I.C.E. Improving Communication Effectiveness (2 days)

	Why This Course?
	Learning Objectives
	Audience
	Course Outline and Duration

Why This Course?
Some people call them “soft skills”. They are more appropriately classified as “hard skills”, because they are difficult to master. No matter how great your technical skills, your effectiveness in communicating with others makes the most difference in whether you succeed or not.

A popular PM exam might deal with the question of what percentage of your time Project Managers spend in communication. Those preparing for that exam may be shocked by the answer. What should be even more shocking: most Project Managers and team members have never had any training in how to spend that 90% of your time effectively. Instead, most training involves what to communicate, rather than improving how well you communicate it.

And now, with distributed projects, offshore development teams, and increased need to communicate with all your bandwidth, these skills are more important to Project Managers and key team members than ever before. “ICE” your next project, your next presentation, or your next Status Report with this Increasing Communication Effectiveness workshop.

Beginning with a self-assessment of communication strengths and weaknesses, the workshop is a survey of communication methods, with suggestions for improvement for each. It explores each major facet of communication, in some cases improving your self-awareness, in other cases, reaffirming your strengths. The workshop results include a fresh self-assessment of communication skills, and action planning for improvement.

Learning Objectives

	Evaluate your communication methods, identify which ones are weakest and which are strongest, and then develop an action plan to improve your weakest communication links.
	Identify the greatest barriers to improved communication.
	Describe the importance of communication in the project environment.
	Discuss the need for using more of your senses and the resulting benefits in communication.
	Discuss advanced and special communication situations, and identify key practices that improve results.

Audience
This workshop is especially for Project Managers, and is of value to Sponsors, Executives, Managers, key team members, and anyone else in your project environment that can benefit from improved communication effectiveness. The content specifically focuses on Project-related communication, rather than general business communication.

Course Outline (2 days)

1. Self-Assessment of Communication Strengths and Weaknesses

2. Communication Basics by the Senses

	Barriers to More Effective Communication
	Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking

3. Project Communication Venues: Integrating the Senses

	Persuading
	Interviewing
	Managing Productive Discussions
	Meeting Management
	The Art of Meaningful Emails
	Giving and Getting Feedback
	Online vs. Paper Differences
	Style Differences: Reader/Listener; Thinking Style Impact
	Reading Body Language and other Non-Verbal Signs

4. More Advanced Applications

	Formal vs. Informal Settings
	Speaking; Presentation Differences with Audience Size
	Methods of Verifying Communication
	Facilitating Larger Groups
	High-Level or Detailed: Matching the Situation and the Audience
	Using Graphics and Words for Higher Communication Bandwidth
	Explaining Complex Concepts

5. Special Communication Situations

	Communicating in a Crisis
	Cross-Cultural Communication Issues
	Matching the Communication Skill(s) and Style to the Situation; e.g. VideoConferencing

6. Integrating Results and Action Planning

	Revisiting the Self-Assessment
	Action Planning for Weaknesses
	Building a Follow-up Plan
	Workshop Summary and Closure