Motivating People to Think and Act Differently
This program will help you strengthen your leadership communication skills — in order to build culture, accelerate initiatives and drive business results
It 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
Motivate people to think and act differently
You will build these skills in a series of 10 highly interactive and practice-intensive half-day sessions
For each session, you will meet on Zoom with one or two of your colleagues and an experienced coach from McAlinden.
Each session will be four hours, divided into practice time, one-to-one coaching, preparation periods, and 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. You will work with different colleagues and coaches in some of the sessions so you get fresh perspectives. 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 relevant and meaningful material to bring to the program
You will practice with your own real communication situations. Pick three remote or in-person 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 the 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.
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 a ten-minute version. 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 you will use the same content to practice managing interaction.
The second and third situations you will practice later in the program, so you can decide whether to choose them now or wait. Here are some basic criteria for those situations:
The second situation will bring together many of the skills you have built up to that point in the program. You can practice almost any kind of verbal communication, but popular choices are interactive meetings and difficult one-to-one discussions. 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 with a group or individual who are likely to be skeptical or resist your ideas.
You will receive an email between sessions with additional information to help you prepare.
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
Discuss the challenging communication situations and relationships 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 first 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 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. 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 in 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 3
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 video of your executive summary and responses privately with a coach.
Session 4
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.
Session 5
Handle challenge and passive resistance
We provide ideas for engaging people and motivating them to think and act differently.
Gain commitment to action
You prepare and role-play a third situation — a meeting where you expect people to resist because they 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.
One-to-one coaching
You review the recording of your role play privately with the coach.
Session 6
Communicate on short-notice
You practice communicating about two or three different work-related subjects, with very little preparation time. Then you practice a completely spontaneous situation.
One-to-one coaching
You review the recording of your spontaneous situations privately with the coach.
Plan actions
You identify a few meetings over the next few months and plan the skills you will apply in each one to increase your chances of success.
Part Two
After 3-6 months using the skills in your workplace, sessions 7-10 will reinforce the skills you have gained and add new ones to further enhance your working relationships. Once the dates are confirmed, we will send you information about how to prepare.
Questions?
Email us goals@mcalinden.com or call us +1 212 986 4950
About us
Visit our main website McAlinden Associates