Engage | Motivate | Inspire

for

This program will strengthen your leadership communication skills for the variety of challenging situations you face.

We will help you:

• Engage diverse stakeholders

Depending on your role, you may be asked to speak at local associations, college fairs, and other community affairs events. These often require you to translate complex Google initiatives into simple messages that people can understand, remember, and feel good about. Googlers also prefer messages that are clear, relevant, and personalized to their needs.

• Motivate people to think and act

Googlers produce a lot of creative ideas, but converting the good ones to action amidst all the data and noise can be a challenge. Your colleagues will appreciate it if your meetings are focused, brief, and action-oriented.

• Inspire your team and community

Having good content is a great start, but it is not enough — being able to convey it with confidence, presence, and energy is critical to holding attention and making people want to follow your lead.

We understand and appreciate the respectful and inclusive communication culture at Google. We also know that many Googlers struggle with being direct and clear within that culture. Our coaches are experienced at helping people balance these goals — in a style that fits their personality, and is right for their listeners.

We don't think there's one "right" way to communicate in all situations, but we do think most people can expand and flex their skills to increase their chances of success in the broadest range of situations. We won’t bore you with a lot of theory — this is an experiential program. We will ask you to dive into practice, experiment with different approaches, and take on board extensive feedback.

By the end of the two days, you will have increased your ability to:

• Prepare and conduct clear, well structured, and convincing meetings and presentations
  

• Answer questions and respond to challenges
  

• Project executive presence and effective body language, including eye contact, vocal variety/pace, stance, and gestures

Googlers — including leaders from HWOPs, DCOPs, Community Affairs, and other areas have said this program develops skills that are relevant to their jobs:

"Global, regional and local presentations along with manager's meetings. I will have much more impact in a shorter amount of time."

"I present to the public all the time. This will help me represent Google better."

"As a program manager, I manage a lot of projects within various functional areas. Getting my ask out there in a balanced way is very beneficial to reaching the optimal outcome wanted sooner"

"Have more impact with reports. Leadership. Credibility. Communicate more efficiently by removing extraneous detail."

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 your own real communication situations. Pick two meetings or presentations that will happen after the program to work with and 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 sue your laptop to prepare content during the program and adjust it based on feedback.

The first 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.

When you practice the second situation, you will bring together many of the skills you have built through the program. You can practice 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.

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

Day 1 morning

Day 1 afternoon

Day 2 morning

Questions?

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

About us

Visit our main website McAlinden Associates