At this time of year many of us get that ‘back to school’ feeling and turn our thoughts to what we want from the coming year. This often includes the new skills we will need to develop. When it comes to communication skills, I recommend considering what you hope to achieve and how strategic or tactical you will need to be.
Training in communication skills can also take many forms. I cover a range of areas and formats in the training I run for my clients. Find out more about the training workshops I run in the services section of my website.
These suggestions might help you think in more detail about what you need.
Tactical workshops
Some workshops or courses are focused on a specific task, such as presentation skills or social media training. Attendees at these kinds of sessions will typically have very particular objectives and training needs, such as the desire to be as professional as possible in presenting to senior leaders and potential funders or achieving higher click-through rates by improving their use of Twitter.
Practical skills and tips help them negotiate the challenges that they face.
Strategic skills
Other communications workshops take a broader, more strategic approach. These sessions typically look at the core of what an individual or business needs to achieve and consider how a better understanding of their target audience and their messages can contribute to achieving these core objectives.
Going beyond tactical actions to look at the fundamental building blocks of engaging particular groups with well-crafted messages addresses wider strategic communication challenges. The principles and skills on offer can be taken and applied in other contexts too.
What do you need right now?
Both approaches to comms training needs are useful. Each has a role to play in successful organisational communication. Skills from the more strategic approach in particular can be applied in different contexts, whether you are looking to market your new service to a particular group of beneficiaries or involve volunteers in a different way.
The key to getting the most out of any development workshop that you attend is to go along with an open mind, ready to learn new approaches and test them out in realistic scenarios, both in the training room and back at your desk.
I don’t think it’s an either/or situation between tactical or strategic, but rather an assessment of the most helpful approach for your particular goals at that time.
If you would like help with developing communication skills for you and your team, get in touch for a no obligation chat about how I can partner with you to make it happen.
Until next time
Sarah