Sensei

Confident Conversations Workshop 2.0

I like designing new workshops and working on new ideas as much as possible.  So far, I’ve only repeated one course within the Queen’s University Open Learning Programme.  That was my 1-day workshop called Body to Body: How To Communicate Without Words.  Read about it here.  Now, I intend to add to this repeated course hall of fame.  On Saturday, 31 May 2008 I delivered a workshop called Confident Conversations: How to Talk in Any Situation.  Or, as I called it my my post-workshop report blog, The Art of Talking Without Talking.

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What are Businesses Getting Wrong in the Recession?

How can we hang in there?  How can we thrive?  How can we ensure that our largest and possibly most expensive resource is working to maximum capacity? Read more…

Question: When is a Gift Not a gift?

Answer: When it’s a skill.

I teach and coach communication skills.  Notice the word ‘skills’.  Not gifts, talents, or even aptitudes.  Skills.  As such, they are ‘learnable’ by anyone.

As a trainer, I can show people, step-by-step, how to make presentations, negotiate, or run a meeting.  I can demonstrate the way to make a first impression, write a report, and persuade your listeners… as well as listen to them.

I believe very strongly in the ‘anyone can do it’ philosophy of learning.  But there was always one skill about which I hesitated.  Charisma.  It’s such a slippery concept to start with.  We can generally agree on a few people who have it.  But what ‘it’ is, we can hardly say. Read more…