Communication Skills for IT Professionals

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Communication Skills for IT Professionals — Seminar Overview

• Overcome Old Habits and Tap Your Full Communication Potential
• People: The Essential Ingredient in Effective Communication
• Enhance the Performance of Your Team Through Communication
• Use Improved Communication with Management to Obtain Support
• Communicate Effectively with Non-Technical Colleagues
• Utilize All Forms of Communication with Confidence
• Deal Effectively with Difficult Situations and People

Overcome Old Habits and Tap Your Full Communication Potential

• What's unique about the technical professional … and how these distinctions affect communication in ways you may not even be aware.
• Finding the "flexibility" in your communication style — why adapting your style could prove critical to successful communication.
• Do personality clashes produce communication barriers for you? Once you've learned the basics of personality styles, you'll be able to adapt your communication strategy for even the most difficult personalities.
• Are you "talking over someone's head?" 3 clear signs that you're not being understood and have lost your listener.
• Why facts don't always speak for themselves: Learn how to "package" information for more effective delivery.
• "Apples to Apples" communicating: 5 essential steps that guarantee better communication with other technical professionals.
• "Apples to Oranges" communicating: 7 guidelines for producing clear, complete two-way communication with non-technical people at every level.

People: The Essential Ingredient in Effective Communication

• Make contact without discomfort: Point by point, learn how to meet people, touch base, and manage social/business situations with ease and skill.
• Techniques for building rapport: Don't be satisfied with superficial affiliations! Learn how to build valuable, meaningful relationships that increase your professional effectiveness.
• Common communication missteps — how to avoid mistakes that damage your credibility.
• "It's not what you say" … Discover what expert communicators know about nonverbal messages, and how you can profoundly impact any message using body language and voice techniques.
• The emotion-communication link: Step-by-step, discover how to channel this essential principle into personal communication power.
• Sit back and listen! You'll be astounded when you try these silence and listening techniques. (Plus, you'll prevent misunderstandings and communication misfires at the outset.)

Enhance the Performance of Your Team Through Communication

• Feedback techniques that leave others feeling confident and comfortable (These proven methods work even when you deliver "bad news.")
• How to bring out the best ideas, increase involvement, and move a team quickly toward its objectives. You'll discover an innovative team communication strategy that enables you to set the process in motion.
• "Summarizing" and "questioning" techniques that prevent miscommunication and bring out the best in every single team member.
• Conflict management: How to resolve the inevitable conflicts that arise in teams. (Even long-standing problems and disagreements can be overcome.)
• Cutting-edge meeting management techniques that shave hours off team meetings without compromising productivity.
• "Sincere praise" — an essential tool for encouraging the behavior you want from others.
• How to turn average workers or team members into "star performers," and take advantage of one-on-one coaching techniques that produce stellar results.

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Use Improved Communication with Management to Obtain Support

• How to get what you want through "informal" negotiating.
• Ways to effectively communicate resource needs.
• Tips for clearly describing conditions, needs, and urgency to get appropriate support for problem solving.
• Techniques that ensure the positive accomplishments and successes of you and your team are recognized.
• Forging "win-win" agreements: a productive system that enables you to negotiate mutually beneficial agreements with subdued, relaxed tactics.
• What do they want? How to uncover and understand the key needs of others. (This is the high-impact "secret" in win-win negotiating.)

Communicate Effectively with Non-Technical Colleagues

• Recognize and control the use of jargon and acronyms to avoid confusing "outsiders".
• Improve understanding of the role and needs of your department or team.
• Make use of nonverbal clues to assure your message is getting through.
• Avoid making enemies, intimidating others, or overwhelming anyone while becoming a successful negotiator.
• Master the use of insightful questions and subtle statements that produce positive results — even with your closest colleagues.
• Improve two-way communication with customers, suppliers, and others.

Utilize All Forms of Communication with Confidence

• Make presentations to groups of any size with confidence.
• Enrich factual information with visual and multimedia material for presentations.
• Utilize electronic communication media effectively (e-mail, voicemail, and more.)
• Take advantage of social networking to build relationships.
• How are you perceived in the eyes of others? Discover how to increase your visibility at every level of your organization by managing limited perceptions.

Deal Effectively with Difficult Situations and People

• How to bring up touchy issues subtly and painlessly — 3 quick-thinking actions that help you keep your composure and communicate well in the face of change, unpredictability, and surprise.
• Various communication styles and tips for adapting your communication to obtain the best results.
• How to appropriately adjust to communicate across generational lines.
• A step-by-step process that enables you to express disagreement or praise with equal ease and give pointed feedback to employees, peers, or managers.

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