PROFESSIONAL IMAGE
Business Casual: What it Is, What it’s Not
The 90's ushered in a new look in business attire and the trend is firmly in place in the 21st century. Many organizations have adopted a more casual approach to business wear for employees on “Casual Friday's", or even for regular dress throughout the week. With casual clothing now an important facet of business dress, adapting to these changes poses new challenges for both men and women. This workshop sheds light on this difficult-to-gage attire requirement. What’s too casual? Are jeans okay? What if I like dressing more formally? You will not only learn what’s expected and acceptable, but you’ll learn the intricacies of colour theory, grooming, and assembling the right wardrobe.
Business Professional: Promoting Your Best Self
What to wear? What’s the right look? Does this even fit? Is this right for the weather? What you wear, how you look, and how you carry yourself makes a bigger difference than most people realize. Over half of the impression you convey to others is based on appearance. Be sure to convey the appropriate message by presenting your best professional self. The four major image appearance components; hair care, skin care, colour analysis, and wardrobe development are reviewed in depth. Both men and women will learn the “must knows” and the “never do’s” in this informative, entertaining, and interactive seminar.
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?
Grace Under Pressure: Professional Protocols
We all need to be aware of how our behaviour is being viewed by others, especially clients. It’s no secret that clients and colleagues are using the behaviour they see to form their lasting impressions of you. Feel comfortable in conveying your best self by learning the why, when, where, and how of professional protocols. These “rules” of office behaviour are not restrictive; in fact quite the opposite is true. Knowing what the expectations are, and knowing how to meet them provides a foundation of confidence and composure that enables personal expression without the worry of: “am I doing this right.”
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.
Attitude: The Power of Choice in Your Life
Take charge of your attitude and take charge of your life with new strategies for beating negativity, eliminating doubts, and setting positive goals. Understand the power of thought, and its impact on prompting emotion. Recognize that thoughts are a choice, and that the right choice leads to better decisions and better outcomes.
Being Effective through Assertive Communication
Are you submissive, aggressive or assertive? Find out where you fit and why assertiveness is the best way to achieve your goals. Learn the words to use, the secrets of body language, and how to interpret other’s behaviour to make positive assertiveness a productive force in your life.
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.
Customer Service for Field Service Technicians
Communication is at the heart of an excellent customer experience. The customer's first impression is based on appearance and initial behavours. We teach professionals the importance and easy to implement strategies to create an outstanding and lasting impression. The initial greeting and small talk at the beginning of a customer interaction paves the way for more productive communication later on.
The next phase of an excellent customer experience is communication that makes customers feel they are important and understood. Again, we teach how to communicate in a way that's effective and supportive no matter what the circumstances. Making sure the customer knows you understand and care creates an open and honest climate which allows for greater clarity, fewer misunderstanding, and enhanced productivity.
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 positive attitude and communication skills to reduce tension, deal with emotion, and make for a more stress free professional life.
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.
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.
Presentations: Develop and Deliver like a Pro
Do your presentations have the impact you intend? Are you unsure what information should be included in, or omitted from, your presentations? Does your delivery grab and hold your audience's attention? Do your words motivate audiences to action? Your executive image can be either built or undermined by your presentation abilities. This highly successful workshop will enhance your presentation skills and give you the insights you need to project a confident executive image in any speaking circumstance. We'll cover everything you need to know to deliver any presentation with clarity, persuasiveness, and confidence. This course is designed for professionals with an emphasis on organizing your thoughts and data for maximum impact, developing visuals to enhance your message, and projecting competence through body language and voice.
Team Deployment: Get it Done
This course allows team members to be more engaged with other teams and other members by learning more about what others do and how we impact one another. The course is a facilitated sharing session where we learn about:
- what we do
- how we do it, and
- how can we do better
We explore roles and responsibilities of individuals and divisions; the principles that guide the organization; behavioural competencies required to succeed; best practices; and problems and solutions.
This program is designed to engage individuals in their work and the work of others. The research is compelling. According the Gallup organization’s research: 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.
Join us for an enlightening session that promises individual and team accomplishment in an atmosphere of sharing.
The New Supervisor: Leadership Skills
Professional communication is the cornerstone to supervisory success. This workshop, designed for Managers, will focus on the essential communication skills to be an effective. We’ll explore, and practice, the skills of listening with intent, sending messages with clarity and persuasiveness, and supervising for success. Through small group interaction, self- diagnosis, case studies and skill practice, participants will learn the practical communications skills relevant to their workplace reality. Participants will learn to communicate more effectively with all levels of the company’s hierarchy: supervisors, peers, and subordinates.
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.
