The Leader's Voice Workshop

Oct 23 & 24th, 2008
Vancouver, BC

The Leader’s Voice™ Workshop is a 2-day experience in leadership communication. We differentiate this experience from presentation and other platform skills by exploring the fundamentals of what it takes to get messages through to stakeholders in multiple contexts. Leadership communication is about aligning hearts and minds, stimulating others to greatness, sustaining focus on key imperatives, and fostering group cohesion and performance.

“The Leader’s Voice”™ offers a very unique approach to Leadership Communication and shows participants how they need to communicate in three channels, factual, emotional, and symbolic, in order to create effective communication that inspires people to get results. It deals with the principles of effective communication as opposed to the techniques which tend to be taught in conventional presentation skills.

The workshop is the result of 11 years of research by Boyd Clarke and Ron Crossland which culminated in publication of the book in 2002. Ron and Boyd analyzed 1100 separate pieces of communication and determined what worked and what didn’t and why. They identified the four fatal assumptions of communication which are that people understand you, agree with you, care the same as you do, and will take the action that you think they will take. Participants learn how to recognize and overcome these four fatal assumptions by using all three channels - factual, emotional and symbolic - to create effective leadership communication.

This workshop is highly interactive and participants will learn how to communicate effectively as a leader and will each receive a personal DVD recording of their practical experience. Learning Objectives:

Business leaders who often speak on just the factual channel, and then don't understand why their messages didn't resonate, must understand that employees and other stakeholders will always put the message through their own emotional and symbolic filters. By focusing on the principles of communication outlined in this course, leaders can conquer the four fatal assumptions by inspiring their employees to align and unite toward a professional vision. Speaking in The Leader's Voice™ will help companies achieve greater results, including:

• Better alignment around key strategic initiatives
• Improved productivity spurred by higher levels of trust among employees
• Greater leadership credibility
• Higher morale
• Increased efficiency through crystal clear clarity
• Better communication among all employees

Course Description:

As the matrix graphic illustrates, communication has four domains. Most presentation skills focus on platform skills necessary to perform in only the Public/Direct domain. The Leader’s Voice™ uncovers the basic barriers to communication that occur in all four domains.

While all four domains are important, research indicates that leaders do get greater leverage in both direct communication domains, so the two-day experience is weighted in this direction. The fundamental experience is designed to equip leaders with better communication abilities in order that their key messages stimulate action against their key initiatives.

Workshop Experiences:

This workshop will provide participants with the following experiences:

• Three oral communication practices that are video recorded
• Several additional communication sessions - not recorded
• 11 short interactive lectures on communication topics
• Four group exercises related to communication information, organizational history, or personal action planning
• One written communication activity
• Five video case studies

General Models:

Our ten years of research indicate that leaders who employ the factual, emotional, a nd symbolic (FES) communication model expand their ability to increase:

• Their leadership communication effectiveness
• Their constituents’ willingness to take action
• Their ability to influence change in constituents’ previously held beliefs