Communication Skills: Results through Collaboration

• Course Info

  You Will Learn How To

  • Build collaborative relationships that emphasize trust and respect
  • Communicate effectively using simple, concise and direct language
  • Enhance your active-listening skills to anticipate and avoid common misunderstandings
  • Foster cross-cultural understanding in your workplace
  • Eliminate the roadblocks that undermine your ability to communicate effectively

  RealityPlus™ Activities

  • Experiencing one-way and two-way communication
  • Defining your communication style
  • Demonstrating active-listening skills
  • Dealing with challenging emotions
  • Revealing personal filters
  • Overcoming cross-cultural barriers

  Course 292 Content

  Building a Foundation

  • Adopting simple, concise and direct language
  • Identifying basic communication principles
  • Applying a communication process model

  Setting Clear Goals forYour Communication

  Determining outcomes and results

  • Soliciting feedback
  • Matching intentions and results

  Initiating communications

  • Figuring out what to say and the best way tosay it
  • Paying attention to verbal and nonverbal cues
  • Creating a strong connection when face-to-face communication is missing

  Avoiding Communication Breakdowns

  Creating value in your conversations

  • Strengthening your relationships
  • Distinguishing value from waste

  Taking personal responsibility

  • Recognizing your role in communications
  • Identifying internal and external factors that impact your communications
  • Establishing message feedback
  • Communicating nondefensively

  Translating across Communication Styles

  Identifying the four communication styles

  • Recognizing your style and the style of others
  • Strengths and blind spots of each style

  Bridging communication styles

  • Closing communication gaps
  • Being flexible without compromising your identity

  Listening for Improved Understanding

  Tools for active listening

  • Asking clarifying questions
  • Confirming the message
  • Demonstrating respect, empathy and sensitivity
  • Listening for the entire message

  Interpreting nonverbal cues

  • Intonation
  • Rate of speech
  • Volume
  • Gestures
  • Facial expressions
  • Posture
  • Use of space
  • Dress
  • Eye contact

  Achieving Genuine Communication

  Creating openness

  • Determining when to speak up and when not to
  • Identifying appropriate degrees of disclosure
  • Establishing value and trust

  A three-dimensional model of behavior

  • Identifying how you interact with others and how to make improvements
  • Calibrating the variance between what you want and what you express

  Matching your body language to your message

  • Enhancing your message to gain your intended results
  • Creating believable and credible messages
  • Ensuring that your attitude supports communication
  • Speaking through silence

  Cross-Cultural Communication

  Navigating beyond cultural boundaries

  • Developing greater sensitivity to cultural differences
  • Building greater accountablility and trust on virtual teams

  Working with filters and assumptions

  • Raising your awareness to avoid misunderstandings
  • Uncovering hidden assumptions
  • Recognizing filters in yourself and others

  Working Constructively with Emotions

  Dealing with anger

  • Overcoming personal challenges
  • Expressing your anger constructively
  • Minimizing defensive reactions in others

  Managing emotionally charged situations

  • Defusing an emotional situation while maintaining your composure
  • Taking responsibility for your emotions

  Who Should Attend

  Those looking to strengthen their communication and collaboration skills and work confidently with others.

  Related Courses

  • Influence Skills - Course 294
  • Personal Skills for Professional Excellence - Course 297
  • Management Skills - Course 290
  • Assertiveness Skills - Course 244
  • Delivering Compelling Speeches and Dynamic Presentations - Course 903
  • Emotional Intelligence: Achieving Leadership Success - Course 3411
  • Project Management: Skills for Success - Course 296
  • Developing Your Leadership Voice - Course 3405

  Training Hours

  First Day Orientation:
  8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.

  Standard Class Hours:
  9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

  Last Day Class Hours:
  9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.

  Free Optional Course Exam Last Day:
  3:45 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

  Each Class Day:
  Upon Request: Informal discussion with instructor about your work-specific projects or areas of special interest:
  4:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

• More Course Info

  What is this course about?

  In this course, you learn how to achieve results in your communications with others and build collaborative relationships that emphasize trust and respect. You also learn to enhance your active listening skills to anticipate and avoid common misunderstandings. The course also features skills for fostering cross-cultural understanding in the workplace and eliminating roadblocks that undermine your ability to communicate effectively.

  Through interactive workshops, self assessments, role-playing activities and video simulations, you gain practical experience initiating and responding to communications with a flexible, genuine and self-confident approach.

  Who will benefit from this course?

  Anyone who must interact effectively with others to get the job done will find this course useful. Managers and professionals at all levels must rely upon sound communication skills for effective working relationships. People from all industries benefit from this course.

  What background do I need?

  No special background is required for this course. People from all industries will benefit from this course. All types of organizations-technical and non-technical, private and public, military and civilian, small and large-have sent participants to this course, with dramatic results.

  How is this course structured?

  This course is structured around a dynamic style of learning created by Learning Tree called RealityPlus^TM -- an immersive experience that engages you in authentic tasks within a simulated real-world context.

  Through media-rich case studies, role playing, and video/computer-based activities, you are immersed throughout the course in an evolving scenario where the decisions you make affect the outcome of the simulation. The RealityPlus learning method is presented in a safe environment where you gain new skills and practice the most effective techniques to bring back to your job.

  At the end of your course, you are prepared to immediately and successfully apply these new skills within your organization.

  How will this course help me deal with conflict in the workplace?

  When people with diverse viewpoints meet, some conflict is inevitable. Whether a given conflict is constructive or destructive depends on how skillfully people communicate. This course teaches methods that enhance work relationships and communications.

  I am a programmer and don't deal much with people outside my group. Do I still need this course?

  Yes! Anyone who must interact with others inside or outside of their organization must be able to communicate well. This includes dealing with co-workers, direct reports and higher-level managers. While you may not have extensive communications with others, this course prepares you for those important challenges or critical situations.

  How can learning about assumptions improve my communication skills?

  People's beliefs and assumptions are contained in almost everything they say and do. Recognizing when people are making assumptions requires skill. Asking the right questions helps you make others aware of how their assumptions, beliefs and attitudes are helping or hindering them, and therefore improves communication.

  Why should I care about openness and building trust?

  In today's environment where downsizing and restructuring are negatively impacting work relationships, team spirit and effective teamwork are often adversely impacted by organizational change.

  This course shows you how to find the right amount of openness, which helps you develop relationships that are more straightforward and where candid discussions and dialogue can take place.

  How much time is spent on each topic?

  Content	Hours
  Building a foundation	1.0
  Setting clear goals for your communication	1.5
  Avoiding communication breakdowns	2.0
  Translating across communication styles	2.5
  Listening for improved understanding	4.0
  Achieving genuine communication	3.0
  Cross-cultural communication	2.0
  Working constructively with emotions	2.0

  Times, including the workshops, are estimates; exact times may vary according to the needs of each class.

  What kind of activities are in this course?

  You are immersed in an experiential learning environment designed to allow you to practice the communication techniques, tools and strategies presented in class. Approximately 65 percent of the course is spent on activities, which include:

  • Experiencing the difference between one-way and two-way communication
  • Defining your communication style
  • Dealing with challenging emotions through video scenarios
  • Revealing personal filters through simulation games
  • Overcoming cross-cultural barriers through case studies and role plays

  Is this course applicable toward a Project Management Institute (PMI) certification?

  Yes. Though this course is not designed as preparation for an exam, it is beneficial to anyone working toward, or maintaining, a PMI certification. Most PMI certifications require a specific number of PDUs in order to obtain and maintain the credential. Completion of this course provides 17 professional development units (PDUs).

  Learning Tree offers several courses that help you prepare for PMI certifications, including Course 276, Preparing for the Project Management Professional (PMP)^® Exam, which prepares you for PMI's most popular certification. For more details on these courses and PMI certifications, please see the Learning Tree PMI Registered Education Provider Q&A.

  How does this course relate to other Learning Tree courses?

  Learning Tree offers other courses in management, communication and planning.

  • 296, Project Management: Skills for Success teaches principles and best practice of running a broad range of projects.

  • 290, Management Skills provides new and experienced managers with the practical skills needed to lead effective teams of professionals.
  • 903, Public Speaking: Delivering Compelling Speeches and Dynamic Presentations provides the opportunity to significantly improve your public speaking skills by practicing and delivering speeches and presentations in a safe environment with personalised feedback.
  • 902, Business Relationship Management: Aligning IT with the Business offers the best practices of an IT Relationship Manager (ITRM) for facilitating actionable IT solutions that provide value to the business and satisfy the needs of business stakeholders.
  • 294, Influence Skills: Getting Results without Direct Authority focuses on the specific behaviors and attitudes that enable you to achieve desired results without relying on the use of authority.
  • 3405, Developing Your Leadership Voice for Presence and Impact provides the skills to create and apply your own communication style in a way that best represents you.

• Certification/Credits

  Many Learning Tree courses provide industry continuing education credits. You can also earn a Learning Tree Professional Certification in your area of expertise and prepare for popular industry certifications. See below for continuing professional development credits associated with this course.

  	This course qualifies as a Core Course in our Job-Specific Professional Certification Program. Read More...
  	This course is approved by PMI® for 17 professional development units (PDUs). For more on the Project Management Institute and a full list of courses approved for PDUs. Read More...

• Tuition

  3-Day Tuition	Per Attendee	Notes
  Commercial	$2,695	Click here for multi-course savings plans. Tuition payment is not required at time of enrolment.
  Government	$2,370