The Communication Mastery Seminar — Communication for Results. It runs about 1½ days.
Eleven modules. Each pairs a short teaching segment with an activity you do in the room, in groups of about five: Prep, The Floor, Read-back, Note.
Table of Contents
- Listening — The Foundation
- The Speaker & Speaking Dynamics
- Facial Communication & Vividness of Language
- Delivery Mastery — Physical Presence & Voice
- Message and Purpose
- Audience Analysis
- The Powerful Message
- Speech Organization
- The Power of Story
- Speaking With Integrity
- Persuasion & Audience Command
Module Summaries
1. Listening — The Foundation
The prerequisite skill for everything else. Covers the Receive/Process/Respond cycle and the habit of rehearsing your reply instead of actually listening.
Activity: The Playback Exercise. Tell a two-to-three minute story that shaped you; a listener, named only after you finish, plays back your core message and the feeling underneath it.
2. The Speaker & Speaking Dynamics
Turns the lens on the speaker as the instrument. Covers honest self-assessment, goal-setting, and the program’s core loop (Principles → Model → Practice → Evaluation).
Activity: The Skills Inventory. Name two strengths, one skill to improve and the situation where it costs you, then introduce yourself on that basis. Keep the sheet; you revisit it at the end.
3. Facial Communication & Vividness of Language
How expression and word choice combine to make language land; sensory, vivid phrasing over flat description.
Activity: Face and Phrase. Recall a strongly felt moment in sensory detail, mark the words that carry the feeling, and deliver it standing so your face and body arrive on those words.
4. Delivery Mastery — Physical Presence & Voice
Gestures, posture, and vocal variety as the “vehicle” for the message, plus fluency (speaking without losing your thread) as the underlying goal.
Activity: Unedited Playback. Record a 60-second impromptu talk, review it once without judgment, then redeliver it from the front with one goal: keep it moving.
5. Message and Purpose
Forces a one-sentence statement of what a message is for before any content gets built.
Activity: The One-Sentence Purpose Drill. Write the purpose of a real upcoming message in one sentence, then deliver a mini-speech built only on it. Listeners say the purpose they heard before you reveal yours.
6. Audience Analysis
How to read and adapt to a specific room (hostile, friendly, skeptical, checked-out), plus environment, energy, and nerves management.
Activity: Read the Room, Cold. Draw an audience type at random and adapt talking points from your own expertise to it. The group guesses which audience you were adapting for.
7. The Powerful Message
The three classical persuasion components (Logic, Emotion, Enthusiasm) and matching message/delivery to context. Heavy emphasis on analogy as the tool that makes ideas stick.
Activity: Build the Bridge. Carry an entire point using only one analogy, simile, or metaphor. Listeners say back, in their own words, the point they understood.
8. Speech Organization
The classic tell-them/tell-them/tell-them structure: intro, body with supporting evidence, closing summary, and a specific call to action.
Activity: Three-Point Build. Prepare and deliver a full three-point speech, with an opening, a body and a close, in up to five minutes.
9. The Power of Story
Story as the program’s central persuasive tool — how to use it precisely, credit borrowed stories, and nest sub-stories without losing the throughline.
Activity: Story Exercise, Told for Benefit. Tell a story of something you accomplished, then later a success you watched someone else achieve, naming the benefit plainly at the end of each.
10. Speaking With Integrity
The ethics of speech: responsibility for words, free speech in practice, and how statistics can mislead even when technically true.
Activity: The Honest Number. Start with the claim, find a figure that supports it, then deliver the honest version with a baseline and take questions about where the number came from.
11. Persuasion & Audience Command
Reading a room, balancing empathy vs. control, handling questions, and earning rapport fast through genuine personal energy.
Activity: What I’m Taking With Me. A send-off, not a test. In up to three minutes, say in your own words what you are taking with you, and, if you like, how you will use it in a real presentation ahead. There is no feedback round.