Communication Courses

Overview: Appraisals which are planned, structured and implemented effectively allow managers to improve communications within their team and improve on training and development plans. This course teaches delegates how to manage appraisals and PDR's effectively.

Overview: Assertiveness is the quality of being self-assured and confident without being aggressive. Assertive individuals are able to get their point across without upsetting others, or becoming upset themselves. This course focuses on understanding the difference between aggressive, passive and assertive behaviours to improve personal communication effectiveness.

Overview: Effective teamwork is fundamental to the success of any organisation. Whether the focus is on service, quality, cost, value, speed, efficiency, performance, or other similar goals, teams are the central methodology of most organisations in the private, non-profit, and government sectors. With teams at the core of corporate strategy, your success as an organisation can often depend on how well you and other team members operate together. In most teams, the energies of individual members work at cross-purposes. Individuals may work extraordinarily hard, but their efforts do not translate into team effort, and this results in wasted energy. By contrast, when a team becomes more aligned, a commonality of direction emerges, and individual energies harmonise. You have a shared vision and an understanding of how to complement each others’ efforts. This one-day workshop is a basic course for team leaders and team members, designed to focus on the characteristics of an effective team player and the elements of an effective team. You will leave the workshop with plans for your personal development as a team player and ideas for developing your team.

Overview: A one day programme focused on written business communication. To write effectively requires knowledge of the process for constructing written business communications. When applied to various types of written communication such as a report, presentation, memo, letter, e-mail, this knowledge helps produce clear, concise, unambiguous communications. The programme provides delegates with a chance to obtain the knowledge, test its application, and thus become more confident when faced with a written communication task at work.

Overview: Meetings are important for management and communication. When it comes to the serious stuff, face-to-face meetings are effective because they outdo the written words of emails and memos, and out-perform the effectiveness of telephone conferencing. Meetings are costly of both time and money. A poorly structured and managed meeting will waste the time of everyone, will cost the time of everyone, and make people dread attending in the future. This course aims to showcase the skills and knowledge needed to chair a meeting successfully

Overview: Coaching and mentoring is a highly effective way of raising awareness and driving performance at all levels of an organisation. However, good coaches and mentors need training. To embed coaching capability across your organisation, you must first equip managers with the abilities and training they need to coach effectively.

Overview: Conflicts can be resolved peacefully and effectively. Peacefully discussing differences of opinion is a healthy way to bring important issues to light and strengthen your relationships with co-workers, managers and suppliers, as well as friends and significant others. This course helps delegates learn how to effectively handle conflict in a way that minimises stress and relieves tension.

Overview: Good customer care depends on the attitudes and skills of each individual employee. Without it few businesses succeed. People at all levels need to understand how communication works from the customer's perspective and to get an understanding of the best way to approach individual customers.

Overview: This course will give the participants the opportunity to develop the skills to deal with difficult and aggressive behaviour. Delegates will have the opportunity to examine the phases of aggressive behaviour and develop an approach to remain in control. They will be able to identify triggers which may provoke an incident; understand the tactics for dealing with the situation and methods to deal with the aftermath.

Overview: Online meetings often fall short. Discover how you can make your meetings more interactive with Zoom and MS Teams. This course looks at best practice and how the tools in Zoom and MS Teams can help you achieve this.

Overview: This course is aimed at staff within organisations who possess very little formal knowledge of personnel management but have a level of responsibility for it. The course is intended to raise awareness and understanding of the main areas of involvement. The workshops are designed to be highly interactive using a combination of discussion, exercises and quizzes, examples of best practice and recent case law to help participants apply the techniques to their every-day work and problems. It greatly enhances the relevance and understanding of the course if reference can be made to existing policies, procedures and problems experienced within the workplace.

Overview: This interactive course enhances interview skills by providing an opportunity to learn the different phases of interviewing: preparation and planning, conducting an interview, and following up. This includes a high level of delegate participation.

Overview: This modular programme is designed to further develop the skills of managers and potential managers. Building leadership capabilities across this level should not only strengthen individual skills but also facilitate the transfer of best practice across the organisation. Between each workshop delegates will be given work assignments to reinforce and embed the skills learned at each workshop. Recognising the busy nature of the delegates role, the design of these assignments will be thought provoking and practical rather than time consuming. Each module comes with its own set of support notes for delegates to put into a ring-binder, which then builds up into a comprehensive management reference book. This highly interactive and practical programme will give delegates an opportunity to learn more about themselves and the different working styles of others to increase individual and team effectiveness. They will be working as individuals, in pairs or small groups, engaging with each other to explore the different approaches. Building a team successfully requires awareness and understanding of the needs for a balanced team. This programme has been designed to give delegates both insight and time to explore their personal preferences, highlighting the benefits of getting the correct balance between both managing the task and leading the team. CLARITY 4D PROFILES As an optional extra, each delegate will receive either an 11 page Clarity4D Personal Profile or a 20 page Team Profile (recommended). The Profile provides delegates with information on their personality type as an aid to understand more about self and others, which can then be used to identify strategies for enhancing interpersonal relationships and improving communications within the team. The Profile includes sections on: Personal style and interacting with others Personal strengths and areas of hidden potential Value to the Team Effective Communication The Profile will be used as a working document throughout the programme as a basis for self-analysis and group discussions. Delegates may then go on to use it as a personal development coaching tool.

Overview: Please contact us for full information on this course.

Overview: Work-related stress (WRS) accounts for 37% of all ill health cases and 45% of all working days lost due to ill health. The total number of working days lost in 2015/16 was 11.7 million. The overall economic cost to Great Britain was estimated to be over £5 billion. (HSE) As an employer/ manager/supervisor, you have a key role in minimising the risk of stress in the workplace. Understanding how stress can affect the health of staff, reduce their productivity and lead to performance issues for both individuals, teams and your organisation, undoubtedly stands you in good stead to prevent harm and create a positive working environment. Because stress can be caused by external and internal factors, managers need to be able to help staff by controlling the pressure from the organisation. In addition to be able to offer support to any individual who either approaches you or who you identify as showing signs of stress.

Overview: A well run meeting can solve problems, encourage consensus, generate action and develop team spirit. However, meetings that are managed incorrectly can lead to frustrating results such as lengthy deliberations and/or inconclusive outcomes. This course will help delegates understand how to keep a meeting efficient and beneficial for all involved.

Overview: This two day, classroom based and tutor-led course is made of up four manageable sessions. Learning takes place through a mix of presentations, group discussions and workshop activities. Each session is built around a Mental Health First Aid action plan.

Overview: Minutes are a vital method of recording information and capturing thoughts and ideas. It is important that this becomes an easy process. This Minute Taking course illustrates the various stages of minute taking and covers invaluable techniques.

Overview: Motivated employees who are satisfied, sufficiently challenged and contributing to organisational goals are vital to organisational success. More than monetary compensation is required for employees to be truly motivated. This course shows managers how to maintain a high level of employee motivation.

Overview: Common problems are just that - all too common. Often they require a standardised language and approach to problem solving across an entire organisation. This course assists organisations in developing a standardised, yet flexible problem solving process that integrates easily into any current organisational format.

Overview: Effective use of the telephone is an essential skill within every department of every organisation. The telephone is an integral part of an organisation's success. Many people are unaware of the image they portray whilst speaking on the phone. This course teaches delegates how to make and take calls, and how to deal with tough situations on the phone such as complaints.

Overview: People benefit from training that's well organised and implemented, and the key to successful training is the trainer. Only a trainer who is properly skilled can maximise the learning opportunity. This course is highly interactive and requires attendees to give brief presentations and lessons to the other delegates.

Overview: This highly interactive 2-day course covers the basic training principles required to design and deliver courses on a one-to-one and group basis. This basic training skills course is aimed at those who are new to training, experienced trainers who want to review their current performance as trainers, or managers wanting to develop their staff.