Is facilitation training important? After all we can all learn from other employees or from outside consultants we bring in can’t we?

Well, in my previous life as a consultant IT project director I noticed people would often be too busy doing their own job to learn the skills of an outside consultant too.

That’s despite massive efforts made to train people.

But unless skills are used regularly after training they fade away.

Learning from others in your own organisation can also be fraught.

Learning by “sitting next to Nellie” as it’s known can work. But it means that any weak custom and practise procedures are copied.

These weak procedures may actually be the direct opposite of the company strategy.

Also if you’re learning from someone because they’re just about to leave the company . For whatever reason.

You don’t get their total focus on teaching you their job.

So ways of doing things can become less and less effective as time goes on.

That means that service to your customers becomes worse. Simply because the people serving them don’t know the best way of working.

Research shows that over 60% of customers leave a business because of poor, ineffective or indifferent service.

Let’s look at the story of two woodcutters

Once there were twin brothers. They were tall, strapping lads who had both become lumberjacks at the same time. One year they took part in a logging competition together. Each was strong and beat everyone they came up against. Until they reached the final where they met each other.

They seemed evenly matched. The crowd looked urged them on as they both started cutting timber at a strong rate of knots. After an hour one of the brothers stopped for a few minutes. Let’s call him the “idle chopper”. He soon resumed work but every hour he kept stopping.

Eventually the competition finished and it was immediately obvious that the idle chopper had cut down significantly more wood than his brother.

His brother shook his hand to congratulate him and asked, “how on earth did you cut twice as much wood as me despite stopping so frequently?”

The idle chopper smiled and said “I wasn’t really resting I was sharpening my axe so my cuts went deeper faster than yours with your blunt axe.”

The “idle chopper” was really the “smart chopper” because he’d taken to heart what President Abraham Lincoln had said.

Abraham Lincoln said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

People can look at training as a complete waste of a company’s time. Because it’s preventing their staff from getting the job done.

But look at the woodcutters the one who kept stopping to sharpen his axe won.

The same is true of any company that gives their staff training. It may stop the busy, busy time for a short while but it means that staff become more productive and therefore achieve more.

Getting yourself and your staff trained is essential if you want to continue to grow and develop,

If you don’t you’ll be like 90% of businesses over a 10 year time frame and be out of business.

It’s really that stark a choice.

There are a number of effective training strategies that I would recommend you to use.

Two of the most powerful are as follows:

a) A Weekly Company Workshop b) Formal Courses – with a twist

Let me explain exactly how they work so that you can go and apply them in your business immediately.

Weekly Company Workshop

1) Set-up an hour per week where all employees gather together.

The first workshop is the Set-up and Introduction Workshop.

2) In this workshop you all brainstorm the issues and problems that you and your customers have with the company.

Someone is designated to takes action notes. That is notes that simply list the actions to be taken with the person responsible and the date to be completed (always before the next meeting).

3) You then prioritise and agree the issues amongst everyone there.

Hint: Give particular weight to customer issues as they are quite likely to resolve one or more internal issues too.

4) Provide a full list of prioritised issues to all attendees. The attendees should be everyone who works for the company, unless they’re sick.

The Second and subsequent workshops are Issue Eaters

5) Take the first issue from the list that was issued the day of the last meeting – it’s that important.

6) Brainstorm possible solutions to the issue.

For example the customers are returning a product to you in large numbers but you can’t see why. The issue is “You don’t know why the product is being returned”.

Several possible solutions occur:

a) Ring customers and ask them why they’re returning them. Also ring customer’s who’ve kept them and ask them why too.

b) Send every customer a questionnaire asking several questions, including one on returns and also specifically for the product in question.

c) Ask the sales force to go and see each customer and ask for their most honest feedback.

d) The managing director to ring the companies concerned to see what the problem is.

Collate the answers and provide the information and analysis to the group the following week.

7) If the solution calls for a better procedure or company process to be implemented designate someone to write it and for it to be issued before the next meeting for review and agreement.

 Only address one issue per session – even if you finish it in 10 minutes. But you must focus completely on that issue.

9) Review the solution and check that it is working. Then sign it off and add to the list of completed issues.

Guess what you’re building with the documentation?

It’s a company file that allows new staff to get up to speed on how your company has got to where it is now and what the current procedures and processes are.

Not just that. It means that at a stroke you’ve pooled the brainpower of several people to produce new and better ways of working that help customers and your staff.

You tell me. Do you think your customers are going to become even happier with an organisation that addresses and resolved issues?

Now you may be thinking I’m only a one person or two person company?

This method applies equally well to you too.

The great thing about it is that as long as you document you’ll have processes in place when you get more staff.

Formal Courses – with a twist 1) Have a formal training strategy for each person. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a one person or 3,000 person company. You need a strategy because otherwise you’ll get asked for training that doesn’t fit with your company goals.

2) Plan what courses staff (and you) should attend during the year.

3) Attend the course – there should be no excuse for non- attendance.

4) Now here’s the twist before your staff go on the course tell them that you’re going to ask them to do a short presentation on the course at the next weekly meeting to all the staff. The presentation is a short summary of the course content, and the 6 to 10 things that the person has learnt and will apply in their job. Followed by 10 minutes of questions.

The reasons for this are:

a) Others benefit from hearing what the course was all about b) The attendee will pay much more attention to the course and learn more from it c) You’re training staff to feel comfortable giving presentations in a relaxed environment. d) Other staff may learn things they can apply in their job.

5) Make sure that they do the presentation. If not you get none of the benefits outlined previously. Make sure everyone does the presentation, even someone who is quaking in dread. Help them get over it by letting them stay seated, or just present over 2-3 weeks. But make sure they do present – it must be a condition of attendance.

6) Been on a course yourself? Right. You do the same as your staff. They’re learning about what you do.

Finally and most importantly there is a set of Golden Training Rules I always use which is

a) Training must be applied when you return from the course b) You and your staff must support attempts to use the training. It may not work very well initially as people start to apply it. c) Re-train at intervals because skills can only be improved by repetition. Look at karate, golf, football and other sports you have to keep practising to get better. It’s the same with work training.

For example people learn everything on a time management course but maybe only apply 10% of what they learnt and forget the rest. When they go again they learn pretty much the same thing but then apply another 10% of what they learn and forget the rest.

So over time they apply more and more of what they’re taught until eventually they’re using all the time management techniques and are experts. Get them to teach new staff!

d) Once you’ve got trained up experts use them to train your own staff.

Does training staff stop the company making money? Ultimately the answer is it makes you even more money than you did before they were trained.

Remember the two axmen?

You want to be the smarter chopper.

Jim Symcox – The Marketing Magician
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/can-you-afford-to-waste-time-training-staff-548.html

A group of senior executives are finishing up a three-day program at a top management leadership training center. They’ve already filled out evaluations of the courses they took and the instructors. Now they’re grading the facilities and meals. Soon they’ll be heading back home to see what work has piled up while they were gone.

This scene is played out countless times every day, all across the country. It also tells you a lot about the mistakes companies make with leadership training.

Companies spend millions every year to send top managers to multi-day, off-site leadership programs. At the same they spend only about 7 percent of the training budget on first line supervisors.

But it’s those first line supervisors that make most of the difference. Jeff Immelt, current CEO at General Electric, says that when he was a boy, he always knew the name of his father’s supervisor, but rarely knew the name of the CEO. That’s normal.

First line supervisors determine whether workers are engaged or not. They’re the leaders who assure that teams have both high morale and high productivity. Why not spend some training money on them to help them do a better job?

The other thing wrong with spending leadership training money on senior managers is that they’re not likely to change much. A manager who’s been plying the leadership trade for a couple of decades isn’t likely to make a big, effective behavioral change because of a couple of classes.

To make matters worse, most management leadership training uses ineffective methods. Companies spend millions every year on classroom-based training that isn’t much different from what you’d see if you could go back in time to almost any Medieval university.

In both cases there’s one person in front of the room talking to a bunch of other people. Oh sure, today there would be PowerPoint slides and the seats might be more comfortable, but Martin Luther would have no trouble recognizing what’s going on.

In this medieval training model, the instructor lays out some basic principles and then works down to specific applications. That might be great for the teacher, but it’s not the way that most human beings learn best.

Think about any baby you’ve been around. There’s not a general principle in sight. The baby sees things, touches things, runs into things and tastes things and then turns all those experiences into general principles.

That’s how most adults learn, too. The most effective sequence is from specific point or experience to general principle.

What we need is more leadership training that uses methods that are more effective than lecture, or even lecture with PowerPoint and handouts. We need to use more methods that offer opportunities to learn from specific, relevant situations. And we need to use more methods that allow for reflection.

But, just because training is different from our Medieval model doesn’t automatically make it effective. There are a lot of programs out there based on the principle that we have to do something special to make learning fun. Other programs grow from the need for trainers and consultants to sell something “new.”

That’s why you have management leadership training that isn’t training at all, at least not in leadership. Executives can try outdoor adventure training which can be lots of fun or they can learn leadership by cooking, which probably helps the executive be more helpful at parties. But how do either of these make you a better leader? None of these trendy methods seem to do much about helping you learn leadership, but they’re a fun way to spend the training budget.

Here’s another really important thing. A lot of great classroom training never finds its way back to the workplace. It never seems to make any difference in what the leader-trainee does.

That’s because companies spend their time and money on the training and forget about the learning. That’s up to the individual, but companies usually don’t even bother to set learning expectations or check to see whether a trainee is using what he or she was taught. They should.

Marshall Goldsmith reviewed how well 86,000 leadership training participants actually learned from the experience. He found that the people who went home, talked about the learning and worked, deliberately to implement new behaviors learned best. But those who just went back home and did no follow-up showed no improvement at all.

The sad fact is that we know how to do good leadership training; we’re just not doing it. Here are some things your company should consider.

Spend time and money training your first line supervisors and new managers. Help them put together a self-development plan that will help them learn on the job. You’ll get the most bang for your buck that way.

Make sure the leadership training you choose addresses specific skills and uses effective instructional techniques. Set specific learning objectives for everyone you send to training.

Make sure that people who go through management leadership training get help and encouragement when they get back on the job. Follow-up to see that they’re working to implement what they learned.

Wally Bock
http://www.articlesbase.com/leadership-articles/why-most-leadership-training-is-a-waste-of-money-and-what-you-can-do-about-it-82050.html

In today’s business climate, competition is very tough. The utilization of business management training takes center stage as business owners and executives come up with novel ways and innovations to get a step ahead of their rivals in the market. These projects go beyond the usual daily operations and are necessary to help the business grab attention as consumers are always attracted by new things. To help businesses succeed in their respective projects, project management training comes into play.

Management in general requires advanced learning and training to ensure that the business prospers and that it is being handled by competent managers.Business management training in this sense deals with the business framework as a whole.

On the other hand, project management is a different approach for an entirely different aspect of the business. Project management restricts itself to those business activities that have an immediate and shorter life cycle and also a rather limited scope. For instance, an aggressive media advertising campaign for the last quarter of the year, or a departmental reorganization. Rebuilding a corporate website or perhaps sponsoring a high-key sporting event are also examples of business projects that would benefit from the deliverables of project management training.

With business projects by definition having short time frames and equally limited resources at its disposal, the pressures of the project can take its toll on ill-trained project managers. This is where project management training serves its vital purpose.

Basic Concepts

Essentially, project management involves utilizing a limited set of resources within a set time frame to meet very specific goals and objectives. With this in mind, here are some of the basic concepts included within the framework of project management training.

• Project Planning and Design – Goals are set and very specific objectives are drawn up.

• Resource allocation – Availability of resources and controlling allocation are tackled under this topic.

• Organization – This deals with the human resource aspect of the project; how to manage and direct the project staff, task delegation and other such related aspects of dealing with the people working on the project.

• Tracking and Monitoring – Progress of the project must be monitored closely to see if everything is on track and if it is not, what interventions must be made to get it back on track.

• Handling Issues – Part of project management involves finding solutions to foreseeable potential issues and setting contingencies for other eventualities.

• Project communications – Projects have various stakeholders involved especially for huge collaborative projects. As such, communicating to all stakeholders must also be given due emphasis.

There are other details of project management not mentioned for purposes of brevity. Nonetheless, project management as a discipline is so encompassing and integral in modern businesses that professional project managers are required certification or accreditation in many territories.

Effectivity of Training

There is no doubt that the quality of business management training can affect the outcome of projects led by those who have undergone the training program. Insist on a training program that is certified by universities or an appropriate board of professionals in order to have some measure of efficacy. Your company’s investment into project management training will yield better benefits in the long run as you pursue groundbreaking and performance boosting projects for your business.

sheila Mulrennan
http://www.articlesbase.com/coaching-articles/project-management-training-examined-555926.html

Have you ever considered how a PowerPoint presentations training course could help you improve your status in life?  Many people are not even aware that this type of training is available, and thus do not know what they are missing.  However, PowerPoint presentations training could be just what you need to give you the cutting edge. 
PowerPoint is probably already installed on most people’s computers, as the program comes bundled with Microsoft Office.  Despite being so readily available to most people, though, the fact of the matter is that most people do not fully comprehend how to use PowerPoint.  This is too bad, because this simple program can serve as a wonderful supplement to any presentation.
PowerPoint provides a simple way for you to add visual aids to your presentation.  Using your computer, you essentially create a slide show comprised of pictures and/or text to accompany a presentation.  If you would like to, you can even create video slides.  This program is perhaps the easiest way to make a mediocre presentation into a great one.  And whether you are a professional delivering a message to a crowd of thousands or a student delivering a presentation to a class, this program can help. 
PowerPoint presentation training will thoroughly teach you the ins and outs of using the program.  Training will simplify this process and teach you step by step how to effectively create amazing visual aids.  After completing PowerPoint presentation training, you will be fully equipped to quickly create a slide show that can add to a presentation of any sort.  And the best part is that you do not have to be a computer wizard to use PowerPoint. 
PowerPoint presentation training can help you whether you are a novice at using the computer or a long-time computer user.  Find more at http://presentationstoryboarding.com/wp.

Now, the question sometimes arises why communication is so important. And rightly so because people usually don’t tell you why they are important, they just tell you that they are. Important.

My answer to this is that I see that the whole of our society is held together by our ability to communicate. Your ability to communicate with your family and loved ones, your friends, your neighbours, with your co-workers, employees and your clients…

How would it be if you were not able to communicate your thoughts and ideas to others?

Imagine not being able to share with another person your experiences.

And just imagine not being able to find solutions to a problem, or not having the skills to guide others and yourself through a crisis.

If you overlook the importance of communication, and the importance of your own ability to take charge of your life, your quality of life will be diminished. Because the quality of your communication is the quality of your life.

Do you not agree that communication skills hold the fabric of your world together? And do you not agree that improving your communication skill level makes sense so that your life becomes more fulfilled for you and everyone you love, such as your family and your friends?

Because our progress as a species, and our success, has always been dependant on our ability to work together, to cooperate, and to communicate.

With your ability to communicate you can face problems and challenges, and you can find solutions to those challenges so that everyone not just feels good about these solutions, they will also cooperate with you in the future. Because they have confidence in you and trust you.

The question about why communication is important is more a question about how much you want to create a life you want to live in, with all those you love and care about. It’s more about how much you want to increase the quality of YOUR life.

And you can start today with improving your communication skills.

Author: Evelyne Draper, Communication Skills Trainer

Duration : 3 min 51 sec

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In fact, in the 10 years we have been in business, we have seen a slow and steady degradation in the quality of on-screen visuals from all industries. No sector seems to be immune. As PowerPoint has grown to dominate the boardroom, ballroom, and even the classroom, its overall contribution to the persuasive arts has been continually diminished by its increasing misapplication.[section]

Now before you start thinking that this is just one more rant against another evil product from Microsoft, hear this: Our firm not only believes that PowerPoint is a wonderful piece of software, we claim that, overall, it can serve the purposes of true knowledge transfer better than any other visual presentation tool available. And we don’t blame the poor souls who create most of the incomprehensi we see – most businesspeople are simply issued a laptop and a copy of PowerPoint and ordered to go forth and multiply the company’s revenues, with little or no thought to training them how best do so.[section]

The real culprits here are found not in the field, but rather back in the main office, from whence, being at least once removed from the actually application of their misdeeds, THEY can comfortably issue edicts of what one shall and shall not do with the design and construction of presentation slides. If you’ve ever been subject to edicts handed down from the Department of Presentation Regulations, you know what we mean.[section]

So when we see a slew of equally bad slides from different people in the same organization, we’re fairly certain that the company has a slew of workers in a Presentation Regulations Department working feverishly to hamstring any attempt by an employee to make their slides understandable, much less compelling.[section]

Our first such encounter with THEM was while training a large consumer products company in Pittsburgh, where class participants presented us with slides that for the most part looked like full-page Excel spreadsheets copied and condensed to (barely) fit within the projectable borders. Can you imagine how much fun it is to try to read 8 pt. Arial font that’s been compressed lengthwise by, say, 20 percent?[section]

Halfway into explaining why its best to not go much below 20 pt. type when projecting images at the current maximum resolution of 96 dpi, one student raised her hand to explain that they had to use very small type to get all the information they were expected to deliver in the maximum of 8 slides THEY allowed. In other words, Regulations had ordered a limit to the number of slides – not the number of minutes (a perfectly acceptable limit) one had to present.[section]

When we redo a client’s presentation to conform to the rules of comprehension, we often take 10 slides and turn them into, say, 24 – all for the purpose of being able to deliver the presentation less ambiguously, in less time. With properly designed visuals, there is usually an inverse relationship between the number of slides and the time it takes to deliver. Know this: keeping your presentations short is almost always a good thing. Few people ever complain that the presenter simply didn’t drone on long enough.[section]

After numerous inquires by both letter and phone, we discovered that the 8-slide maximum was part of a larger policy that, among other constraints, limited middle-managers to the number of slides they could present based on their company grade level. So managers in the 50-65 level could deliver 8 slides, 70-85’s were allowed 12, 90’s and above could have as many as 20. No mention of the harshness of the penalties for any transgression, but evidently nobody was willing to go head-to-head with the company’s Prohibitor General. Amazingly, a few letters later we learned that the source of most of these dictates had actually left the company four years prior, but her successor was unwilling to mess with corporate policy.[section]

And that, it seems, is how many of these immensely damaging protocols come from – people long removed from accountability, who together form that great entity THEY, by whom all things are denied.

Only after we were given the opportunity to present one of the redone presentations to an open-minded senior VP was the policy changed – but not without his using up some of his political capital to make it happen. (He has since left the company, too.)[section]

Although we also believe that for purposes of branding, or, say, when an executive needs to get similar information on different topics from different direct reports, having consistency in presentation design throughout the company can be a good thing. Our argument is with those who command consistency over quality – and quality in presentation design is all about one thing: do the slides add to the process of knowledge transfer? For the most part we see slides that work diligently against knowledge transfer because they must first conform to protocols that only THEY can dream up. And to change policy, you first need to achieve the impossible: finding THEM.[section]

As consultants we often work as agents of change within organizations, and sometimes that means stirring things up here and there. We believe that in large organizations its often more productive to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, so we urge participants in our classes to stand up to THEM, and create slides that persuade rather than simply conform. As often as not, THEY never discover the difference until its too late and the culture’s already changed![section]

How do you get ideas for great presentations? Get creative and follow these few guidelines:

First, set aside analysis and criticism. They will be important later. Analytical thinking causes a creativity to stop. Once analysis and criticism enter the picture, people censor their thoughts and share only what they feel will be acceptable or what they can defend. Criticism in any form is the fastest way to kill creativity. Next, generate some good ideas to work with. Step back and look at the challenges you are dealing with from a distance. Force yourself to look at several different perspectives. Here are some tools that will help you do that.

Associate
The place where people most often describe getting creative ideas is the bathroom. Those ideas are not the result of an analytical process but are the result of a random association. Association can be formally used. Instead of focusing, associate. What are things that weigh less than a pound, what are possible uses for baking powder, uses for paper clips, items with numbers on them. One idea leads to another.

One idea triggers connections or associations to a new train of thought. In training programs, I use non-business examples to get people to loosen up. Once they are associating freely, they can take that form of thinking and apply it to a work issue. Associate all the things you can think of that effect morale (or effectiveness of meetings, employee retention, customer service, etc.)

Context
All ideas are the result of context. If you have ever lost your car keys, the first thing you probably did was mentally go back to the “context” of the last place where you remember having them. That context might be at the front door or in the car or you remember having the keys in your hand with the groceries. Change context and you get different ideas.

The same principle applies to creativity. If you want to improve morale, what contexts relate to that issue? Possible context might include: training, evaluations, leadership style, involvement, variety of work, positive feedback, focus of the work team, snacks available, bonus plan, etc. Making a list of possible contexts causes a group to step back and generate an overview of the situation. Every issue has many potential contexts and each context opens new perspectives to view the issue from.

What’s working
Whether you are concerned about morale, retention, customer service, project management, leadership, or effective facilitation of meetings, some aspect of your current challenge is working. Or, they have worked in the past. Identifying what’s worked holds great clues to continuing success. Use association to identify what has worked. When a meeting has been effectively facilitated, what caused it?

Reversal
A reversal is looking at the opposite of the current challenge, and also one of the fastest ways to get a group unstuck and creative. If customer service is the issue, forget it for a moment. Instead of improving customer service, make a list of things you could do to make it worse. If you wanted really lousy customer service, what could you do?

I had a conversation once with a man who was deeply concerned that his company would lose its competitive edge in the Natural Gas industry with de-regulation. His concern was obvious. I asked him, “If you wanted to lose your competitive edge, what could you do?” His first reaction was confusion. Why would he want to think about that? His next reaction was a smile. He was so concerned about losing his competitive edge, he hadn’t looked at the things he had the ability to work with.

When you use a reversal to look at an issue, some of the things on the list are actually happening right now. Identify them so you can work with them.

Put it together
Use the tools. Associate to loosen up. Apply association to the issue you are working with. Generate a list of things related or associated with the issue. Create a context list including different contexts that have an impact. Look at what’s working when the issue is working smoothly. Make a list of things you could do to make the situation worse. In a short time, you can come up with a lot of perspectives.

Once you have done this, it is time to bring in analytical thinking. Debate, analyze, and decide what to do next. The better you have done in generating perspectives on the issue, the better your solution will be.

Ed Oakley
http://www.articlesbase.com/motivational-articles/getting-creative-finding-great-ideas-when-you-need-one-part-two-90020.html

Effective communication skills are highly valuable. They enrich our personal and social lives. In business it’s a matter of life and death.

This article will show you how to gain almost instant rapport with whoever you meet whether in person or through writing using highly effective communication skills.

In recent years, much has been learned about the way the human brain processes information. The memories we have, the way we perceive experiences, are controlled by our visual, auditory and kinesthetic abilities.

Everything in our minds is there primarily due to what we see, hear and feel. Remember these three modalities, they are VERY important. Again, they are

VISUAL

AUDITORY

KINESTHETIC

These three modes combine in any learning or communication process. We use all of them to a degree.
However, research indicates that with the majority of us, one of those modes is more dominant than others.

Do you like to learn by watching, looking at diagrams or training videos? Probably you are more visually oriented.

Do you prefer to be told through the spoken word? Or are you the kind that likes to get his hands on the subject and starting doing, learning through a process of experimentation? Then you are probably more of an auditory or kinesthetic.

If this is true of us, it is true of the other person. What if you knew which kind of mode is dominant in the person you are talking or writing to? Could that help build rapport or in some way make your communication skills more effective? ABSOLUTELY!

Companies have spent thousands of dollars educating their salesmen to utilize this knowledge. The results? Dramatic!

How can you apply this very valuable insight? By taking special note of the words and phrases your prospect uses.

People often use expressions that indicate which modality they are thinking in at that moment. For example, “I see what you mean”, “I hear you”, “I’ve got a feeling about this”. When you hear these expressions, sit up, take note. They are sign posts pointing to that person’s modality.

So you have the sign posts, what do you do now? You respond in the same manner. Start using expressions in that person’s dominant modality. Why should this work?

Because words convey ideas to the other person’s mind. You start communicating on the other person’s wavelength. Just like two modems making an internet connection, your two brains start ‘hand shaking’. The effect is amazing.

Skeptical? That’s understandable. Just start, try it and you won’t be any longer. Here is a true life experience.

A successful financial advisor read up on this subject and started employing the methods.

One day he walked into the office of a manager interested in a savings plan. The financial advisor noticed many artistic pictures on the manager’s office walls. He commented on them and gave an honest compliment.

The manager used expressions like “let me show you”, “you must see this”. The financial advisor immediately picked up on this and realized the manager was a visual.

When the time came for him to make his presentation, he started off by saying, “Let me first give you the big picture” and with that he pulled out a diagram. The manager immediately leaned over and started closely scrutinizing the savings plan. From there on it went like a dream.

The rapport was established early on. The manager began to think “I like this man, I can do business with him.” A very good plan was devised which suited the manager’s needs well and both parties were happy – the manager with his plan, the financial advisor with his commission. A win win ending.

Don’t underestimate the power of communicating in the other person’s preferred mode.

Now, how can you apply this in your business? Do you write ad copy or sales letters? Do you do face to face selling or telephone selling?

Sprinkle your words with phrases from each mode and see how the prospect responds. If they respond with similar expressions, you have identified their mode.

Here is a list of words and phrases to help you identify a dominant modality:

VISUAL

crystal clear / focused / flash / hazy / sight for sore eyes / up front / it appears to me / get a bird’s eye view / it looks like / in the mind’s eye / you get the picture / it’s clear cut / take a dim view / tunnel vision / the naked eye

AUDITORY

rings a bell / all ears / certain overtones / harmonize / make myself heard / tuned in / that’s unheard of / to tell the truth / in a manner of speaking / gave him an earful / listen up / tongue-tied / described in detail / sounds like / just say it

KINESTHETIC

I’m conscious of / you can sense / she perceived / lay your cards on the table / come to grips with it / that’s a pain in the neck / pull some strings / hang in there / touch base with / it boils down to / start from scratch / that was under handed / hold on / you need to experience it / in a moment of panic

These lists are just to get you started. There are an abundance of signals out there in the way people express themselves.

You just need to “read the signs”, “hear the bell ring” and “grasp the meaning” behind the words your prospect is using, either in written or spoken form.

Rapport is almost priceless. Agreements, contracts, big business deals are often concluded between people because they sense a bonding between them.

Develop and practice these essential communication skills and your life and business will take on new vitality!

Michael Jones
http://www.articlesbase.com/advice-articles/effective-communication-skills-how-to-build-rapport-with-everyone-you-meet-103740.html

When tested quality programs such as Six Sigma are implemented the right way, process improvement in a company can result in tangible gains within 3 to 6 months. Employees feel satisfied and ultimately, the shareholders also benefit from the overall results. While it is possible for business owners to study quality initiatives and effect changes within their organization on their own, sometimes an external consultant with expertise in Six Sigma might be the best person to help lead the change. Consultants are immune to a company’s internal politics and have the advantage of exposure to information and best practices from other companies where they have implemented the procedure.

Choosing The Appropriate Consultant

Selecting the right Six Sigma Consultant is a vital decision that can have a tremendous effect on your business. Ways to assess a Six Sigma consultant include checking if their experience is relevant, if their track record is successful, if they are willing to impart their knowledge systematically and if they are skilled at training and facilitation.

Features Of A Good Consultant

-Six Sigma Consultants should have a unique blend of skills in Six Sigma and relationship management in team development and conflict resolution.
-They should serve as good communication lines between the employees or the customers and the leaders of the organization.
-They should take adequate responsibility for writing projects, documenting them and making decisions for the project.
-They should be able to lead the projects and facilitate conferences.
-Six Sigma consultants should also be able to make presentations to associates and contribute to a company’s change of management process.

Selection Criteria

-The key to selecting a good Six Sigma consultant is becoming aware of the specific needs and work culture of your firm.
-Companies hiring a Six Sigma Consultant should initially perform a careful assessment of their internal environment and then formulate a team that can oversee the whole process.
-The company should know whether it requires a full Six Sigma service implementation or whether it only requires training.
-The main reasons for hiring Six Sigma Consultants should be their expertise on certain subject matters, are skilled at communication, be it written or verbal, are unbiased and can implement their skills within the company in a non-partial manner.
-Accountability is also an important consideration; if the implementation doesn’t work then it can be placed squarely as the responsibility of the consultant. From an owner’s point of view, it’s easier to blame an external consultant than to take sides within the company itself.
-Cost is certainly a major factor while choosing a consultant but it should not be the only one. The professional fees charged by Six Sigma firms can vary from reasonable to very expensive and the key consideration should be the value that the consultant brings to the organization.

Pre-Hiring Measures

-It is advisable for companies to identify about 10 Six Sigma Consultants and ask for a proposal, based on which, they could shortlist 3 to make a presentation. This method of selection has worked very well for many companies.
-Background information about a consultant can be obtained from other businesses that have been through the process before.
-It is important to select a firm with more than a few years of Six Sigma experience.
-During the selection process, team leaders must decide what role the consultant has to play during the project. The consultant can be a strong facilitator and an experienced practitioner, a team member or a subject matter expert.
-To fit into any of these roles, a consultant has to have strong facilitation skills, in-depth process knowledge, industry exposure and should be able to perform specific tasks for the team.

Tony Jacowski
http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/identifying-and-selecting-a-six-sigma-consultant-54525.html