PROFESSIONAL IMAGE
Art of the Cocktail: Business Development in the Social Arena
Managing the impression you make and maximizing your ‘like-ability’ are the keys to making every networking opportunity consistently profitable. First impressions really are important. The way you greet people can set the tone for the entire interaction that follows. If you make a poor initial impression, you may spend the rest of your time overcoming it.
Meet and mingle with your colleagues while you learn from the pros. Brush up on the protocols of introductions, business card exchange, conversation management, and more. Learn the secrets to business development through rapport building.
We start with a 15 minute presentation covering the basics of:
- Emotional connection
- Authentic Communication in the Social Arena
- Approaching groups
- Introductions: yourself and others
- Cocktail etiquette
After this, we’ll list the issues that often cause confusion and discomfort for professionals attending social functions on the PowerPoint for participants to consider. Typical issues include, leaving groups, talking with client’s spouse, coping with criticism, handling gossip, transitioning to business talk, business card exchange, and many, many more.
Dining Etiquette: Maintaining a Positive Impression
In this fun and interactive workshop you will be given tips on putting your best foot forward with the non-verbal communication, effective introductions, table small talk, serving yourself at a buffet, dining demeanour and behaviours that will make you confident in any business social situation. You’ll learn the differences of attending larger group buffet venues and smaller dining situations.
Conversing with your clients at the dinner table is always an opportunity to create and strengthen the relationship, or to inadvertently weaken it. Understanding the ingredients of good conversation, knowing what to say and when, directing and redirecting the interaction, and being capable when it becomes difficult, are the hallmarks of excellent dining etiquette.
Etiquette Essentials for the Contemporary Workplace
In today's professional environment, responsibilities often extend beyond the workday into the evening, and beyond the workplace into the social arena. Whether it's client lunches, networking evenings, or business conferences, most professionals find themselves, from time to time, in the "social business arena." However, these occasions sometimes trigger insecurities. Where do we sit at a social event? Who gets introduced to whom? What is the best type of handshake? When and how should I present my business card to international clients? How can I make it clear to my client that I intend to pay for the meal? What spoon do I use for my dessert?
Performance Networking: Galvanizing Professional Support
Networking is the set of communication skills required to build relationships, inform others, and learn from and about co-workers and clients. Managing the impression you make and maximizing your ‘like-ability’ are the keys to making every networking opportunity consistently profitable. First impressions really are important. The way you greet people can set the tone for the entire interaction that follows. If you make a poor initial impression, you may spend the rest of your time overcoming it. In this fun and interactive workshop you will be given tips on putting your best foot forward with the right handshake, effective introductions, and presenting and requesting business cards with confidence. You’ll learn the differences of interacting in a large group venue verses the requirements of a more intimate setting. You’ll master the principles of impression management by exploring perceptual tendencies, the ins-and-outs of small talk, and the subtleties of office diplomacy.
Professional Image: The Psychology of Perception
A universal perceptual tendency is to “judge a book by its cover”. We form lasting opinions based on what we see. In fact, over half of the impression you convey to others is based on appearance. The look of credibility, composure and professionalism must accompany the message for an audience or client to accept it. You must be believed to be heard, and we believe what we see.
Be sure to send the full message by visually presenting your professional credibility. This seminar is about attaining a professional presence that in all circumstances speaks well of you. Learn how your body language, dress and personal style impact the decisions others make of you and your ideas.
Professional Presence: Communicating Confidence
To be self-confident in professional and social situations is a feeling of freedom- freedom to be you. To be encumbered by concerns of how you look, how you act, what to say, how to say it, etc. constrains your willingness to get involved, to be creative, to be assertive, ultimately to be yourself. This workshop takes the pressure off by giving you the easy to implement strategies of looking your best, conversing with confidence, and dining with grace. Learn how to network for results, listen to create goodwill, and make introductions with flair. Knowing you’re making the right impression with ease and comfort provides you with the psychological and emotional space to be yourself. This workshop is designed by choosing elements from our other full day workshops to create a customized experience for participants.
PERFORMANCE COMMUNICATIONS
Art of One Way Communication: From E-mail to Voice Mail
How are you being perceived through email, text messaging or voice mail?
Learn the simple to implement skills of organizing a one-way transmission to motivate another to pay full attention to your message. The organisational structure (when to say what) assists tremendously with comprehension and retention of even the most complex of ideas. Impress all with your ability to simplify the complex, get to the heart of the matter, and motivate receivers to want to pay attention.
Being Your Best: Dealing with Difficult Situations
Interactions at work with colleagues, supervisors, and technicians don’t always go as smoothly as we’d like. One’s ability to maintain control in difficult to control situations is the hallmark of excellent communication’s ability. Learn to communicate via email and telephone to promote cooperation and effectively resolve issues that are deemed difficult. Recognize that conflicts will happen in the workplace, our goal therefore is to be at our best when it’s most required of us. Learn to use your voice and rapport building skills to reduce tension, deal with emotion, and make for a more stress free professional life.
To be at our best when we most need to be requires having the confidence and competence at recognizing potential problems and circumventing them before they escalate. Being assertive in clarifying expectations early in the engagement is essential.
This highly regarded course uncovers the often hidden motivations of why we act the way we do, and provides practical, easy to implement, strategies to turn negatives into positives and strengthen interpersonal relationships. We’ll explore the typical difficult interactions of your workplace and role play approaches that lead to improved outcomes.
Business Development through Authentic Communication
Learn the simple skills of authentic client communication by knowing how to tap into the autobiographical urge of others. Asking the right questions at the right time builds your emotional foundation with existing, or prospective clients. Learn the skills necessary to overcome the obstacles that hold us back from making the invaluable connections that make us memorable. Give others the opportunity to tell their story and realize that money flows in the direction of biographical knowledge.
Appreciate the business case for re-awakening curiosity. Use the “six degrees of separation” phenomenon to find common ground and build lasting relationships. Being authentic in your desire to learn about others you meet is at the heart of competitive advantage. Do what your competition is not doing: dare to be authentically curious and watch business development flourish.
Communicating with Clients: Questioning and Listening to Achieve Results
Learn to achieve your conversational goals with clients by asking the right questions and actively listening to the answers. Use closed and open questions strategically to move client conversations in the right direction. Learn to lead by involving people in a way that galvanizes their support in the short and long term. Practice one of the most important skills of career success: empathy. Learn to see agendas from the client’s perspective to enhance your own understanding, to build your credibility (and likeability), and to enhance your persuasive influence.
Conversation Management: Attaining Goals Protecting Climates
Conversing with your clients at the office, a conference, the golf club, or any other venue is always an opportunity to create and strengthen the relationship, or to inadvertently weaken it. It’s the conversations we have that build relationships. Understanding the ingredients of good conversation, knowing what to say and when, directing and redirecting the interaction, and being capable when it becomes difficult, are the hallmarks of excellent conversation management. In this entertaining and interactive session we’ll explore a pragmatic model of interpersonal effectiveness. We’ll increase our self-awareness, capitalize on the perceptual tendencies of others, and appreciate talk that includes and excludes. We’ll delve into the important elements of the conversational process: attitude, attendance and contribution. You’ll be given tips on putting your best foot forward, preventing conversational problems, and repairing interactions that do go astray.
Customer Service: Making the Most of Interactions
You provide superior customer service when you can identify your customers' wants and then exceed them. But the question is; how do you identify your customers' wants? You do this by watching for, identifying, and maximizing moments of truth. Once you see these windows of opportunity, you look for and analyse your customers' meta-messages - the real messages they are sending. This is done by using such strategic communication techniques as active questioning and kinesic analysis. When you are able to identify, and then exceed your customers' needs and/or wants, you have the tools for building and enhancing solid customer relationships. Inevitably though, some customers can be more challenging than others. We'll also discuss ways to identify potential customer service problems before they turn into conflicts, and identify strategies that can effectively defuse difficult situations.
Difficult Clients: Thriving in Difficult Situations
Client negotiations can sometimes leave us feeling frustrated when we feel the client is being unreasonable. Our responses in these situations will have an impact on the present negotiations, engagement with the file, future business, and so on. Dealing with difficult clients requires that we be at our best under pressure. To engage clients with tact, diplomacy, skill, and compassion are the hallmarks of learned communication competence.
Our responses to these clients must be based on professional integrity and assertive communication while still maintaining a supportive communication climate.
We need to explore the underpinnings of unreasonable requests and behaviours in order to understand them and move ahead with supportive professionalism.
Diversity in Canadian Business: Emotional Intelligence at Work
Canada is becoming the most diverse country in the world. Meeting customer needs and providing quality service for this changing customer base is the biggest challenge facing the Canadian Service Industry. Customers who feel employees are indifferent to their needs will simply go elsewhere. Organizations that understand these new customers will be able to strategically align products and service communication to build strong relationships while cultivating customer loyalty and repeat business. The key to this is in our ability to adapt our sales communication to the comfort level and expectations of different cultures, different ages, different sexes, and different personalities. This workshop provides participants with the insights and practice required to make every customer interaction a personal and professional triumph.
Emotional Intelligence: “Most Predictive Trait of Success”
Join us for an illuminating program to view with new eyes the essentials of intercultural communication. Find out what the Harvard Business Review cited as the single most significant skill leading to career success. Leave with a new appreciation for generational differences and how we can thrive by tapping into our strengths.
Employee Engagement: Inspiring Performance
An employee who resides in the top quartile of the employee engagement continuum is three times more likely to succeed than in the bottom quartile. Of publicly traded companies, more engaged organizations outperformed competitors by almost 20%. Employee engagement is one of the most significant determinants of profitability within a company’s control.
Based on the overwhelming research of the U.S. Gallup organization, this program uncovers the mind-set, and the easy to implement skills that lead to higher employee engagement.
We no longer live in a world where the paternalistic relationship between employee and employer exists. The company can no longer offer the traditional motivators of money, promotion, and job security- these are simply too scarce to go around. The new reality must engage through an implicit contract of mutuality where employees learn and grow, and have the confidence to take care of themselves even if the company can’t. The skills of validation, information, and participation are the underpinnings of the engagement premise that work satisfies human needs.
The relatively simple, and as a result consistently underestimated, power of: expectations, resources, opportunities, recognition, encouragement, purpose, progress, etc. have a (to put it mildly) profound impact on customer service, resignations, accidents, productivity, sick days, creativity, sales, and productivity.
Join us as we explore the practical strategies of engaging employees to their potential. Learn to spot the root causes of performance gaps and implement the appropriate interventions. Empower your employees by hearing their voices in a new light. Appreciate the power of a healthy, supportive communication climate in promoting growth and performance.
Listening: The Emotional Power of Being Good
Learn how to expand your listening capabilities and become a more effective communicator. Listening is a learned skill that typically has been ignored as such; consequently, it’s our worst communication skill. Learn to take in greater amount of information, hear what’s not being said, and build relationships in this powerful session.
Professional Integrity: Achieving Favourable Outcomes
Client negotiations can sometimes leave us feeling frustrated when we feel the client is being unreasonable. Our responses in these situations will have an impact on the present negotiations, engagement with the file, future business, and so on. Dealing with difficult clients requires that we be at our best under pressure. To engage clients with tact, diplomacy, skill, and compassion are the hallmarks of learned communication competence.
Our responses to these clients must be based on professional integrity and assertive communication while still maintaining a supportive communication climate.
We need to explore the underpinnings of unreasonable requests and behaviours in order to understand them and move ahead with supportive professionalism.
Social Styles: Relational Communication Skills for Professionals
This highly successful seminar brings participants to new insights about themselves, their colleagues, and their customers. Learn to assess the interpersonal style of others, and learn how to maximize your communication approach to enhance effectiveness and persuasiveness.
Woman Winning in the Old Boys’ Club
Appreciating gender communication differences, and separating gender stereotypes from reality is an important step to feeling comfortable in traditionally male, or female, dominated networking situations. Managing the impression you make and maximizing your ‘like-ability’ are the keys to making every networking opportunity consistently profitable regardless of gender disparities. Appreciate how gender stereotypes and misconceptions can limit our ability to professionally connect with others. Learn to maximize our gender particular strengths to enhance our professional interactions in and out of the office.
Workplace Climate: Office Diplomacy at Work
Unlike the weather, we control the communication climate in which we work. It’s up to us to decide if it’s going to be positive and confirming or negative and pessimistic.
Join us for an enlightening look at the control we have over our workplace environment.
- Delve into the psychology of our workplace behaviours and its influence on others.
- Understand the importance of creating a supportive workplace climate.
- Use language that fosters supportiveness rather than defensiveness.
- Listen as a tool to build goodwill.
We can’t control the weather, but we can create a workplace climate which respects privacy, fosters cohesion, and enhances professionalism.
Workplace Writing Made Easy: Organization and Clarity
Anyone who works at a desk knows the importance of good writing skills. This course is just what you need to write clear, concise business letters, memos, emails and reports. Professionally relevant activities and basic do’s and don’ts will have you writing like a pro as you discover the secrets to well-written sentences and learn how to quickly organize your thoughts.
Too much writing and too little time is the recurring challenge of the busy professional. Learning how to focus your main message and bring it to your readers’ immediate attention are the keys to fast and effective business writing.
