon
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
You present a ten-minute version of the material you prepared earlier in the day. 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.
Day Two Morning
Concise executive summaries
You practice delivering your material from Day One as a two-to-three-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.
Day Two Afternoon
Lead productive meetings
You role-play a second situation — usually an interactive meeting or a difficult one-to-one discussion — that will happen soon. You continue to build your skills, adapt them to a different environment, and walk away with specific ideas that will contribute to the success of that situation. We record your role play.
One-to-one coaching
You review the recording of your role play privately with the coach.
Day Three Morning
Advanced Preparation: creating storylines for complex and / or controversial material
We introduce additional preparation tools that are particularly useful for complex material and skeptical listeners. You prepare for an upcoming meeting and then receive feedback and recommendations from your colleagues and a coach.
Day Three Afternoon
Lead complex meetings
You role-play the meeting you prepared in the morning to see the results of the additional preparation tools. You will also see how your delivery skills and ability to interact productively contribute to or get in the way of your success. We record your role play.
One-to-one coaching
You review the recording of your role play privately with the coach.
Plan actions
You identify a few meetings over the next couple of weeks and plan the skills you will apply in each one to increase your chances of success.
Part Two
After 3-6 months of workplace application, Part Two will reinforce the skills you gain in Part One and add new skills to further enhance your working relationships, including active listening, written reports and decks, gaining commitment to action, and 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