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Communication & Collaboration Training
A modular program of learning labs – built to suit
Ain’t nothing soft about soft skills.
Communication between humans is hard – with all their emotions and psychology and not knowing what you’re thinking and stuff.
Every job description on every job board in the world is looking for candidates with excellent communication skills.
And those skills are hard to come by. The prevailing wisdom… they cannot be taught.
Except that they can… For real, they can.
Arguably, every problem you face in your company – and every problem your customers face – has a solution rooted in communication. Better communication, better and quicker solution.
There are three primary ways we help you cultivate world-class communication and collaboration on your team…
1) One-Legendary-Team Program
Team Building has earned itself a bad rep by being boring, annoying, non-specific, and time wasting. So we at The Yes Works often shy away from that term.
And it can’t be argued… You’ve got to build a legendary team if you want people and profits to thrive.
So it’s true that our One-Legendary-Team Labs are also Team Building That Lasts.
2) Soft Skills Training
Some say they can’t be taught. Humbug! Some say they’re squishy, woo-woo garbage. Double-humbug!
At The Yes Works, we dislike the term “soft skills” even more than the term “team building.” That said, we know what people mean.
They mean interpersonal skills, people skills, creativity skills, problem solving skills.
We’ve called on neuroscience, ancient wisdom, and performing arts know-how to break them down and operationalize them. We converted them into repeatable algorithms of human and humane communication.
We’ll teach you so your team can communicate like the dickens.
3) Leadership Development Program
Leadership is communication. And communication is leadership.
Even the adage, “Lead by example,” isn’t an argument against this truth. It supports it, through another adage… “Actions speak louder than words.”
Leadership development is communication and collaboration training.
The best communicator wins.
You know this. Better communicators:
- Win more sales
- Win more promotions
- Win more friends
- Win more influence
- Win more races (cool story)
In business, the best communicator wins. The team with the best communication wins. How did Zappos win? Communication. How does Gary V win? Communication.
How will you win? Communication.
What’s the secret to TEAMIFICATION? Communication.
- Clarity
- Consistency
- Specificity
- Repetition
- Patience
- Repetition
- Compassion
A key takeaway that participants in The Yes Works communication training programs repeat back to us… “Everything is an Offer.” In other words, “Everything communicates.” And it’s the subtle stuff that communicates the loudest.
- Body language
- Tone of voice
- SILENCE
- Company policies that conflict with stated company values
Most of us are unaware of the subtle communications we’re making every day. Others notice.
Most of us are unaware of the gaping holes we’ve left in communications – and efficiency, momentum, effectiveness, and success fall into those holes and hold us back.
The teamified team – the world-class communicators – they excel. Together.
Legendary teams endure.
Ready to make real change? Take Initiative Today
You might be ready for Communication and Collaboration training if…
Are you and your team human? Are you and your team psychic?
If you answered, “Yes, no,” then communication and collaboration training is for you.
Communication Gaps to look out for:
- Conflict
- People working at cross purposes
- Accidentally doubling up on work
- The meeting after the meeting (where people later deliberately sabotage what they said they’d support)
- Misunderstandings
- Lost sales
- Too low or declining customer satisfaction scores
- Customer attrition
- Team member / employee turnover
- Confused facial expressions in meetings
- Saying or hearing, “Why didn’t I know about this sooner?”
If you want to get farther faster, in growth, in profit, in momentum, in innovation…
It may well be high-time to get your team into some communication and collaboration training.
Results communication and collaboration training can deliver:
One of our clients, Sage, recently sent us 150 newly hired people with hard-to-find technical skills. They hired us to train these folks in communication skills because a high percentage of new-hires typically quits within 90 days because, while technically skilled, many of these folks didn’t want to keep facing the strain of difficult conversations with customers.
A gap in communication skills was creating painful and costly employee turnover.
Six months after training 150 new hires in a few critical communication skills fit for the scenarios they most commonly find challenging, not one of these new hires has quit. Not one.
If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 100% new-hire retention after 6 months where typically many quit within 90 days.
You can also look forward to:
- Frictionless change initiatives
- Greater visibility for you into every corner of your org
- Less destructive conflict between people (and more productive conflict between ideas)
- Greater clarity and less wasted time
- Fewer resources wasted on misunderstandings
- Meetings that get more done in less time
- Greater overall productivity
- Greater efficiency and (more importantly) effectiveness
- Better learning from failures and errors
- Less fire fighting thanks to more early intervention
How does that future differ from your present?
Communication & Collaboration Training FAQ
Well spotted. Collaboration is communication. Improve communication – improve collaboration.
Collaboration is about bringing what you’ve got to the party and discovering together how, where, if what you’ve got fits into the shared objective.
It’s a communication process.
When we build out the communication and collaboration training program to meet your needs and objectives, we’ll bring in all the collaboration-specific tools and skills you may need.
Nope. Wherever you are, we’d be happy to come to you.
Sometimes that means we hop on a train, car, boat, or plane.
More often, it means we come to you through the wonders of online video conferencing. And we’ve been training teams of up to 40 people at a time remotely.
Even in that large a group, the training is experiential, interactive, and heavily participatory.
And we can mix it up, as we often do. Work with your team in person for part of the program, and remotely for the rest.
When we talk about what you’re looking for, we’ll co-create a solution that fits you just right. Looking good, Goldilocks!
Good! Then this will be very productive.
You’ve likely heard of (or even read) Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t. One of the often-overlooked but key messages of that book is that great companies are transparent companies. Information flows like water. Silos are dissolved. People share information and resources rather than hoarding them. Information generosity is encouraged and rewarded.
In other words, in great companies, communication isn’t just good. It’s great!
Think of some of the people you most admire in all the world – especially those you don’t know intimately. One thing most of them probably have in common… They’re world-class communicators.
The Yes Works serves leaders who aren’t looking for good communication on their teams. They’re looking for world-class!
In a word… Results.
Clear, articulate, concise, conveying the intended meaning… These are minimum standards for good communication.
Peter Drucker famously said, “Communication is in what the listener does.” So the communicator’s job is to have the listener receive the very same thing they intended. So… Arguably every miscommunication is on the communicator.
Steve Sims is a world-class communicator, and he says, “I don’t communicate so I can be understood. I communicate so I can’t be misunderstood.” That’s the ticket to effectiveness every time.
Good communicators communicate with well-chosen words. World-class communicators take everything into account… Context, body language, tone, etc. – not just their own, but others’ as well. They tailor their message and everything surrounding it to the audience of the moment. They communicate subtly, consistently, on a whole-nother plane.
What would be possible for you, your team, and your company if you were all top-level communicators, picking up on every signal, and sending no mixed signals?
Bye-bye misunderstanding and confusion. Hello rocket-fuel! (Bet you’ve seen Wyatt, our rocket powered snail-friend.)
Yikes… How much do you find you and your team doing that doesn’t need doing because someone already handled it?
How often do you find you can’t use X – which you were counting on – because someone else has already used it?
How often do you find that your most productive team members throw up their hands and go work somewhere else because, “They offered a higher salary.” Here’s the secret they didn’t tell you. It wasn’t for a higher salary that they left.
Ok. Let’s take your premise for a moment. You need to communicate less. I’ll take that to mean you need to spend less time communicating and more time producing.
We can get behind that. People are tired of yak-yak meetings that seem to be more sizzle than steak – and rightly so.
If you want to spend less time communicating so you can spend more time producing, then you need that communication time to count – and count big!
What makes communication time punch above its weight-class?
World-class communication skill.
World-class communication training.
We do!
Who do?
We do!
Sorry. This has devolved into a weird cheer-leading call and response.
We’re upleveling professional communicators every day. Every professional must communicate for a living. Ipso-facto… Every professional is a professional communicator.
Unfortunately, not everyone is communicating at a professional level. And still fewer are world-class.
What does world class communication get you? RESULTS.