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August 12, 2016

Ask Jeff! New Series on Workplace Communication

communication skills trainingLast week we posted about “ways to encourage communication in your office.” Communication is one of those things people tend to take for granted. However, communication skills can always be built upon and improved. 
Jeff Holth, MasteryTCN’s Channel Partner Program Manager, is with us today to talk about a new series of training courses to help employees and managers know “what to say when.” Jeff, can you tell us about this new series and the unique take it offers on building communication skills?

Sure thing. First, the series of courses is called “What to Say When,” and each course offers a short vignette demonstrating a common workplace communication dilemma. The videos use examples to show the wrong thing to say and options for the right thing to say.  Some of the courses are geared toward managers and some of them apply to everyone.

what to say when communication trainingEach video provides quick and simple tips that are easy to remember, and the narrative examples really make the material easy to apply to real life. Plus, each vignette is only a few minutes long – making it easy to schedule in some training throughout the work day. You could even watch the course on the fly if you know you have to go have a difficult conversation.

Can you get into the specifics on what kinds of topics these courses cover?

Yes, so the manager courses cover situations such as, conducting interviews, setting objectives for team members, dealing with an uncooperative team member, talking to a team member about being late, handling conflict between employees, and offering team members praise.

communication skills Some of the courses for employees cover what to say when you’re new on the job, you need help with work, someone breaks a commitment, a co-worker is negative, the boss keep changing priorities, and how to deal with a personality clash with a co-worker.

We published each of the 30 vignettes as a stand-alone course. We also divided the 30 vignettes into two collections; one for employees and one for managers. This way organizations have the flexibility to assign training using these titles in whichever way works for them. They might make all 30 vignettes available for people to take on the individual topics as they need them, or they want to assign out the two collections.

Sounds like this series covers a lot of communication tips for the conversations people might be nervous to have! What a great way to give people the tools to navigate difficult conversations in the workplace. Like we mentioned in our post last week, communication helps an organization meet its goals, and providing the resources for employees to develop these skills is a great first step.
If your organization is looking for training content, click here to get more information on how you can get MasteryTCN courses for your organization.

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