Study after study confirms the link between good manager communication and engaged employees. Listen to this webinar and learn what managers can do to become better communicators – and stronger leaders. You’ll learn how managers can change employee attitudes and behaviors, the type of information employees demand, and which communication resources leading organizations provide managers. You’ll leave the session with practical tips, tools and frameworks that managers can apply immediately and insights into what separates outstanding managers from the rest.
What You Will Learn:
- Communication competencies every manager needs
- How to keep managers and employees informed and engaged
- Winning managers’ support for communication
- The best way to alienate managers
- How to convey information, field challenges and brainstorm solutions – in under 15 minutes
Questions that are answered:
- What are leading organizations doing to enhance manager communication?
- What feedback should communicators solicit from managers?
- What do employees want most from their managers?
- What can communicators do to help managers succeed?
Who Should Attend:
- Communications professionals who want to enhance their partnership and value to the business
- First line supervisors and managers who want to take their staff communications to the next level
Instructor:
Andy Szpekman provides human resource management and communication research, strategies and tools to improve business performance. His clients include Bank of America, BC Hydro, Cardinal Health, McKinsey & Co., Microsoft, News Corporation, Scholastic and Wachovia.
Earlier in his career, he led HR communication at Bank of America, served as communications manager for a global division of Warner-Lambert, and was a senior HR and communications consultant with Brecker & Merryman, Inc.
Andy is active in the Council of Communication Management and a former Officer of the Metropolitan New York Association of Applied Psychology. His work has been featured in national news and business publications and leading trade journals. He holds a B.A. in psychology from William Paterson University and an M.A. in organizational psychology from Columbia University.
With the passage of new laws and regulations to curb white-collar crime, executives are paying increasing attention to corporate governance and compliance programs. But what role do compliance programs play in employee behavior?
Research shows that compliance programs can actually do more harm than good when it comes to actual employee behavior. However, carefully designed compliance programs, supported by other elements of culture, can be instrumental in building an ethical culture that not only drives ethical employee behavior but also employee engagement and business results.
You will learn:
- Key research on the connections between ethics and employee engagement
- Four building blocks of ethical culture
- Elements of an effective ethics/compliance program
- Links between ethical culture and employee engagement
- Importance of ethical leadership and trust
- How character gets defined in leaders
- What is moral language, and how to use it
- Three strategies that can make a real difference in creating an ethical culture
- Three steps executives and managers can take to encourage ethical behavior within their organizations and departments
- Three audience segments you need to consider when designing ethics/compliance initiatives
Kate answers real-world questions on:
- Best practices in talking about ethics with employees
- How to reward employees’ for good ethical behavior
- Explaining the success of the hit TV show The Apprentice
- What channels work best when delivering the ethical rules of an organization
- Advice to those in an organization who have either observed or have strong suspicions of unethical behavior in their company
Presented by:
Kate Nelson is a consultant, Wharton professor and author specializing in ethics program design and strategic organizational communications.
- Formerly a senior fellow in ethics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, she currently teaches business ethics at Wharton Executive Education and to executive MBA students at the University of Delaware.
- Co-author, with Pennsylvania State University Professor Linda Klebe Trevino, of Managing Business Ethics (published by Wiley; 4th edition due in August 2006)
- Consultant on ethics and communications for 15 years
- Formerly a principal and communication practice leader for Mercer HR Consulting in Philadelphia
- Formerly vice president and head of worldwide HR communications at Citicorp in New York City; held similar positions at Merrill Lynch and Honeywell
- Guest speaker on ethics and values at many conferences and organizations, including the Conference Board, World@Work, Society for Human Resources Managers, Young Presidents’ Organization, the Ethics’ Officers Association and Wharton Executive Education.
- She has designed and/or conducted ethics training programs for numerous business schools, including Harvard, University of Chicago, Columbia, Vanderbilt, NYU, MIT, Temple and Northwestern; and for numerous organizations, including GE, Johnson & Johnson, J.P. Morgan, Prudential Securities, Morgan Stanley, Aviva, Degussa, Shell Oil, AC Nielsen, Glaxo SmithKline, Citibank, Dupont, Lockheed Martin and NASA.
- The ethics game that Kate created at Citicorp, The Work Ethic, was awarded the Gold Quill of Excellence by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) in 1987 and was featured in numerous media, including the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Fortune.
- Communications she created have been recognized by the American Institute of Graphic Artists, the Art Directors Guild, the IABC, and have been exhibited in the Whitney Museum of Art in New York.
- She received her B.A. from the College of Mount St. Vincent in New York City and has been affiliated with Wharton since 1991. Kate also is a 2002 graduate of Leadership, Inc., a Philadelphia organization that mobilizes the private sector on behalf of the community and trains executives to serve on boards of directors.
- She is a member of the Council of Communication Management (CCM).
Internal communications measurement is fast becoming a critical skill for communicators and the profession as a whole. Knowing the basics of research, analysis and reporting are essential to the ability of internal communication to deliver business results that drive corporate performance. Using research the right way will help you continuously improve programs and earn the respect of leadership.
Recognizing that this is not a shallow topic, and measuring internal communications is different than measuring PR, Communitelligence has invited two of North America’s premier experts to walk us through the most critical insights and tactics that all communicators need to know. This webinar won’t make you an instant measurement expert, but it will school you enough to shift your role and amp up your department’s output to the next level.
What You Will Learn:
- The new normal: how leading companies are measuring and reporting their internal comms programs today
- Starting with the basics: how to set measureable objectives
- Moving the needle: a scientific approach to isolating the effect of communication on employee behavior
- How to conduct research and plan your goals and program accordingly
- Aiming for the holy grail: some simple ways to measure communication’s effect on employee engagement
- Asking the wrong questions: the 10 biggest measurement mistakes
- How to analyze basic data to find actionable insights
Presented by:
Angela Sinickas ABC is author of How to Measure Your Communication Programs (now in its third edition), and chapters in several books. Her 140 articles in professional journals can be found on her website. Her pioneering work in measuring the effectiveness of organizational communication has led to consulting assignments and speaking engagements in 29 countries. Her work has been recognized with 17 international-level Gold Quill Awards from IABC, including two for her website, and a Bronze Anvil from PRSA for her measurement newsletter.
Claire Watson, ABC, APR is president of Words with Wings . . . where strategy meets inspiration, and a master communication strategist with a passion for excellent communication. Her work has earned 30 international and over 150 national and provincial awards of excellence. She has managed multi-faceted communication programs for the federal and provincial (Saskatchewan) governments, and for private sector companies. Teacher, speaker, author, mentor and a consummate professional, she has taught Public Relations and Communication Management for the University of Regina. Her broad range of experience includes the full range of integrated employee, marketing and communication activities. Claire has worked with IABC at the chapter, regional and international levels for 17 years. She was the recipient of the 2012 IABC Chairman’s Award for global leadership in communication and service to the Association.
“Participating in this webinar was a wonderful experience that is worth a repeat!”
Mobile is changing everything, including what employees expect from your intranet and internal communications. As employees increasingly see rapid improvements in their mobile user experiences on the open Internet, they’ll demand it from their organizations as well. Now Google has further emphasized its commitment to ‘Mobile First’ with the acquisition of Motorola Mobility. This could be a major game changer as other companies react to this challenge.
Now is the time to position your organization to take advantage of mobile technologies in 2012 to make better connections with employees working away from their desks for extended periods. Join Martin White, noted intranet and mobile expert, and Terry Pulliam, Director of Communications at Sprint, in this webinar to help communicators, HR and IT professionals start mapping out a sensible mobile strategy. Hear what’s working, how one leading intranet is tackling the challenges of mobile, and what you should be thinking about right now.
What You Will Learn:
- What mobile isn’t (the desktop only smaller)
- Where to start – what do employees really want?
- Making a business case for investing in mobile
- Who should own mobile service development inside the enterprise
- The technology and governance of mobile collaboration
- Why mobile intranet design is only the tip of the iceberg
- The trade-offs between web apps and native apps
- Key considerations when choosing your mobile strategy
- Lessons to be learned from best-practice mobile intranets
Presented by:
Martin White is a leading European authority on intranets, workshop leader, columnist, book author, professor and Managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd. Over the ten years has undertaken assignments in North America, Europe and the Middle East as well as in the UK. He has extensive business experience in the USA, having first visited in 1975. In the early 1980s he worked for Creative Strategies International, Cupertino, and from 1984 to 1989 he was a senior manager at International Data Corporation, Boston. He has keynoted a number of US conferences, including the Enterprise Search Summit in 2004 and in 2008. He is the author of The Content Management Handbook, Making Search Work, and Successful Enterprise Search Management (with Stephen Arnold).
Terry Pulliam is communications director at Sprint, where she guides the strategic direction of the company intranet and social media sites, employee communications editorial strategy and creative media services.
Terry and her team have received numerous IABC Gold, Silver and Bronze Quill awards, and her work has been recognized in industry forums including “Intranet of the Year” from the International Quality and Productivity Center, and CIO “50/50 Award” for top 50 intranets. She is a past president of the Kansas City chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.
Previously, Terry was director of internal communications for Sprint’s wireless division. She has also worked for a national association and advertising agency J. Walter Thompson. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Missouri – Columbia.
Who Should Attend
- Intranet managers, internal communications, IT, human resources, public relations, corporate affairs, media relations, and issues management.
“Great overview.”
“Provoked thought on avenues and alternatives I hadn’t considered for addressing security concerns.”
Times have changed. In today’s world, communication moves at the speed of light. People want information, and they want it now. On top of that, they want it in more creative formats than before, thanks to the social media tools taking the world by storm. And your employees are no different.
In this webinar, you will hear from two internationally recognized companies – Monsanto and Sprint – that have taken major steps recently to meet employee expectations with major initiatives to improve their employee communication strategies, tactics and tools.
Katie Sauer from Monsanto will talk about the evolution during the past two years since they launched a complete overhaul of the company’s employee communications. Specifically, she will describe Monsanto’s online news publication and why it is now regarded as a best practice in the profession.
She will explore a number of provocative questions.
- Are your employee news publication and intranet meeting their needs?
- Are you giving them honest facts or corporate-speak?
- Are you sending them weekly or monthly publications, or are you giving them up-to-the minute information?
- Are you communicating things your way or their way?
Jennifer Sniderman from Sprint will talk about how the company decided to seize unprecedented opportunity to build on their efforts to revolutionize the customer experience and use the same approach to facilitate conversations among employees and help surface the “why” behind key decisions. By blurring the lines between Sprint Space (internal social media platform) and i-Connect (the company-wide intranet) Sprint continues to drive authenticity and engage key employee influencers.
In this presentation you will learn how Sprint’s News 2.0 strategy is:
- Activating our brand from the inside out, by making employees active participants in revolutionizing the customer experience; tapping collective wisdom, acting on what we learn
- Spreading optimism at new speeds
- Driving confidence in leadership at all levels
- Decreasing communications clutter and reaching employees in ways they’ve embraced outside of work
Both of these remarkable case studies underscore the need for a plan that allows you to communicate with your employees—and vice versa—in the honest, simple and fast way they expect. At this webinar, you will learn how to create an online communication mechanism that will become an integral part or your employees’ lives.
What You Will Learn:
- How to write and produce stuff your employees will want to read—and trust
- How to integrate social media tools into your employee communication strategy
- How to get legal and management backing you
- How to use your intranet publication to change your company’s culture
Presented by:
Katie Sauer is a communications manager for Monsanto, where she is responsible for writing content for both the company’s employee news site and corporate Web site. She has worked for Monsanto since earning her bachelor’s in communication from Truman State University in Missouri. She worked in sales and marketing for Monsanto before moving to public affairs in 2006.
Jennifer Sniderman oversees employee communications channels and editorial including Sprint’s corporate Intranet and Sprint’s social media platform. She is responsible for developing the news strategy and messaging architecture for enterprise employee communications.Jennifer leads the team responsible for Sprint’s IABC Gold Quill award-winning leadership communications program and is the managing editor of i-Lead, Sprint’s bi-weekly online newsletter. Jennifer is also the executive producer/writer of a recurring talk-show broadcast to the desktop of Sprint managers nationwide. In her role at Sprint, Jennifer has developed numerous multimedia campaigns and interactive communications solutions. She is currently working on Sprint’s social media strategy for employee communications and enhancements to Sprint’s integrated online leadership community.
Les Landes is President of Landes & Associates. His firm provides services in the areas of planning, marketing, public relations, organizational communications, team development, and quality improvement systems. Prior to starting his own firm, Les worked with Pet Incorporated where he served for 10 years as the company’s Director of Communications with responsibilities for corporate advertising, employee communication, public and media relations, consumer affairs, and creative services. He also played a major role in developing and implementing Pet’s quality management system.
“This is exactly the kind of specific, here’s how we did it, replicable information (that is often difficult to find) that we were looking for. Really great stuff. We got a lot of ideas and also confirmed that in many ways, we are on the right track as well.”
“Real-life examples of the inner workings of two companies’ intranets. Informative speakers. Good tips.”
Ok, if we professional communicators would all come clean, we would admit we’ve been paying a lot more attention to the sexy new digital communication workplace tools than we have to that oldest but most important social medium, face-to-face communications.
Unfortunately, practice and research says ignoring manager communication is a bad idea. In the midst of so much change, workplace stress, confusion and mistrust, there is a powerful human case to be made for attending to this most basic kind of communication. Gallup research shows that “managers from hell” are creating active disengagement, costing the U.S. an estimated $450 billion to $550 billion annually.
According to ROI Communication’s annual benchmark survey:
- One in four managers is not considered a credible source of information
- Only 55% offer recognition and appreciation for a job well done
- Only 25% clearly understand their communication role (which coincides with the fact that only 27% receive communication training), and
- Only 18% are measured for communication performance in their performance reviews
Roger D’Aprix has been preaching the face-to-face communication mantra since he was a communication manager at Xerox in the late 1970s. He’s convinced today’s workers want and expects more than command and control, top-down communication. In fact, if face-to-face communication is failing, there is an excellent chance that all of the other forms of communication in the organization are also failing.
Drawing from his new book, Creating an Engaged Workforce: the Face-to-Face Communication Toolkit, Roger will arm you with the basic strategies and tools to either launch or reignite your organization’s manager communication program in ways that will prepare them to fulfill the all-important role of interpreter for their people. It’s time to fire up your face-to-face communication program.
What You Will Learn:
- Why human satisfaction with work and business success both demand a face-to-face strategy for delivering critical issues to employees
- How to build the business case and form the key team you need to seriously impact face-to-face communication in your organization
- Why too many face-to-face communication programs fail and the secret sauce of those that sing
- The key tools and processes you need to make your face-to-face communication program a winner
Presented by:
Roger D’Aprix is internationally known as a practitioner in the theory, strategy and practice of employee communication. His ground-breaking work at Xerox Corporation beginning in the 1970s qualifies him as one of the pioneers in employee engagement. As a communication consultant, lecturer and author he has assisted scores of Fortune 500 companies in developing their communication strategies and designing their communication training.
In 1998 IABC named him ‘one of the most influential thinkers in the communication profession in the last 25 years.’ He was named an IABC Fellow, that organization’s highest honor, in 1978. For 15 years he held senior positions with two of the leading human resources consulting companies. He served as vice president and global practice leader for Towers Perrin’s human resource communication practice and as principal and service developer for Mercer Human Resource Consulting.
Before that, he led employee communication for Xerox Corporation and held executive communication positions at General Electric and Bell and Howell. Presently, in addition to his own consultancy, D’Aprix & Co., he is affiliated with ROI Communication as a member of its advisory board. ROI is a global consultancy that specializes in internal communication strategy and practice. He divides his time between residences in Rochester, New York and New York City.
We are living in an era where social media not only impacts the way human beings interact with one another, but is influencing business decisions and customers’ perceptions of brands. By making employees confident in the fact that they can reach out to customers and by providing them with the necessary resources, you grow your external reach exponentially.
The Social Media Ninjas team at Sprint has done just that with their award winning employee advocacy program. Through the implementation of a training program that gives a fly-by of the corporation’s social media policy along with placing strong employee-facing support resources in a variety of channels, Sprint has created a program that drives employee engagement while protecting and enhancing its brand reputation.
Find out how internal communications is your best fuel for active advocacy and why a too formal social media policy can actually deter employees from joining your force. You’ll see how Sprint empowers its employees with real-time, company-approved, social media updates.
What You Will Learn:
- How to align internal communications and social media goals
- How to create a winning cross-functional team
- How to communicate a policy that works for advocates and Legal
- What motivates employees to participate voluntarily
- What resources you can put in place to optimize success
- Various channel to stay connected with your employee advocates
- The effect that extra reach can have on your organization
Presented by:
Jennifer Sniderman, Group Manager – Employee Communications leads news, editorial and social media for enterprise-wide employee communications at Sprint. She specializes in interactive multimedia engagement programs which have garnered numerous awards. Jennifer is the co-creator of Sprint’s Social Media Ninja program leveraging employee advocacy to bolster the customer experience and improve Sprint’s corporate reputation. She provides counsel to Sprint’s Human Resources team to deliver leader-focused communications programs. Prior to joining Sprint, she was Assistant Vice President, Corporate Communications at Zurich Scudder Investments in Chicago, IL. Outside of work, she serves on the board of Chameleon Arts & Youth Development, a non-profit organization providing arts education for homeless and under-served children.
Sara Folkerts, Internal Social Media Manager is passionate about sharing, communicating, transparency and being open-minded. This has led her to her current job as a community manager and social media evangelist at Sprint. In addition to her role as community manager, Sara co-leads the Ninjas program at Sprint. Sara has presented on internal social media strategies at several conferences and at other companies. Where can you find her? On Twitter, of course! @saramiller.
Nic Lazowski, Communication Specialist is driven to engage employees and deliver information that will result in action. His role is centered around employee involvement and advocacy. As a Communication Specialist for Sprint, Nic is responsible for helping to drive employee education and advocacy through social media with other members of the Social Media Ninjas lead team.
Who Should Attend
- This webinar will cater to individuals who recognize the growing need for immediate and far-reaching contact with customers and potential customers. The information provided will allow you to start making your organization more nimble and approachable while improving reputation among customers.
Webinar attendee: “I appreciated all the information on how to put together a social media program for employees; the tools to use, the benefits of involving employees, how to set up the training program, etc.”
Organizations have been trying to crack the code on employee engagement for at least 30 years, with pretty dismal results. Gallup’s October 2011 Employee Engagement Index reported only 29 percent of employees are actively engaged in their jobs, 52 percent are not engaged and 19 percent are actively disengaged.
Could these results be because we’ve been so focused on the how-to of employee engagement (tools and best practices) that we’ve glossed over the whys of basic human motivation and performance in the workplace?
This webinar is based on the principles and practices from the recently published business fable, Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement, by author Les Landes. The book starts with the somewhat provocative premise that employee engagement is powered mainly by the uniquely human qualities of imagination and free will – and how the two are inseparably connected.
According to Landes, when you combine imagination and free will with other key ingredients – security, self-esteem, responsibility and accountability – you create a virtual “human rocket” that propels and guides employees to extraordinary performance.
Building on that theoretical framework, Landes will offer a number of practical ideas you can use in your organization for policies, systems and processes to create the kind of culture where employees love to work and customers love doing business.
Bonus feature: The Q&A conversation at the end will be started by two internal employee engagement experts: Jim Shaffer, Jim Shaffer Group, consultant, author and speaker; and Roger D’Aprix, RPO Communications, consultant, lecturer and author.
Already a member? View Replay
What You Will Learn:
- The power of trust … What it takes and how to get it.
- Play, work and hell … Why you should STOP trying to motivate “your people.”
- Double-talk, distortions, and disconnects … How to keep employees tuned in and turned on using the principles of “Real-Life, Real-Time Communication.”
- The problem with employee suggestion programs … Why most of them get such dismal participation, and how to create a system that produces dramatic results.
- Getting to the heart of company culture … Why it’s critical to know where your culture is now before you start beating a path to where you want to be in the future.
- Faking sincerity … Why transparency and truth are increasingly critical in today’s workplace.
- The program trap … Why many corporate initiatives seem so phony to employees, and what it takes to make them “real.”
Presented by:
Les Landes is President of Landes & Associates, a management consulting firm that provides services in team/organizational planning, marketing and public/media relations, organizational communication, employee engagement, performance improvement systems and, executive coaching, and meeting facilitation. The firm serves clients in various industries, as well as government and non-profit organizations.
He is the author of numerous published articles on topics related to communication and organizational performance. His articles and interviews have appeared in several publications, including Communication World, The Public Relations Strategist, Executive Speeches, Training, Total Quality Newsletter, Quality Progress, Strategy and Leadership, Journal for Quality and Participation and more. He also writes a regular e-column called Inside Out that focuses on aligning employee engagement with marketing communication.
His new book, Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement, opens the door to a fresh understanding and appreciation for human nature in the workplace, and it sets the stage for a breakthrough in optimizing employee performance. This unique business fable shows how tapping into the power and purpose of imagination and free can create the type of organization where employees love to work and customers love doing business.
Who Should Attend
This webinar is primarily aimed at professionals involved in helping their organizations improve employee engagement, including:
- Internal communications
- Public relations
- Human resources
- Executive communications
- Public affairs
- Investor relations
- Senior management
“I liked the advice to avoid ‘flavour of the day’ by not naming a campaign or program and instead making it part of our everyday way of doing things.”
When it comes to humanizing your brand in social media, nobody can do it better than your employees. The 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer found “conversations with employees” remain one of the most credible sources of information about a company – ahead of news coverage, online search, or ads.
Pepsico is one company that has done the social media math. On Facebook alone, average users have 130 friends. Multiply that times Pepsico’s 300,000 employees and you have potentially millions of trusted conversations.
With that vision, Sharon McIntosh, senior director of global internal communications at PepsiCo, set out last year on a methodical process to empower employees to share their pride in the company on their social networks. In the process, the PepsiCo intranet has become a key platform for delivering and tagging the content that gets shared outside.
In this unique webinar, Sharon will share her journey to empower employees to be social media brand ambassadors. It has taken a balanced combination of tools, trust. Every company needs to figure this out – get a head start by attending this important webinar with your team.
What You Will Learn:
- Where you should start; who needs to be onboard
- How do you sell a social ambassador program to management, and employees
- How do you create a voluntary, online training program to educate employees on engaging in conversations that are authentic, responsible and interesting.
- How do you decide on the right content for employees to share – and a seamless process to make sharing easy
- How to make sure your social media policy doesn’t scare employees away
- What about incentives?
Presented by:
Sharon McIntosh is senior director of Global Internal Communications for PepsiCo, overseeing the internal strategy and channels for the company’s nearly 300,000 associates. She previously worked in internal communications, corporate communications, marketing and media relations at a range of companies, including Sears, Waste Management and the Illinois Hospital Association. Connect with Sharon on Twitter: @mcintoshs.
Who Should Attend
- Social media is a team sport. Business professionals from all of these departments have a key role to play and should attend this webinar, preferably as a group: internal communications, HR ,marketing, corporate communications, public relations, customer service, legal and media relations.
“Excellent information … Great job Sharon!!”
Reduce waste, cut costs and reduce environmental impact, increase employee engagement and retention, bolster your brand … what’s not to like about infusing green and sustainability into your organization?
And so it is no wonder that companies, large and small across all industries, are launching and supporting employee green teams to add arms and legs to green and responsibility goals. But, as this webinar underscores, green teams and social innovation do not just sprout and blossom without coordination, recognition, communications and a basket full of other good practices.
Whether you are just thinking about launching an employee green team, or you would like to ratchet yours up to the next level, learn the latest strategies from our three experts with a wealth of what works, and what doesn’t.
What You Will Learn:
- Building and communicating the business case for green teams
- How to grow green teams without dampening the grass-roots passion that they started with
- Big picture overview of some best practices from other leading companies, including Bloomberg, EMC, Ingersol Rand and Genentech
- How to create unique recognition and training programs (specific to your corporate culture)
- How to connect green teams to customers and communities
- What are some pitfalls to watch out for?
- How should you measure success?
Learn how the eBay Green Team, started by a small group of employees, has grown to more than 2,400 eBay employeees in 23 countries and 225,000 eBay buyers and sellers. The program was awarded “Best Employee Engagement Strategy” by the 2010 Social Innovation Awards.
Presenters:
Krista Van Tassel: As the newest member of the Wells Fargo Environmental Affairs team, Krista supports our many Green Teams, who promote environmental innovation and educate team members about their role in supporting our sustainability efforts. Before coming to Wells Fargo, Krista earned her MBA in International Business at Georgetown University. She’s also worked in a variety of sustainability and marketing positions in both the nonprofit (Net Impact) and for-profit (Sun Microsystems) worlds, and served as the Cupertino Campus Chair for Hewlett-Packard’s 2002 Charitable Giving Campaign. In her oh-so precious free time, she enjoys running, reading and volunteering.
JD Norton has been with eBay for ten years and spent most of that time not only making it a great place to work for eBay employees, but also making sure eBay is a good corporate citizen in the communities in which they operate. He is currently heads Community Engagement for the eBay Green Team, where he leads a global employee Green Team of over 2500 employees spread out across 25+ office locations worldwide, as well as 300,000+ eBay community members who have also taken the green pledge.
Deborah Fleischer is President of Green Impact, a strategic sustainability consulting practice that helps socially responsible companies and NGOs transform a commitment to sustainability into action. She is a LEED AP with over 20-years of direct experience working with businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits on environmental and sustainability challenges. Her expertise focuses on strategy, engagement and communications. She is the author of Green Teams: Engaging Employees in Sustainability and is a regular contributor to GreenBiz.com, where she has blogged extensively on best practices for engaging employees. Her recent clients include the University of California San Francisco, Plantronics, Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI), Sonoma Open Space District and the Sonoma Land Trust. You can follow her occasional tweets at @GreenImpact, join her Facebook page or check out her blog Shades of Green.
“Good ideas for reinvigorating our team and expanding our reach internally and externally.” … Webinar testimonial
Learn how to conduct a communication audit that will provide the hard data you and your management need to make the right decisions.
Scrambling to meet the next deadline for the employee pub. Running e-mail copy through the approval ringer. Tying up all the logistical loose ends for next week’s town hall meeting. There’s plenty to keep you busy when you work in employee communications. But are you sure the tactics you’ve chosen are the best ones for reaching employees? And what about strategy? What do employees really need to know to do their jobs?
Before you spend scarce company resources on employee communications, you’d better know the answers to these and many other questions. And a communication audit can give you those answers.
Why a communications audit? How does it work? How can it help boost the bottom line? Where to focus? What to ask?
This session answers all these questions, plus gives you an inside look at how one company audited its employee communications program, what they learned and how they applied their learnings. Hear from the communicator who led the project and the measurement experts who helped her succeed.
In just 90 minutes, you’ll learn how to conduct a communication audit that will put your program on the right track.
Key learning topics:
- How to make the decision to conduct a communication audit — often the most difficult step in the process — and how to sell management on the idea
- How to know what communication issues to focus on
- How to write powerful questions that reveal the most useful information
- How to analyze data, so you know the most important items to act on
- How to develop and implement a plan of action — the greatest benefit of a communication audit
Plus: Robert, Katrina and Kim answer real-world questions on:
- The pros and cons of Web surveys vs. paper
- The percentage of responses should you expect in a survey and how to ensure a statistically significant number of responses
- Recommendations on alternate communication channels, such as blogs and wikis
- How to learn if your employees really want to end their employee newsletter
- The real costs behind a communication audit
About your seminar leaders:
- Robert Holland, ABC, Holland Communication Solutions, has more than 17 years of experience in organizational communications, including employee communication planning, publication management, consulting, media relations and change communication. He is co-leader of the Communitelligence Internal Communications community and a frequent contributor to several national and international professional journals, including the Journal of Employee Communication Management. His column “Communication at Work” appears on the Business Channel of Richmond.com every two weeks. He is author of Prove Your Worth: The Complete Guide to Measuring the Business Value of Communication, published by Ragan Communications. Robert earned IABC accreditation in 1992. His bachelor’s degree in mass communications is from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va.
- Katrina Gill is president and founder of Gill Research LLC, a full-service research and consulting firm specializing in communication metrics, audits and employee/organizational research. Katrina has more than 14 years of diverse research experience, from the planning and development of projects through the presentation of results and recommendations for action. Katrina is formally educated in research methodology and has completed post-graduate study on a doctoral track in clinical psychology at the University of Missouri. A frequent speaker, workshop leader and author on strategic research and measurement, Katrina has taught undergraduate and graduate-level courses. She is a member of the American Marketing Association and the International Association of Business Communicators.
- Kim Hall is a communications consultant with Wells Fargo & Company, supporting internal communications for a division of 5,500 employees. She partners with managers in business units, human resources, marketing and public relations to develop integrated communication strategies that help the organization meet its goals. With 10 years in communications in the corporate and nonprofit sectors, Kim has worked on fundraising campaigns, grant writing, newsletter production, change communications and communications measurement. She has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in English and is a member of the International Association of Business Communicators.
The data is in!
- Diversity is a source of competitive advantage
- Diverse teams arrive at better, more innovative solutions than monolithic teams
- Diversity is not the same as affirmative action or any other government mandated equality program – it’s better
- Diversity makes common, moral and good business sense
You are a believer. Great.
But while your energy and enthusiasm on the topic of diversity are required, they are not sufficient. You need a rock solid communication plan and the know-how to execute it in order for diversity to take root and stay rooted in the fabric of how the company you work for does business.
What You Will Learn:
1. Explaining the business case
2. Reinforcing the values and visions of the diversity effort
3. Identifying the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) for employees
4. Defining diversity
5. Communicating expectations
6. Demonstrating ongoing commitment
Instructor:
Jacqueline M. Welch is Vice President, Employee and Organizational Effectiveness for Rock-Tenn Company, a $2.2 billion Norcross, Georgia headquartered manufacturer of packaging products, merchandising displays and recycled paperboard. Rock-Tenn Company operates more than 90 facilities throughout the United States, Argentina, Canada, Mexico and Chile.
As Vice President of Employee and Organizational Effectiveness, Jacqui is responsible for talent acquisition, performance management, career development, learning and development, succession planning, organization development, employee relations, compliance, union relationships, corporate communications, and workplace practices such as corporate citizenship and diversity for a workforce of 10,000 employees. Jacqui reports directly to the CEO and is an officer of the company.
Jacqui’s expertise is in developing, implementing and institutionalizing people programs, practices and policies that support business objectives and optimize organizational culture. This includes developing customer-focused business strategy for the human resource function and building line capacity to manage the people asset.
Who should register:
- Communications, HR, public relations and managers and supervisors who want to help take their organization’s diversity program to the next level
If you are like most communicators, you know that text alone is just not enough—today’s employees not only want to see their leaders on video, but want to be seen themselves. YouTube, Vimeo and FaceTime are teaching your employees how powerful video is, and learning about video in their non-work life makes them want to do more with it at work.
Creating meaningful business communications is not the same as recording cute dog tricks. Your employees need to know what works, and what doesn’t. And more importantly, you and your company need to be ready for: increased demand on your IT networks; the need to put policies and procedures in place and the importance of providing training to help them get it right.
In this series you will hear top practitioners talk about how they’ve put a new generation of digital video tools to work in their organization to inspire, lead and train employees; to cultivate employee engagement by putting the right tools in the hands of employees themselves; and to integrate external and internal communications for the kind of results one can only get with truly aligned communications. We’ve found practioners from leading companies to share specifics on what works across categories including internal communications, marketing, PR, social media and human resources.
What You Will Learn:
- How leading companies use employee created video: when, where, and how
- What the IT and regulatory issues are that you need to be most concerned about
- How leaders train and manage employees who are contributing video
- How video can be better integrated with intranets and social media
- The three most important things to AVOID with employee generated content.
- AND most importantly, what kinds of good results happen when you get it right.
Presented by:
Ronna Lichtenberg is co-founder and CEO, Videotrope. Prior to her entrepreneurial career, Ronna had a long-tenured career contributing to strategic planning and marketing initiatives at Prudential and Prudential Securities. During her tenure, she was the first woman named to Prudential Securities Operating Council. As a superior communicator and strategic consultant, Ronna’s experience incorporates wide-ranging personal experience as a communicator, including former contributing editor of “O”, the Oprah magazine and regular appearances as a workplace expert on national TV. She has published three books in ten languages (to rave reviews) and has a decade of experience as a keynote speaker with Fortune 500 companies and helping small to large businesses successfully execute business development imperatives and strategic initiatives.
Dave Williams has been working at ESPN since 2000. Prior to joining the corporate communication team he worked with ESPN’s production operations team on all of ESPN’s studio shows including SportsCenter, Sunday NFL Countdown, and Baseball Tonight. As a senior internal communication specialist, Williams brings his vast videography, digital editing, writing, and production experience to the internal communication team. He ensures that the multi-media aspects of the organization’s internal communication strategy are of the same high-quality production techniques that ESPN employees are accustomed to seeing on their external programming.
Deirdré Straughan is a Technical Content specialist for Solaris Product Management at Oracle. In this position she produces and/or manages production of technical content (video, white papers, web pages) about key Solaris technologies including storage, networking, and installation. Examples of my video work can be seen here (look for the items with my name in the description). In this position she produces and/or manages production of technical content (video, white papers, web pages) about key Solaris technologies including storage, networking, and installation. Examples of my video work can be seen here (look for the items with my name in the description). Deirdré has been communicating online since 1982. Her experience managing and communicating with online communities dates back to 1993, when she began interacting with Incat/Adaptec/Roxio customers via CompuServe, the Usenet, and listserv. She also wrote, edited and managed a stable of newsletters with 140,000 subscribers, and managed websites and online strategy for Adaptec/Roxio.
How effective CEO presentations can help companies rebound during an economic downturn
When a company’s earnings and stock price are on the rise, it may not be critically important how well a CEO performs behind a lectern, in front of cameras and microphones, or at a hearing table. But as earnings and stock price head south, a CEO’s ability to inspire confidence through speeches and presentations can prove essential to a company’s ability to survive and recover. CEOs who communicate well can, at the very least, buy the time needed to put an effective turnaround strategy in place.
With the economy battered by the credit crisis, high fuel prices, and other maladies, growing numbers of corporate leaders face the challenge of finding ways to inspire key audiences who are both very worried and extremely important—employees, analysts, stockholders, regulators, and the press.
This webinar offers some very specific, hands-on advice how CEOs should communicate during tough times. The advice is based on the experience of key CEO’s who have been there and done that –Former CEOs Lee Iacocca of Chrysler and Champ Mitchell of Network Solutions, Jack Welch of GE, as well as current CEOs John Chambers of Cisco Systems and Brightpoint’s Robert Laikin. All used first-person communications effectively to turn companies around or dramatically boost their performance.
Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy once said, “Communication needs to be a core competency of any business. It starts with the CEO.”
You Will Learn How CEOs Can:
- Make communication a priority.
- Be proactive, not reactive
- Handle problems and mistakes.
- Develop and present a recovery plan.
- Match their presentations to their audience
- and much more
Presented by:
Dr. Jeff Porro, Ph.D. has written “first-person speeches” and provided communication strategies for the CEOs of Sodexo, Eastman Chemicals, the McGraw Hill Companies, Office Depot, the COO of General Mills, as well as for diplomats such as former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and other government leaders, and presidents of some of the nation’s leading trade and professional associations. He helps corporate, government and nonprofit leaders take their visions to a new level, moving key audiences with speeches that engage minds, open eyes, touch hearts and awaken the spirit. In addition to offering his expertise to world and business leaders, he has extended his skills to the world of entertainment. Dr. Porro discovered and researched the true story of a Jim Crow-era African American college debate team, and helped turn it into the 2007 feature film The Great Debaters starring Denzel Washington.
As head of Porro Associates, LLC, Dr. Porro draws on his background as a research scholar and a Washington policy analyst to weave persuasive arguments. At the same time, his creative writing has given him the skill and empathy to capture a speaker’s voice and evoke the speaker’s passion. Dr. Porro holds a Ph.D. in political science from U.C.L.A..
Robert Laikin, founder of Brightpoint, has served as a member of Brightpoint’s board of directors since its inception in August 1989. Mr. Laikin has been Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Company since January 1994. Mr. Laikin was President of Brightpoint from June 1992 until September 1996 and Vice President and Treasurer of Brightpoint from August 1989 until May 1992. From July 1986 to December 1987, Mr. Laikin was Vice President, and from January 1988 to February 1993, President of Century Cellular Network, Inc., a company engaged in the retail sale of cellular telephones and accessories. His honors and awards include:
- Recipient of the William L. Haeberle Entrepreneurial Legacy Award for 2008
- Inducted into the Central Indiana Business Hall of Fame in 2008
- Received a Stevie Award for Best Turnaround Executive in 2007
- Recipient of the Distinguished Entrepreneur Award by the Kelley School of Business Alumni Association (1999)
- Recipient of the Indiana Entrepreneur of the Year Award (1995)
- Received an honorable mention in 1995 Inc. Magazine National Entrepreneur of the Year Award
Kelly R. Lang is Director of Strategic Communications in the Corporate Communications department of Cisco Systems. Ms. Lang joined Cisco in 2001 as Marketing Communications Manager and in 2003 joined the Office of the President as John Chambers’ Executive Communications Manager. Today, Ms. Lang is responsible for the Executive Communications and Operations functions including the Office of the Chairman and CEO (OCC), the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), and the Chief Globalisation Officer (CGO). Prior to joining Cisco, Ms. Lang was Program Manager for a Global Event Marketing Organization, Nth Degree, from 1998-2000. From 1996-1998, Ms Lang was Assistant Director of Administration with RCI Group, Inc. after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Maryland, where she was recognized with outstanding student achievements including Maryland’s Talent and Tutor Search Program.
Ms. Lang is passionate about business and how communication helps drive business strategy to become a change agent for the organization. Her focus on process, operational excellence and hiring the right talent to support highly visible executives helps drive a more integrated, cross-functional communication effort that highlights the increasingly complex and important role of the communications professional.
Who Should Attend
This webinar is primarily aimed at communicators and executives trying to cope with a slowing economy, including external communications, internal communications, and shareholder communications.
We all live in glass houses. Reputation failure is no longer a threat that looms large for companies only in high-risk industries and activities. It has become an all-too-familiar scenario for all companies in all corners of the world. A Weber Shandwick proprietary analysis revealed that over three-quarters (79 percent) of the world’s number-one most admired companies lost their crowns over the past five years in their respective industries.Over three-quarters (79 percent) of the world’s number-one most admired companies lost their crowns over the past five years in their respective industries. The corporate reputation “stumble rate” continues to rise. Recent corporate crises have demonstrated that a company’s reputation can be destroyed in seconds. A mishandled response, inappropriate act, product tampering, or poorly timed financial disclosure all have the power to instantly tarnish a respected reputation. However, the well managed and reputation-conscious company does not need to stand defenseless when faced with a damaged reputation. This web conference will identifiy and describe the actions companies and their leaders can take to safeguard their corporate reputations, and rebuild their reputations and restore their good names after a crisis. Read Q&A with Dr. Gaines-Ross.
What You Will Learn:
- Why reputation is more fragile than ever,and why it matters to a company’s valuation, well-being, and permission to exist
- What triggers reputation loss and why are so many companies struggling with tarnished reputations?
- What can a company do to safeguard its reputation from loss?
- What are the most important steps in recovering reputation
- What role should leaders, communication, marketing and PR professionals play in reputation recovery and sustainability
Why you should purchase:
Media coverage of reputation alone has increased 108 percent over the past five years. Reputation management is now considered a legitimate body of knowledge, with a number of emerging new disciplines, including reputation recovery. Also, the sheer number and severity of corporate falls from grace in the last few years — coupled with the emergence of revolutionary ways of transmitting information, influential micro-constituencies and widespread mistrust of business — have magnified the need for a viable framework for the repair and recovery of damaged company reputations.
Presented by:
Dr. Gaines-Ross is one of the world’s most widely recognized experts on CEO reputation — how CEO reputations are built, enhanced and protected. She spearheaded the first comprehensive research on CEO reputation and its impact on corporate reputation and performance. She developed Weber Shandwick’s first global corporate reputation study — “Safeguarding Reputation™,” which identifies strategies for sustaining and recovering corporate reputation. Dr. Gaines-Ross is the author of CEO Capital: A Guide to Building CEO Reputation and Company Success (John Wiley & Sons, 2003) and Corporate Reputation: 12 Steps to Safeguarding and Recovering Reputation (www.corporatereputation12steps.com, John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
Before joining Weber Shandwick, Dr. Gaines-Ross was Chief Knowledge & Research Officer Worldwide at Burson-Marsteller and Marketing & Communications Director at Fortune. At Fortune, she initiated several groundbreaking research programs including “Leveraging Corporate Equity” and “Brands at the Crossroads.” She is also widely recognized for her strategic insights into and analysis of Fortune’s Most Admired Companies Survey. Dr. Gaines-Ross was a 1995 winner of Time Inc.’s President’s Award. She is also the co-author of FORTUNE Cookies: Management Wit and Wisdom, which was published by Vintage Books.
Dr. Gaines-Ross’ work has been featured in the Financial Times, The Times (London), The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Wired, Advertising Age, PRWeek, Forbes, The Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, Chief Executive, Business 2.0, Across the Board and in many other publications around the world. She has also appeared on CNN and CNBC.
Dr. Gaines-Ross is a frequent public speaker on CEO and corporate reputation management. She has lectured at The Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, USC, Wharton School of Business, New York University and Columbia University. Dr. Gaines-Ross was also a speaker at the 2003 World Economic Forum Governor’s Meeting. She is a member of Ethical Corporation’s Advisory Board, serves on the Executive Advisory Panel of Corporate Reputation Review and was inducted into the Academy of Women Achievers of the YWCA of the City of New York. Dr. Gaines-Ross has been named one of the “100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics for 2007” by Ethisphere Magazine.
Dr. Gaines-Ross created http://www.reputationRx.com, the Web site devoted exclusively to reputation news and information, and her blog can be found at http://www.reputationXchange.com.
Who should purchase:
- Corporate communications, marketing and public relations professionals Executives at all levels and areas of the company who need to understand the new “stumble-rate” of corporate reputations, and be prepared with a realistic roadmap to reputation recovery that can stabilize and regenerate a company’s most competitive asset.
Potentially, executive communications is the most powerful PR tool your organization has. In reality, lots of effort is wasted and you’re hard-pressed to figure out what the bottom-line results your C-suite communications’ activities are yielding. Fret about this no more. We’ve assembled the world’s three leading experts on how to create a disciplined executive communication program. Moderated by Vital Speeches of the Day editor David Murray, this all-star panel includes the founder, the manager, and the chief evangelist of the original strategic executive comms program.
You Will Learn:
- How to match executives with messages and messages with audiences: matrices and message-mapping.
- How to evaluate speaking and interview opportunities so you take only the ones truly worthy of your executives’ time.
- How to get executives on board and keep them on board by showing them real results.
- How to use social media to magnify the power of your program.
- How to introduce strategic executive communications to organizations that have been running the function ad hoc.
Who Should Attend
- C-level and senior executives from Fortune 1000, mid- and small-sized companies
- Speechwriters and Executive Communication Managers
- Directors of corporate communications, PR, marketing, community relations, public affairs, finance and HR
- Executive directors, leaders and managers of non-profits, NGOs, churches, educational institutions and philanthropic foundations
- Leaders of federal, state, county and municipal government departments and agencies
- Members of the national media including bloggers
Presented by:
Steve Soltis directs the Leadership Communications function at The Coca-Cola Company. In this role he is responsible for executive communication and positioning for the company’s chairman and CEO and is also the architect of the company’s senior executive speakers bureau. Soltis joined Coca-Cola in September of 2006, after spending 10 years directing executive communications for UPS, and two years as a speechwriter for MCI. Prior to his corporate communications career, Soltis worked in a variety of editorial positions for The Global Network, Harte Hanks, Ackerley Communications and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. In 2006, Soltis was a recipient of the PRSA Silver Anvil Award for B2B Marketing for the work he led in developing UPS’s global customer conference, Longitudes. A graduate of the University of North Texas and Mary Washington College, Soltis also serves on the Advisory Board of the College of Science and Technology at Georgia Southern University. He is the author of two travel guide books and lives in suburban Atlanta with his wife, Stacy, and two children, Annie and Christopher.
Bruce Danielson is a thought leadership consultant who designs and implements strategic communications programs to help companies achieve their next level of growth. He recently completed an 11-year career as Executive Communications Manager at UPS, where he was responsible for message platform development, forum placement, speech writing and message repackaging to support the company’s senior executive communications strategy. Prior to joining UPS, he served as a speechwriter and event manager at MCI. Danielson began his corporate communications career at Harland, serving as Director of Corporate Communications. Away from the world of thought leadership, Bruce plays old-time fiddle and is an avid whitewater canoeist and hiker. He lives in Atlanta with his musical wife.
David Murray writes and speaks about communication—business, political and personal. He’s editor of Vital Speeches of the Day, a monthly collection of the best speeches in the world. He writes about sports, people, politics and travel for magazines, newspapers and websites. publications and websites. And he discusses the communication life at his popular personal blog, Writing Boots.
Practical techniques any manager can use to motivate new behaviors and deliver better business results
Why are managers employees’ preferred source of communication? Because employees crave information that affects their day-to-day lives – information that only their managers can provide. Andy Szpekman, president of AHS Communications, outlines what managers can do to meet employee expectations, become better communicators and be more successful managers.
You’ll learn the four competencies every manager needs, the type of communication employees demand, and proven ways to change people’s attitudes and behaviors. You’ll leave the session with a solid understanding of what separates outstanding managers from the rest, as well as useful tips and simple tools any manager can apply immediately on the job. Whether you manage others or advise those who do, this teleseminar will help you engage your organization’s employees to deliver their best work.
Learning Topics:
- Six things every manager needs to do well
- What to look for when gathering employee feedback
- How to deliver a tough message effectively
- Stupid ideas about communication
- How to convey information, field challenges and brainstorm solutions – in under 15 minutes
Andy answers real-world questions on:
- Companies that are doing a good job at training their managers to be better communicators
- How to effectively measure whether a manager is communicating well
- advice and techniques to help managers be more open and forthright in their communications, even when they may fear repercussions from their management
- Specific advice for how to handle situations in non-public organizations, where laws prevent communications to be less timely than we would like it to be
- How to focus on listening rather than figuring out what you’re going to say when the other person stops talking
- the “huddle technique” to brainstorm solutions right after the change or problem has been communicated to employees
- The 360-degree survey technique to assess the effectiveness of manager communications
- The wisdom of setting up regular employee communication time
Who should purchase:
-
Line managers
-
Functional managers
-
Internal communicators
-
Corporate communicators
-
HR managers
-
Change managers
-
Internal marketers
-
College/university libraries and bookstores
Instructor:
Andy Szpekman provides HR and communication research, strategies and tools to improve business performance. His clients include Bank of America, BC Hydro, Cardinal Health, McKinsey & Co., Microsoft, News Corporation, Scholastic and Wachovia.
Earlier in his career, he led HR communication at Bank of America, served as communications manager for a global division of Warner-Lambert, and was a senior HR and communication consultant with Brecker & Merryman, Inc.
Andy is active in the Council of Communication Management and a former officer of the Metropolitan New York Association of Applied Psychology. His work has been featured in national news and business publications and leading trade journals. He holds a B.A. in psychology from William Paterson University and an M.A. in organizational psychology from Columbia University.
How to grow the leadership capacity of your team to meet changing corporate demands
Learn how to cultivate the leadership potential of your staff and in the process become a better leader yourself.
So much to do, so little time. It’s a common complaint of communication managers everywhere. Demands increase while resources dwindle, and we find our value compromised by perpetual busyness.
How to solve this dilemma? The answer lies in leveraging the power of the people who work with you everyday. By developing the leadership abilities of your staff, you bring greater meaning and satisfaction to the work they do and increase the performance of your team and yourself exponentially.
In this seminar, you’ll learn how traditional management approaches limit the effectiveness of your staff and your potential as a leader. Elise discusses current research on the forces of change that make leadership a job for everyone and how you can appeal to the leadership potential of your employees, regardless of their particular areas of strength.
She also looks at some tools and processes you can start using immediately to create an environment of learning and leadership within your team, including your own personal leadership assessment and learning plan for change.
Learning topics:
- How the complexity of today’s business environment requires a new leadership approach by communicators
- The core competencies required for leadership in the practice of communication
- Discovering what motivates staff to excel
- Creating a learning organization within your own team
- Mapping out a learning plan to increase your team’s leadership capacity
- Making the transition from “doing” to “leading”
How-to Handouts in This CD:
- DOING MORE WITH MORE – 17 slides
- Leadership Interviews Exercise
- Core Competencies for Communication Leadership – Personal Checklist
- Core Competencies for Communication Leadership – Personal Learning Plan
Elise answers real-world questions on:
- How to choose the right leadership competencies for developing your staff
- How to balance the disciplines of managing and leading
- How to find the time to develop you staff when you have so many other things to do
- How to make leaders of staff who would rather be followers
- The best tools and channels to communicate with your team about leadership visions, competencies
- Five areas of leadership ability
- Why communicators tend to be too shy about stepping up to the plate as leaders – and how to over come this
- Recommendations on courses or training to advance your communication leadership skills
- Why communicators may be looked over or taken for granted by the executive leadership of organizations
- Common traits of leadership “heroes”
Who should purchase:
- Business leaders
- Corporate Communications
- Marketing
- Advertising
- Internal Communications
- Public Affairs
- Public Relations
- Organizational Development
- Human Resources
- Corporate Strategy and Development
- Senior Management
- College/university libraries and bookstores
Instructor:
Elise Roaf, MBA, ABC, MC, CHRPhas more than 20 years of experience as a communications professional and consultant in the private and public sector and with nonprofit organizations. Her areas of expertise include strategic communication, change management and organizational development. She has developed curricula, taught courses and facilitated workshops in university and corporate settings and is currently a sessional instructor in organizational communications at Kwantlen University College.
Elise holds a Master of Business Administration specializing in Human Resources Management from Royal Roads University, a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Ontario, and a Certificate in Public Relations from the University of Regina.
Her professional designations include an Accredited Business Communicator and a Certified Human Resources Professional. She has received numerous awards for excellence in business communication. Among them are the Master Communicator Award, the highest honor awarded to a Canadian member of the International Association of Business Communicators, and the IABC Chairman’s Award for contributions to the association and the profession as a whole.
The best way to communicate with people you are trying to lead is very often through a story.
More and more organizations are realizing that stability and predictability are no longer reasonable assumptions. In fact, the number one problem of today’s managers is the difficulty in getting their organizations to adapt to a competitive environment that is neither stable nor predictable. Yet while change is irresistible, the organization often seems immovable.
Drawing on his experience as program director of Knowledge Management at the World Bank from 1996-2000 and his work with many of the top organizations in the world, Steve Denning shows how to identify and craft a springboard story; i.e., a story that will spark action. Using a simple template, you will be equipped to get started on crafting your own springboard stories.
What you will learn:
- The importance of storytelling
- Appropriate situations for telling stories
- Why storytelling can handle leadership challenges for which conventional command-and-control techniques are impotent
- The essential ingredients of a springboard story — i.e., a story to communicate a complex idea and galvanize action
- How and why storytelling can communicate complex ideas, and why stories are so persuasive
- How to find and craft springboard stories for your organization
- How to use storytelling to ignite your career by becoming an authentic leader
- A 10-point template for crafting your stories
- Eight types of stories that you can put to work for you
- How storytelling changed the way the World Bank shared knowledge
Who should purchase:
This exceptional learning opportunity is designed for managers and professionals in:
- Corporate Communications
- Marketing
- Advertising
- Internal Communications
- Public Affairs
- Public Relations
- Organizational Development
- Human Resources
- Corporate Strategy and Development
- Senior Management
- Anyone, anywhere in an organization
It’s also an important addition to the offerings of college/university libraries and bookstores.
Instructor:
Steve Denning is the former program director of Knowledge Management at the World Bank. He now works with organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia on knowledge management and organizational storytelling.
Steve is the author of several books on organizational storytelling, including:
- The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative (Jossey-Bass in April 2005).
- Squirrel Inc: A Fable of Leadership Through Storytelling (Jossey-Bass, 2004), a fable that elaborates seven different kinds of organizational storytelling
- The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations (Butterworth Heinemann, 2000), which describes how storytelling was used as a powerful tool for organizational change and knowledge management at the World Bank
Steve was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He studied law and psychology at Sydney University and worked as a lawyer in Sydney for several years. He did a postgraduate degree in law at Oxford University in the U.K. before joining the World Bank, where held a number of positions from 1996 to 2000.
In 2000, Steve was named as one of the world’s “10 Most Admired Knowledge Leaders” (Teleos). In 2003, he was ranked as one of the world’s Top Two Hundred Business Gurus: Davenport & Prusak, “What’s The Big Idea?” (Harvard, 2003). In 2005, his book, The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling, was selected by the Innovation Book Club as one of the 12 most important books on innovation in the last few years.
Steve is a Senior Fellow at the James MacGregor Burns Leadership Academy at the University of Maryland.
For more than two decades, through his ongoing study, The Search for a Simpler Way, Bill Jensen has been researching how our managers and workforce communicate with each other.
In the past few years, something critical has happened: They have hacked our capabilities.
They can do what we do. Often, better than we can. How do we leverage that, instead
of fighting it? How can we learn from them?
Two-way communication means listening to what the workforce has to tell us. If you are
interested in learning from them, this is the most crucial webinar you will attend all year!
What You Will Learn:
- What benevolent hacking is, and how we are being hacked
- How companies waste massive amounts of time and energy…
and how we are complicit in this act - The top three things you should be doing to save your
organization from itself - Practical tips for getting started, and getting praise from above
Who Should Attend
This webinar ideal for communicators with:
- VPs, Directors and managers of internal communications, social media, marketing,
corporate communications, public relations, and branding - Anyone responsible for integrating external communications — marketing, sales, customer service, branding, etc. — with internal change efforts
Presented by:
Bill Jensen is today’s foremost expert on work complexity and cutting through clutter to what really matters. He has spent the past two decades studying how work gets done. (Much of what he’s found horrifies him.) Known as Mr. Simplicity for his first book, Bill has written five best-selling books based on his research. His latest, Hacking Work, was hailed as one of 2010’s Top Ten Breakthrough Ideas by Harvard Business Review. It reveals an underground army of benevolent hackers — breaking all sorts of rules so everyone can do great work. Bill is CEO of The Jensen Group: his list of clients includes the top companies in the world and he is constantly on the road, speaking in places from tech-shops in San Fran to sweatshops in Asia to palaces in Europe. Most importantly: Bill’s personal life fantasy is to bicycle around the globe via breweries.
There’s no shortage of theory, hyperbole and pure BS (or baloney, or hot air) about social media marketing. Learn what social media’s challenges and opportunities really are – in plain English – via case studies from three experts who are in the trenches with household name corporations.
Heads up … this is not another web conference about social media tools such as blogs, vlogs, podcasts, social networks and microsharing. The technology is important, of course, but not nearly as crucial as the need to understand how to engage in instant, two-way conversations stripped of safe corporate-speak or spin. Grasping that reality and executing it is the sweet spot of social media, and that’s where this webinar is focused. Learn by successful examples and studies of major brands who have pioneered in the space.
What You Will Learn:
- What your audience expects from your social media efforts
- What resistance you’ll meet from inside your own organization — and how to overcome it
- Top 6 reasons your company should not blog
- Top 5 reasons you should have a blog
- Why most corporate social networks fail
- How smart companies are using social networks now and how you can too
- The way to get your company banned from a social network
- Which social networks matter and which ones don’t
Who Should Attend
This webinar is primarily aimed at individuals responsible for corporate communications, public relations, corporate affairs, human resources, employee communications, media relations, and issues management. It will help those in the early stages of implementing or learning about social media, although it will also help more advanced practioners to focus their efforts. It is especially suitable for:
- Small and mid-sized business leaders
- Corporate executives who are new to social media
Presented by:
Christopher Barger is Director, Global Communications Technology. In this role, he leads the social media (blogging, podcasting, user-generated content, wikis, social networking, etc.) efforts for General Motors – both in developing the company’s own content and building relationships with influential voices outside the company. Barger is a communications professional with nearly 10 years experience at Fortune 20 companies. He is a seasoned media spokesperson, communications strategist, and public speaker. Barger’s specialties are “Social Media”/Web 2.0, social networking and media; public speaking.
B.L. Ochman helps companies integrate social media tools and blog advertising into their communications to engage their audience and increase their sales. She is an Internet marketing strategist to Fortune 500 companies including IBM, McGraw-Hill, American Greetings, Ford Motors, Simon & Schuster, Cendant, Kaneka Corporation and others. She is internationally respected blogger whose blog about Internet marketing, What’s Next Blog, is rated in the top 50 in the world by Ad Age Power 150, where she also is Number One among women business bloggers. She heads the creative team of whatsnextonline.com. Her articles and case studies about Internet marketing trends appear in MarketingProfs, MediaPost, Businessweek Online, and several other publications. Before turning her talent to the Internet in 1995, Ochman ran an award-winning New York PR firm that she grew to one of the 100 largest independent PR firms in the US, with clients including Stew Leonard’s, Miracle-Gro Plant Food, The American Dairy Association, Kaneka Corporation and many more.
Mike Prosceno runs “new” media relations at SAP. He is also a social media evangelist inside the company promoting both the internal use of social media for productivity gains as well as its use externally for reputation enhancement. Having been in corporate or marketing communications for 18 years he has held a variety of management and non-management positions in the IT, manufacturing and financial-services industries.
Attendee comments:
- “BL definitely added value for my particular perspective on what I am trying to accomplish.
- “Great overview by Ms. Ochman. Good, practical experience from GM.”