Communicating for Impact

Be a leader who can connect and communicate with clarity, conviction, and compassion—whatever the audience, setting, or message.

Challenging business conditions and the increasing regularity of virtual interactions are making communication more difficult for today’s executives. In Communicating for Impact, you’ll strengthen your ability to lead and communicate with clarity, conviction, and compassion in different settings—public, private, in-person, or on platforms like Zoom.

Whether you are pitching a major proposal, negotiating a merger, delivering bad news, or providing performance feedback, this program will help you connect and communicate more confidently.

Objectives:

• Work more effectively with a wide range of people 
• Learn the five decision- making categories of leaders: Charismatics, Thinkers, Skeptics, Followers, and controllers.
• Tailor your presentations to the executives you are trying to persuade, to deliver the appropriate information in the most effective sequence and format.
• Find common ground and build enduring relationships  
• Deliver a compelling argument that persuades and motivates others 
• Navigate tension and conflict of all kinds  
• Tailor your message to your audience—whether one person or a group 
• Deploy humor and emotion to good effect

Communicating for Impact is appropriate for leaders in organizations of any size, type, or sector who want to improve their ability to communicate. Participants may have strategic, operational, or administrative responsibilities and should have at least 5-10 years of experience.

Outlines:

Module 1: Change the Way You Persuade

1. Find the right form to communicate your message:
2. Convincing your boss that your company needs to make an important move.
3. Five Styles of Decision Making, and the Ways to Influence Each.
4. Five Decision-Making Styles
5. Charismatics
6. Thinkers
7. Skeptics
8. Followers
9. Controllers

Module 2: Harnessing the Science of Persuasion

1. How to capture an audience, sway the undecided, and convert the opposition.
2. Bringing scientific rigor to the business of securing consensus.
3. Cutting deals, and winning concessions.
4. The Six Principles of Persuasion
5. The Principle of Liking
6. People like those who like them.
7. The Application: Uncover real similarities and offer genuine praise.
8. If you want to influence people, win friends.
9. The Principle of Reciprocity
10. People repay in kind.
11. The application: Give what you want to receive.
12. The Principle of Social Proof
13. People follow the lead of similar others.
14. The application: Use peer power whenever it’s available.
15. The Principle of Consistency
16. People align with their clear commitments.
17. The application: Make their commitments active, public, and voluntary.
18. The Principle of Authority
19. People defer to experts.
20. The application: Expose your expertise; don’t assume it’s self-evident.
21. The Principle of Scarcity
22. People want more of what they can have less of.
23. The application: Highlight unique benefits and exclusive information.
24. Putting It All Together

Module 3: The Power of Talk

1. Who Gets Heard and Why.
2. Communication isn’t as simple as saying what you mean.
3. Most managerial work happens through talk—discussions, meetings, presentations, negotiations.
4. Through talk that managers evaluate others and are themselves judged
5. What Is Linguistic Style?
6. One Up, One Down
7. Confidence and boasting
8. Asking questions
9. Conversational Rituals
10. Apologies
11. Feedback
12. Compliments
13. Ritual opposition
14. Negotiating Authority
15. Managing up and down
16. Indirectness

Module 4: The Necessary Art of Persuasion

1. Four Ways NOT to Persuade
2. Make your case with an up-front, hard sell.
3. Resist compromise.
4. Think that the secret of persuasion lies in presenting great arguments
5. Assume persuasion is a one-shot effort.
6. The four steps of persuasion
7. Establish credibility.
8. Frame goals on common ground
9. Vividly reinforce your position.
10. Provide evidence
11. Connect emotionally.
12. The Force of Persuasion

Module 5: Is Silence Killing Your Company?

1. Who Gets Heard and Why.
2. The Reign of Silence
3. The Costs of Suffering in Silence
4. Breaking the Spiral of Silence
5. Recognize your power
6. Act deviantly
7. Build a coalition

Module 6: How to Become an Authentic Speaker

1. What Science Teaches Us
2. Being open to your audience
3. Connecting with your audience
4. Being passionate about your topic
5. Listening to your audience
6. “Rehearsing” Authenticity
7. What Underlies an Authentic Speech

Module 7: Telling Tales

1. The Power of Narrative
2. A “Poorly Told” Story
3. Tales of Success and Failure
4. A Collective Yawn
5. A Storytelling Catalog
6. Sparking Action
7. Communicating Who You Are
8. Transmitting Values
9. Fostering Collaboration
10. Taming the Grapevine
11. Sharing Knowledge
12. Leading People into the Future
13. An Enticing but Hazy Future

Module 8: How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea

1. Coming Up With Creative Ideas Is Easy; Selling Them To Strangers
2. The Sorting Hat
3. How to Kill Your Own Pitch
4. The three types of successful pitchers
5. The Showrunner
6. The Artist
7. The Neophyte
8. Catchers Beware

Module 9: The Five Messages Leaders Must Manage

1. Message 1: Organizational Structure and Hierarchy
2. Message 2: Financial Results
3. Message 3: The Leader’s Sense of His or Her Job
4. Message 4: Time Management
5. Message 5: Corporate Culture

Module 10: Taking the Stress Out of Stressful Conversations

1. Types of Stressful Conversations
2. Preparing for Stressful Conversations
3. Managing Stressful Conversations
4. “I Have Bad News for You”
5. “What’s Going On Here?”
6. “You Are Attacking Me!”
7. Preparing for a Stressful Conversation
8. The DNA of Conversation Management
9. Managing the Conversation
10. Honor thy partner
11. Disarm by restating your intentions
12. Fight tactics, not people