Meeting

Eliminate Your Team's Time-wasting Conflicts,

Victim Behaviors, and Personality Clashes

Secret Communications Skills That Get Results

Increase Team Productivity Immediately

With Six Proven "People Skills"

"Teamwork is an unnatural act, poorly performed by non-consenting adults, in full public view".... Dick Cochran

Teams don’t automatically work because we haven’t learned how to interact on a team. Given enough time a team may go through the four stages of Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. But we need our teams performing now!

And what’s worse, some teams never get beyond the Storming stage.

You can’t be any more successful than your team!

You've agonized when:

People waste time whining, moaning, and groaning instead of resolving issues.
They don't trust each other and don't share information so progress gets delayed
You spend most of your time working through "personality clashes" rather than doing real work.
Stakeholders, clients, and suppliers outside the team aren't treated well so you don't get the support you need from them to be successful.
The list goes on and on....

Teams need to learn quickly how to interact in positive, supportive ways that enhance team performance.

They need to learn people skills

Hear are the Benefits of These 6 Essential People Skills:

Problem Solving Skills Find The Real Issues To Deal With:

When team members know the Three Step Process we all go through when we encounter a problem they will be able to cut out the time wasting whining, moaning and groaning.
When they learn that they always have Three Choices whenever anything happens, they will feel empowered and focus on getting done what needs to be done.
When they know how to give and get the 4Ws of Commitment (Who, What, When & Where), they will know ahead of time that they are making and getting commitments that will stick.
They will be able to Identify Victim Behavior and quickly move on to productive solutions.
Because they know the Three Step Process, the whole team will move from problem to solution faster.

Adapting Messages To Their Style Ensures That They Hear You:

By reading a person's Social Style, team members will communicate more effectively eliminating rework caused by misunderstanding.
Knowing What's Important to each style will reduce time-eating conflict and friction.
Being able to Deliver Customized Information to people with other style needs will reduce interaction time and increase quality of work.
Balancing the Strengths of the four social styles will increase team effectiveness and productivity.
Treating Each Other the way their social style prefers will raise morale and enhance teamwork.

Building Trust With People Enhances Cooperation:

Delivering Respect reduces conflict and disagreements, increasing output.
Increased Trust makes clients, stakeholders, and suppliers more willing to provide resources and support.
Creating the High Trust environment increases teamwork and cooperation.
High Trust holds the team together in tough times to keep getting work done.

Clarifying People's Messages Increases Communications

Cutting Through "Smoke Screens" eliminates the uncertainty in commitments.
Using "No" Strategies gets more cooperation and buy-in.
The Reactive Responses Approach enables people to handle emotional responses and get things done.

Effective Confrontation Skills Reduce Conflicts

Behavior Requests, get people do what needs to be done.
The Discrepancy Request prevents conflict from starting.
The Planning Check List keeps confrontation form getting out of hand.
The Levels of Confrontation allow team members to get more results with difficult people.

Positive Feedback Encourages "Right Behaviors"

The Structured Approach generates more "right" team behaviors.
The Positive Feedback Process increases morale and commitment.
The Feedback Format ties performance to business results generating team motivation and buy-in.

Bottom line: Take the time spent on needless people issues and spend it getting more useful work done.

These 6 Essential People Skills Are "Nerd Certified"

What does “Nerd Certified” mean?

We all know the “Nerd” stereotype: “Good technically, but not real great with people.”

I was that stereotype. My engineering background didn’t help me at all with people. In one terrible experience, the HR department called me into a conference room so that my team could tell me what I was doing wrong. The team told me that I was too uncaring, to aloof, and to un-sympathetic. I knew then that I needed to learn “People Skills”.

It took me many years of trial and error and the good luck to find a great mentor. Finally I pulled together these 6 essential people skills. Since 1994 I have been teaching these skills to people like myself. I am a “recovering” Nerd (Electrical Engineer} and a “revitalized” people person.

I now have a balance between the Technical Skills, and the People Skills.

Since these 6 Essential People Skills work for any technical background: Engineers, Accountants, IT Professionals....

They will work for anyone

Let me give you some examples of the applications of these skills:

Denver Water trained their entire IT Department
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) trained their Finance and Administration department of fifty-plus people
Johns Manville, trained production supervisors at six different plants throughout the United States.
Hewlett Packard trained the Computer Display Marketing group.
Crystal Specialties trained the Top Management Team and first level supervisors.

Get these 6 Essential People Skills for your team!

In the past you had several choices.

1. You could hope that your HR department had some classes you could use that would help bring your team together. Usually these are generic skills like listening, they might include a detailed personality type inventory like Myers-Briggs, or a conflict resolution course. These classes aren’t integrated or customized for your team

2. You could send your people to different training seminars and then encourage them to share what they learned with the team. Again, there is no coordinated approach and your people are not expert trainers. This type of seminar costs $600 to $1200 dollars for a two day seminar per person and it doesn't include travel expenses. It's too costly in time and money to get all the skills you need.

3. You could just work through it. Get the team together and work out the norms and standards for working together. Who’s got time for that when there is work to be done. This process also assumes that you are a skilled facilitator and human resources expert that can actually get a diverse team through the process in one piece.

Here is a better answer

Our Skillshop™ brings together those proprietary, proven skills, and only those skills that are needed to make your team work effectively. Every member on the team needs these 6 essential people skills. The skills are focused in two areas:

Adaptation Skills to build a high-trust environment so that you can work with any person, no matter what their style of interaction,
Persuasion Skills to get them to do what needs to be done with fewer hassles and less stress for everyone.

We couple the teaching of these 6 essential people skills with interactive exercises that give the attendees opportunities to see and actually experience using the skills before leaving the Skillshop™.

We have condensed this critical information into fourteen hours of intense, interactive, hands-on, learning. It works. People begin to use the skills immediately at work and at home.

I know you are concerned about your return on your investment in time.

Can your team afford fourteen hours of skill building?

Yes, look at the Return On Investment

If you spent fourteen hours training your team and shortened 14 days off your schedule, that would be well worth it.
Think of future time savings if you could keep the team from getting in those “ain’t it awful” gripe sessions
Consider the value of shortening the time it takes to come up with a course of action when the inevitable, unplanned, “cow patty” lands on your project team.
Imagine how much it would be worth to have team members know how to comfortably raise issues before the issues became major problems.
What would it be worth to get the one critical Stakeholder to actually provide the recourses she or he committed to?

So far we’ve only considered the time savings.

Look at the other benefits that good interaction skills bring to the team:

Lower stress,
Fewer disputes,
Higher morale.

It’s a tremendous payback.

The ROI is terrific and the returns keep coming.

Once your team starts using these 6 essential people skills they become habits that keep delivering results. Your team is now better and more productive no matter what the task.

You have created a competitive advantage that will pay dividends for a long time into the future. .

You may still be concerned about how you might implement this program.

You have a business to run. So let’s look at what other clients have done to gain these skills without disrupting their business.

Option 1: Chunk it up: The material is divided into four modules that build with each skill. Each module is three and one-half hours long and delivers skills that are immediately useful. The modules are then delivered two days per week for two weeks.

The first advantage of this approach is that people are able to keep their job function going while they attend the training.
The other major advantage is that there is time between the lessons for attendees to absorb and practice the lessons learned.

At UCAR we repeated the same session in the morning and the afternoon. That way half of the people in a department or job function could attend in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. It also allows attendees some flexibility in choosing which class to attend to work around their schedule.

Option 2: Do it all at once: This approach is to do the Skillshop™ two days back to back.

One advantage is everyone can start using the skills sooner.
This also works well when team members are brought in from out of town because it reduces travel costs.

Option 3: Combo: This option really is about structuring the delivery to work best for you and your situation.

At Johns Manville we conducted a two-day training session at each of six locations throughout the U.S.

Let’s talk about what will work best for you.

We Don't Just Paint People With Training and Hope That It Sticks!

Skills must be applied on the job.

If the skills that attendees learn in the Skillshop™ aren’t used when they get back to work, then we have all wasted our time and money.

Learning specialists tell us if we use a skill 7 times in 21 days we “own” it. We have created this special package of Job Aids and a Success Journal that team members can use. The job aids help a person internalize these skills. They keep the skills fresh in the person's mind for when they really need to use the skill. The great thing is that each person can work on the skills in the order that’s important to them to build their mastery.

Job Aids Turn Knowledge Into Skills

Success Journal: This is the key to long term development of these skills. Each skill is covered in the journal with a brief reminder of how to use it. More importantly, there is space to plan and record your successes. This journal is based on the proven adult learning concepts that if you use a new skill 7 times in 21 days, you own it. You develop skills in the order you want and at your own pace.

Reference manual: This 97 page reference workbook provides a resource for those inevitable questions that come up after the training. You can quickly refresh your memory or recall exactly what the right format was for a particular situation.

Skill Cube: This 3 inch desktop fold-up cube presents nine of the key concepts for easy reference. Use while you are on the phone or doing your e-mail. When someone walks in to your office, quickly check the Social Style Matrix for the key word reminders. Use the Ableness Question to uncover the real issue.

Skill Cards: These are set of 10 business-card-sized reminders providing 20 key concepts for review and practice. The set can easily be carried in your pocket or PDA wallet. It includes everything from Behavior Request formats to the Ableness Question. Use them in meetings or anywhere a quick reminder will help.

The Self-Perception Guide: This reference book will give you additional information on your social style. It will also give you a perspective on the value you place on certain behaviors and how you tend to get things done with others. It helps you build on the strengths of your style and emulate other social style elements for growth.

Our goal is to make it easy for attendees to effect permanent changes in behaviors. By changing your behaviors you change your results.

This Program Gets Results

Or You Don't Pay

If this Skillshop™ does not meet your expectations within three months of completion, contact me for a full refund of the training fee. This is an iron-clad, no-questions asked, money-back guarantee. You get the training fees back and you get to keep all the materials and job aids.

First Quarter Special Offer

We have put together a special package that will hold your investment fixed for any Skillshop™ delivered in 2009.

Normally if you sent your people out for training for a two-day seminar, you would expect to pay over $1000.00 per person plus expenses. And they would be in a class of thirty to forty people.

Good learning doesn’t happen in large classes. We limit our class sizes to 18 students. The students get interactive participation, real life practice and outstanding learning.

Our special price for this offer is $9879 for up to eighteen people. (You save $8,121 over an outside seminar and that does not count the savings in travel)

This package includes:

* Up to 18 class attendees

* 14 hours of interactive learning

* Plus a comprehensive 97-page reference manual for each student. (A $1602.00 value)

* And a Social Style profile and reference book for each student. (A $666.00 value)

Additional Take Action Bonus

Place your order before December 31, 2009 and receive up to two hours of telephone/email coaching for each attendee during the 90 days following the session. (That is a $2369 value)

My goal is to get these 6 essential "people skills" generating results in your organization as soon as possible. We will help your people internalize these powerful skills and make them operational. You and your organization realize the benefits immediately.

Contact me, Dick Cochran, with no obligation, and we’ll work out the details.

Call me at 303 666-4224

Toll free at 1-866-317-4224

Email me at Info@CommunicationsInTheWorkplace.com

Get your group trained and focused to make a big impact in 2008

President

P. S. When your team is successful, you are successful.

Here is an additional Bonus for Continental U.S. Clients

I know that to bring in a program to get the 6 essential people skills that your team needs to dramatically increase productivity it really helps to have all the costs predictable and nailed down.

How does $0.00 costs billed to you for travel, meals and lodging sound?

You will get the 6 Essential People Skills training for your team. COMStar will take the responsibility to get to your location. You save typically $900 dollars, and you don’t have to worry about charges you can’t plan on or going over your budget.

Contact me by December 31st to take advantage of this offer.

Call me at 303 666-4224 Toll free at 1-866-317-4224

Or email me: Info@CommunicationsInTheWorkplace.com

Teamwork training pays big dividends in higher team performance

Building teamwork requires six essential people skills