ABOUT OUR WORKSHOPS
Whether you’re a first-time speaker or a veteran, a new employee or a CEO, the Communications Academy can help you become more effective.
- We can help you make the most of your time in front of your colleagues, an audience or a TV camera.
- We can make you a more effective, more empowering member of a team.
- We can help you to provide more responsive customer service.
- We can help you to write tighter, clearer, more impactful documents.
ABOUT OUR CURRICULUM
Whether you have an in-house communications department, work closely with an outside advertising agency, or go it alone, working with the Communications Academy means your key players can participate in a workshop that is custom-designed to meet your organization’s needs.
When planning begins for your workshop, the Communications Academy becomes a partner to your organization – ensuring that your staff is prepared to handle any type of communication situation.
After the workshop is over, the facilitator is available as an on-going consultant to provide your staff with special expertise in handling any communications situation your company may face.
ABOUT OUR APPROACH
People learn best when they enjoy the training. Participant comments tell us that one of the things people appreciate the most about Communications Academy courses is the comfortable, relaxed atmosphere. It often means they’re surprised by how much they’ve learned and the skills they’ve strengthened.
The Communications Academy understands that training also works best when it is designed for the audience. It must be interactive and offer true-to-life scenarios and experiences. Most of all, it must be presented in a supportive, non-threatening environment.
Realizing that each business has different needs, Academy facilitators offer a range of courses including both single facilitator and team-facilitated sessions.
OUR SINGLE FACILITATOR SESSIONS
Designed to increase confidence, skill, efficiency and effectiveness, these sessions build on a design created for the University of Pittsburgh College of Business Administration’s communications courses. The difference is that your employees can complete the workshop in just a half-, full- or two-day session instead of a whole semester.
State of the Specialty Writing Skills Tune Up – Whether in half-day or full-day format, this workshop reflects current research on how to communicate more effectively when communicating to inform, persuade or deliver bad news. It provides easy-to-use patterns of organization to simplify the writing process and a grammar refresher to help participants bring their writing skills up to date.
Presentation Skills Tune-Up: This course helps participants improve their content and presentation skills. It enhances presentations made both internally and externally – whether to clients, associates, stakeholders or the community.
Presentations in a Sales Context: Similar to the Presentation Skills Tune-up workshop, this version provides added lecture and discussion time spent on viewing the presentation based on where it falls in the sales process.
Team Chartering – This session can help any team work together more effectively. It is especially useful for new or problem teams. Team members complete various activities to help see their fellow team members as individuals, to see the importance of teamwork and communication and, primarily, to develop and agree on the basic rules of behavior – the charter – under which the team will operate.
“Turn over a New LEAF” Customer Service Training – In this case, the guiding principle for the customer service program stands for Listen, Empathize, Act, Follow-up. This session is flexible enough to be a half day or full day.
OUR TEAM-FACILITATED OPTIONS
Most crisis communication or other executive media training is offered either by former reporters or by public relations practitioners. The Communications Academy offers you a choice. One option is our main facilitator. The other choice is that, if requested, our courses can be presented by co-trainers who offer you and your staff a unique blend of skills and experience. Participants often tell us one of the most beneficial aspects of this training is the differing viewpoints provided by the facilitators. The real-life experiences show how theory works in practical applications.
Media Relations: The Communications Academy Media Relations course prepares participants for interactions with members of the media – at any time and under any circumstances. It covers print and broadcast media.
Crisis Communications: This course prepares participants to deal with both the internal issues and external scrutiny that can be generated in a crisis situation. The course deals with planning for a crisis situation and handling those situations. Participants practice several media interactions over the two days. They may also practice one-on-one interactions with key stakeholders.
