Leadership Communication Skills

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For almost thirty years, Davis Polk has partnered with McAlinden Associates to help its lawyers strengthen their leadership communication skills — skills that are essential to being seen as a trusted advisor, to building long-term productive client relationships, and to career progression within the firm.

These skills are also useful in your day-to-day meetings, from providing a client with options for structuring a transaction, to clarifying the consequences of a particular course of action, to briefing a Partner.

In your colleagues’ words:

I can't think of a skills-based training that felt more helpful and practical. The McAlinden trainers are terrific coaches that show how to improve communication in a positive, empowering way. I also really liked the program as a way to meet others throughout the office, some of whom I have worked with and others who were new to me.

I believe the program will be tremendously helpful in providing clients with advice more focused on their needs and bottom line.

Communicate info more quickly and effectively; generate trust, confidence, respect of colleagues and clients

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

You will build your skills in highly interactive and practice-intensive sessions.

• Small working groups will ensure you have a very personalized experience. You will practice with two colleagues from Davis Polk 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 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 use 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.

• If you do not have an upcoming presentation or meeting, you can practice one from the past.

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

Session 1

One-to-one coaching

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Questions?

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

About us

Visit our main website McAlinden Associates