TRAINING COURSE: Sharpen Your Communication Skills Workshop

Mastering Business Writing Techniques:

• Introduction: Why does everyone need to boost their business writing skills?
• The Art of Punctuation - the traffic signals of language: tells us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, or stop.
• A top-down approach to improving text – edit like a reader.
• Effective transitions – holding the flow of thought.
• Tips to maximize impact.
• Polishing the words – poppycock and commonly-confused words.
• Polishing your grammar and punctuation – common mistakes and things that make some people go mad.
• Spelling – using the tools.
• Infinitives.
• Proofing your work – tricks to help you see what’s really there.
• Practical tips to avoid overused business words, replacing them with language that creates rich variety for our audiences. 

Developing Advanced Proficiency:

•  12 golden rules for successful writing that ensure people read what we write.
•  How to analyse complex topics?
• The art of summarizing and explaining complex topics. 
• Inspiring, Influencing & Persuading through Storytelling: how to narrate experiences with enough detail and feeling so our audiences are engaged.
• Newsworthy writing for external audiences that will grab interest and keep people reading to the end.
• Accurate proof reading that picks up errors, confusion and potentially embarrassing mistakes. 

Writing Practical Applications:

• Email Etiquette: tips and tricks. 
• How to master writing for online audience?
• Impactful Presentations: presenting messages clearly so audiences participate positively and remember our key points.
• Writing speeches that grab attention: motivating and persuading audiences when developing and delivering both informal talks and more formal speeches.
• Gold standard letter writing for business: how to structure letters so our recipients read, understand and act on what they read.
• Powerful Reports and Briefing papers. 

Writing Powerfully and Persuasively for Any Situation

•       Put yourself in your audience’s shoe.
•       Using a critical eye to make sure you’re presenting your ideas logically.
•       High impact wording.
•       Document presentation & flow.
•       Building rapport with your audience.
•       Managing expectations: responding to bad news.
•       Effectively handling difficult individuals.
•       How to ensure uptakes?

Introduction to Influence and Persuasion:

•        What is influence and persuasion?
  
•        When do we influence?
  
•        How your behaviour impacts on your chances of success when trying to influence others?
  
•        Understand the power of creating a strong personal effect to confidently influence people. 

Master influencing others:

•        How the mind works: Psychological influence.
  
•        The motivation factors of influence.
  
•        Nudge theory: is this the answer?
  
•       Cialdini’s Model used to influence universally.