Communication Skills for It Professionals

Good communication skills directly affect your ability to get your ideas accepted. Think of how much more efficient you could be if your messages were clearly understood the first time.

This powerful and practical one-day seminar will help your technical professionals:

• Determine why communicating can be such a challenge for technical professionals — and how to overcome that challenge and turn it into an advantage
• Discover proven steps that successful communicators employ to build strong relationships and trust
• Recognize the technical professional’s most common communication goofs … and ensure they don’t cause mistakes or damage your credibility
• Learn a fail-safe strategy to approach difficult conversations or touchy subjects … and get the intended results
• Control the use of jargon and acronyms that can get in the way of optimal communication
• And much, much more!

Overcome old habits and tap into 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
• The basics of personality styles, and how you can adapt your communication strategy for even the most difficult personalities
• Are you “talking over someone’s head?” Three clear signs that you’re not being understood and have lost your listener
• “Apples to Apples” communicating: five essential steps that guarantee better communication with other technical professionals.
• “Apples to Oranges” communicating: seven guidelines for producing clear, complete two-way communication with non-technical people

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
• Common communication missteps — how to avoid mistakes that damage your credibility
• 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 … even when delivering “bad news”
• How to bring out the best ideas, increase involvement and move a team quickly toward its objectives
• “Summarizing” and “questioning” techniques that prevent miscommunication
• How to resolve the inevitable conflicts that arise in teams
• “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 strategies that produce stellar results

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 support for problem solving
• Techniques that ensure the positive accomplishments and successes of your team are recognized
• Forging “win-win” agreements

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 and 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

Utilize all forms of communication with confidence

• Make presentations to groups of any size with confidence
• Enrich factual information in presentations with visual and multimedia material.
• Take advantage of social networking to build relationships.
• Discover how to increase your visibility at every level of your organization by managing limited perceptions.

Deal effectively with difficult people and situations

• Three 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.
• 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

All professionals who have been highly trained in their technical specialty who want to increase their interpersonal effectiveness: managers of technical professionals; project team leaders; any technical specialists; newly appointed leaders or managers.