Course content
Planning conversations
If you go into a conversation with a plan, the conversation will more easily go the way you need it to.
You will learn to create a description for yourself of what you want out of the conversation. This will allow you to have a meeting that is useful.
Conversation flow
You will learn what the steps are that a conversation goes through.
You will learn what phases there are and what to do to move the conversation along in the right direction.
Body language
Reading someone else is very important. Is your conversation partner nervous? Does he/she have time, an alterior motive or want to leave?
You will learn how to tell without asking directly.
Feedback
How do you know if the conversation goes well and that the person you talk with is on the same page?
You ask!
Asking the right questions at the right time is very important.
Tools
There are many techniques to achieve specific things in a conversation.
Among the most important ones are the art of summarizing, handling jargon, telling stories and using examples.
You will learn these and more in this course.
Communication for technical people
In this course you will get a 50 page training manual, which goes even deeper than the in person sessions, 5 sessions of 2.5 hr each with the trainer in an online environment and exercises to implement the course in your real life.
In technical communication you will get models that will help you understand what’s happening while talking with others, tools and tactics to improve connection, a new understanding of the person you are conversing with and the ability to obtain feedback to know that what you are doing is helpful.
With this knowledge and the tactics to implement it, you are ready to make a serious improvement in your life.
Content per session
In this session we get to know each other and we’ll ensure that the course is connected to your goals and introduce the technical communication model.
The main components in this session are setting goals and requirements for a conversation and begin our journey to understand our conversation partner better.
An important part of this is learning how to ask for feedback, this feedback will come back throughout the course and will allow you to observe the progress that you are making.
In session 2 we start out a little more theoretical and introduce a communication model from psychology, the model of Schultz von Thun. We will not be going in depth, but we’ll learn what it takes to analyze a conversation to learn what went well and what didn’t.
Then we will go into what makes a good explanation happen. What is the structure of that? How do you create a good rhythm in the conversation? We’ll also go into tools on summarizing, brevity and an introduction to stories.
Session 3 will focus on quite different things.
You will understand the limitations of jargon and how to notice them, learn the tool of using examples and we will use a new way of thinking to help you understand your conversation partner better.
Session 4 is dedicated to the art of body language!
After this session you will be able to read your conversation partner, does he/she want to continue the conversation? Does he/she still understand what you are talking about? This technique will help you to answer these questions.
Later in this session we will also return to feedback and integrate body language. We will also talk about equivalent stories, which are made up examples that show a concept, but are not necessarily real or true.
Session 5 is titled bringing it all together. In this session we are going back to all the concepts we’ve touched upon and make time for things that are relevant to you specifically and that will help you to develop yourself further. Some time is also reserved to look back on how you’ve all been doing trying to implement these concepts in the real world and touch on any subjects that we might have had less time for in the previous sessions.
After this session you will have started to make a major improvement in your life.