Summary
This one-day program examines personal communication styles and focuses on critical skills of listening, providing feedback, communicating in team settings, and the use of questioning as an intervention. Participants engage in group exercises to examine interpersonal and situational factors that create obstacles to effective communication. They will learn to recognize barriers to communication and choose effective techniques to overcome them, use active listening, questioning and other techniques to ensure mutual understanding and strengthen working relationships, and understand their personal communication style and how to respond appropriately to the communication style of others.

To meet the challenge of management in today's fast-paced, rapidly changing environment, one skill serves as the basic foundation for all of the others: the ability to communicate effectively with all levels of the organization. Without this basic skill in place, efforts to manage daily performance, change initiatives, and cross-functional operations suffer dramatically. The most effective managers, then, are those who develop the critical skills of listening, communicating in a cross-functional, matrix based setting, providing feedback, and handing difficult interpersonal situations. 

Course Outcomes
The program improves managers' effectiveness in nearly every area by examining personal communication styles, critical listening and communication skills, factors that inhibit communication, and organizational communication systems. Participants will be able to:

• Understand the pivotal role communication plays in management effectiveness and performance;
• Recognize the barriers to communication that they create both as senders and receivers;
• Choose effective techniques to overcome those barriers;
• Use active listening, questioning, and other techniques to ensure mutual understanding and strengthen working relationships;
• Understand their personal communication styles and respond appropriately to other styles;
• Develop specific communication strategies to improve the performance of their units; and
• Establish both individual and unit-based communication processes. 

Individual and group exercises structure a discussion and analysis of the barriers to effective communication. Participants evaluate the effectiveness of communication practices, and learn ways to improve results by varying those styles. A diagnostic self-assessment of individual communication styles becomes the basis for each manager's action planning.