Improve Your Business Communications Skills for Success

While “my way or the highway” is often the position taken by people during a disagreement, it is almost always a one-way road to resistance, confrontation, or disengagement.  Alternatively, by engaging in productive dialogue and seeking to understand differing perspectives and conflicting needs, disagreeing parties can create a climate of mutual respect and a positive foundation for collaborative problem-solving.  This half-day interactive workshop will involve participants in exploring and identifying strategies to transform professional disagreements into opportunities for mutual understanding and effective conflict management, both as parties to a disagreement and as mediators in other parties’ disagreements.  The workshop will focus on leveraging participants’ “emotional intelligence” to examine three types of disagreement:  misunderstanding, negotiable disagreement, and non-negotiable disagreement.  Participants will learn to differentiate underlying needs and stated/apparently unmovable “positions”, to suspend judgment and seek mutual understanding, and to use the “5 A’s” of productive conflict resolution.        

Presenter:  Deanne Shapiro, MA, is the founder and president of Life Skills Associates LLC, a training and consulting firm specializing in organizational development and effectiveness.  For 25+ years, she has provided professional services for organizations in the for profit, nonprofit, and public sectors, in such areas as supervisory/managerial skills, leadership development, executive coaching, staff development, workforce diversity, teambuilding, change management, communication skills, conflict resolution, and stress and time management.  She has presented seminars for the Center for Professional Development, University of Hartford for many years and previously taught at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work, Capital Community College, and Bryant University Center for Management Development.

Emails, memos, meetings, reports – the average person in the world of business communicates electronically, in print, or in person hundreds of times a day.  Effective writing gets your work done quickly and effectively; ineffective writing wastes time and may undermine the message that you mean to send.  If you’d like to write more purposeful and effective emails, letters, memos, or reports; be more efficient with your writing time; and feel confident that the message you sent was the message you wanted to send, then this workshop is for you.  We’ll discuss the fundamentals of audience and purpose, explore multiple strategies for organizing effective messages, and offer techniques for fast, effective cleanup.

 Presenter:  Beth Richards, MA, is currently the director of first-year writing at the University of Hartford.  Prior to joining the Rhetoric and Professional Writing department at the University, she was a technical writer focusing on manufacturing and machinery.  She also has conducted numerous business and technical writing workshops for a variety of organizations, including the Connecticut Judicial System.  Timken Precision Engineering, KPMG, Pratt & Whitney, Capitol Region Education Council (CREC), American Savings Bank , and Blum Shapiro.

To give effective presentations, leaders need to know strategies for preparing and presenting ideas and information.  A successful presentation can be a catalyst for both action and decision making.  With a few simple techniques, this seminar will teach participants to master their presentation skills and will boost their confidence about speaking before a group.  Learn strategies to organize and prepare for presentations, to develop content, to design strong openings and closings, to “read” the audience and keep them engaged, to reduce stage fright and anxiety, and to become recognized as a subject matter expert in your field or topic.  When, and how, to use Word or Power Point and how to use visual aids to communicate ideas and information will also be discussed.

    Presenter:  Diane Winston, MBA, is a communications professional with over 25 year of corporate experience with companies that include Citibank, AXA Financial and Pitney Bowes. She has led global initiatives impacting internal and external clients as well as defined revenue-impacting strategies for products, projects and change management efforts. After several years as a freelance consultant, she established Winston Strategic Partners, LLC, a specialized business strategy and communications consulting firm based in Norwalk, Connecticut.  The firm’s clients include large corporations, small businesses, non-profit organizations and individuals.  At the individual level, Winston provides coaching on presentation and communications skills for executives, writes their speeches and develops their presentations.  She earned a certificate from the Executive Education Program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago, and a BA in political science from New York University.

Regardless of the position you hold in an organization, whether you’re on the front line or supporting the front line, your work is affecting customers. With increasing access to information and alternative products and services, your external customer is choosing where to do business based on the level of service they receive.  Of the customers that you lose, it’s reported that 69% don’t return because of bad service.  You also have internal customers who have needs and expectations that must be met.  Learning the essential practices of effective customer service can enhance your business relationships. This seminar addresses methods and sound business practices for establishing and maintaining positive, effective relationships with both internal and external customers.

Presenter:  Deanne Shapiro, MA, is the founder and president of Life Skills Associates LLC, a training and consulting firm specializing in organizational development and effectiveness.  For 25+ years, she has provided professional services for organizations in the for profit, nonprofit, and public sectors, in such areas as supervisory/managerial skills, leadership development, executive coaching, staff development, workforce diversity, teambuilding, change management, communication skills, conflict resolution, and stress and time management.  She has presented seminars for the Center for Professional Development, University of Hartford for many years and previously taught at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work, Capital Community College, and Bryant University Center for Management Development.