While there are multiple factors that influence your career prospects, your communication ability likely tops the list. You must send messages that are clearly understood and comprehend what your coworkers want you to understand. This series will prepare you to do just that.
How to Ask for What You Need
It can be so disappointing when your expectations aren’t met. Too often the problem is that you assumed others knew what you needed. Big mistake. You need to ask for what you need (and sometimes that means telling people what you don’t like).
This skill is assertiveness. It means being direct, honest, and respectful. It’s an easy skill to understand. It’s a difficult skill to practice, probably because so few use it. Come learn how to say what needs to be said.
How to Be a Better Listener
Strong listening skills help you in two ways. First, you more clearly understand people and concepts. This leads to better decisions. Second, active listening helps others feel like you care about them, which increases respect.
The result is stronger, more trusting relationships with your employees, peers, and manager. This session will help you assess your listening skills and make the necessary changes to become a better listener.
How to Ask Better Questions
When you hear an answer you don’t like, it’s often because you asked the wrong question. Forming and asking skillful questions can improve your team’s creativity, problem-solving, productivity, and results.
Unfortunately, people place more emphasis on the answers rather than the questions. This misplaced emphasis leads them down an unintended path. In this session, you’ll have the opportunity to sharpen your question asking skills.
How to Respond with Empathy
Your employees work harder when they know you care about them. A common mistake is to assume they already know that. Some do, but others don’t. How do they perceive you? Do you come across as being empathetic to their unique circumstances?
While some empathy is conveyed via body language, that’s addressed in another session. The focus for this session is on what you say to convey empathy to your employees.
How to Use Body Language
“What you do speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you say . . .” To become a skillful communicator, you must master body language.
First, your body language needs to reinforce what you intend to convey. Second, you need to read the body language of others, without assuming you know what it means. Instead, learn to use it as an opening for more in-depth conversation. Come and increase your body language awareness and abilities.
How to Speak Up in the Face of Personal Peril
Sometimes the problem isn’t what to say. The real challenge is determining if you should say anything at all.
There are plenty of situations in which speaking up seems like a dangerous option. And yet, it’s clear that someone has to find the courage. That someone should be you. In this session, you’ll learn how to find your voice when the easy path would be to remain silent.