Introduction

Welcome to your online Communication Skills for Leaders course. For over 20 years our trainers at Total Success Training have taught thousands of our delegates to become more effective by teaching them practical tips and techniques that can be used immediately.  
 
We’ve designed all of our courses to be both practical and easy to follow and have included topics that we feel will help you to learn quickly and easily.
 
To get the best out of this on-line training course please complete all of the topics but go through each one at the pace you feel comfortable with. You may decide to do it in one go or in stages. It’s all up to you. We have included lots of exercises and quizzes to get you thinking, planning and using the course information in the most practical way.
 
By the end of this course you will feel both competent and confident in conducting interviews. It will allow you to:

You are allowed to complete the course within 30 days of booking. During this time you can take as many attempts as you like. Please note, after 30 days your booking will expire and you will have to repurchase the training course.

This online course or any portion thereof may be copied, reproduced or used in any manner. Permission granted to reproduce for personal, educational or commercial use.

Why Is Good Communication Important?

Good communication is a vital skill because it allows the manager to function effectively in all situations, such as:

• being able to respond to criticism with confidence
• knowing how to get the correct information quickly
• influencing and persuading colleagues during meetings
• the ability to motivate someone towards achieving an objective
• handling objections and opposition when making proposals
• developing special skills when assessing, interviewing and appraising people
• learning to use the dynamics of conversation for both problem solving and social use with friends

Those who practice good communication find the following benefits

• an ability to get to the heart of matters quickly
• an enhanced ability for recognising what people are really saying, but not expressing
• an easier way of responding, especially when under pressure
• becoming less reactive and able to manage their own communication more effectively
• to be able to manage conflict in a calm and effective way
• to negotiate effectively and achieve objectives quickly
• to learn to be firm without giving offence
• to get people to think more creatively about the job
• to get others more involved in planning and implementation

There are no quick fixes to good communication, it is a skill which needs to be practiced everyday, but we spend 85% of our time in conversation with other people so the techniques can be used everyday in all situations.

In this course we will be following effective communication strategies and using techniques based on Neuro-linguistic programming to achieve our objectives.

How to Increase our Confidence

Can you remember some time recently when your spirits were up? Perhaps the boss had just told you that you had been successful, maybe promoted; or you dressed in a way that drew several compliments; or you handled a difficult problem with a colleague and everything turned out well. Would you agree that this is what it feels like to know confidence?

Can you remember another occasion, when you made an embarrassing slip or a costly error; or you were criticised angrily by your boss or someone close to you; or you felt helpless in handling a problem with someone? Again, go back and relive the feeling you had, even though it may be painful, just for a moment, then shake it all off. Would you agree that that feeling could approximate to lack of confidence, for you?

Now relax for a moment, then feel the 'state of confidence' you are in today, this moment. How high is it in relation to each of the two 'examples' you relived a few minutes ago? What words, sounds, colours or textures would describe your level of confidence, now? And how would you rather be, in terms of confidence, now? When our confidence is less than we would like it to be, it usually means we have allowed our thoughts to dip into one or more of these feelings:

• worthlessness
• helplessness
• hopelessness

Two ways in which we unwittingly contribute to the lowering of our personal confidence, are:

1 . By losing connection with the positive values that drive us

2. By allowing our internal 'self-talk' to influence and 'self-sabotage'.

You may already know the core values in your life that are very important to you. If you are not sure of them, we can help you to quickly identify them. Without thinking too much about it, recall three times in your life, not just your working life, which were very significant for you in a positive way. Taking the first instance that you have recalled, ask yourself:

1. ‘So, what was it that I really got out of this?’ (maybe ‘satisfaction’, ‘recognition’, ‘peace’ etc)

2. And when you have the answer, ask yourself the next question - ‘And what was important for me, in that situation, about feeling (recognised, or satisfied or peaceful etc)?’

3. And the next question, after you have an answer to question 2 (maybe your answer was something like 'feeling recognised gave me a sense of worth', for instance) is - 'And what is significant for me about having a sense of worth?’

Repeating this sequence of simple self-questioning with each of the three life situations we have chosen, leads us to our core values. The sequence is - 'What did I get from this?'; 'And what was important for me about that?'; and 'What was significant for me about that?' There comes a point where we identify 'core values' like 'trust', 'security', 'love' etc.

It is likely, in a stressful or problematic situation where we are not feeling as confident as we would like, that one or more of our core values is not being met. Moreover, our core values may be being seriously transgressed or violated by what or how someone or others are being/doing.

The key is to:

1). Be aware of my core values

2). Be aware of the problem and notice how it affects me

3). Ask myself - “Which of my core values is being violated here?”

And if you can identify that for instance, the value 'integrity' is being transgressed, - then you are getting some way to understanding the cause of the problem. How you choose to respond will depend upon the circumstances though it is recommended that the best way to 'recover yourself is to remind yourself of all the good things that that particular value means to you. Recalling a time when that value was supremely met will do this and 'spark' an associated positive state.

Reframing

If you were asked, "What does a footstep mean?" you would probably answer, "It doesn't mean anything to me." But what if you're sitting home alone late at night, and you hear footsteps downstairs? A moment later, you hear the steps moving toward you. Do the footsteps have meaning then? The same signal (the sound of footsteps) will have many different meanings depending upon what it has meant to you in similar situations in the past.

Thus the meaning of any experience in life depends upon the frame we put around it. If you change the frame we put around it the context, the meaning changes instantly. One of the most effective tools for mastering our internal communications is learning how to put the best frames on any experiences. This process is called reframing.

Reframing in its simplest form is changing a negative statement into a positive one by changing the frame of reference used to perceive the experience. There are two major types of reframes, or ways to alter our perception about something: context reframing and content reframing.