In our previous post on the importance of communication, we talked about why we believe developing communication skills in your organisation is not only important, but crucial.

Here are our top 10 tips for implementing a communication skill development program in your organisation:

1. Make organisational communication some one’s responsibility! If someone has a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) linked to improving communication then it will receive the attention it demands.
2. Find the people in your organisation who are passionate about communication and give them a role to play.
3. The majority of communication occurs out of habit and changing habits requires sustained pressure over time before it will deliver a return on investment. Avoid quick fix solutions  that become ‘fad’ training and implement solutions that will permanently change the communication DNA of your organisation (often referred to as ‘the way we do things here’.)
4. The words we say and write start first with our thoughts and internal dialogue (self talk)  – communication skills development needs to include this level of internal communication as a starting point. This also includes developing emotional intelligence and providing employees with techniques for managing attitude.
5. The importance of communication needs to be recognised and supported at an executive level.
6. Developing communication skills is a specialised area – if you don’t have the internal skills then bring in external help from experts who do.
7. Create a communication plan that addresses and aligns communication in all areas of the business – consistency of communication from all business areas is essential for building trust internally and with customers.
8. Look for ways to measure communication in your organisation such as  internal surveys, processes for reporting and improving communication that is failing, external benchmarking for customer communication.
9. Walk the talk – leaders must lead in action before others will follow. Include executives and senior managers in communication skills development.
10. Don’t stop – communication skills development is all about continuous improvement and constantly adapting to the ever changing working environment.
11. Bonus Tip – What you don’t communicate can often speak louder than any words. Ensure your communication strategy looks at what is not being communicated as much as what is being communicated.

Remember when you were in school? Did you learn the most from the interminable desk-bound subjects you had no interest in and where the teacher droned on and on, or the hands-on subjects and field trips that involved all the senses?

How many of us learned more about handling money from playing ‘shops’ or Monopoly than we ever did from a maths book.

Games are multi-sensory and offer something for everyone irrespective of a person’s learning style. Most of all, games are fun.

Where traditional training methods attempt to instil skills at an intellectual level, skills learned through games tend to stick at an almost cellular level. This is an essential factor in ‘training transfer’ – a measurement of how well a trainee is able to effectively use the skills learned over time. The greater the training transfer, the better the return on the training investment.

In many training environments, messages introduced from a traditional lecture style method are filtered against participant mindsets and perceptions. In many cases the message is either fully or partially rejected as something that doesn’t apply to the participant. Games and activites that create an immediate experience followed by a linked debrief are often very successful at shifting these judgements and mindsets that would otherwise prevent a person from developing new skills.

When designing or evaluating any training program, consider how much of the content includes elements of:

• Participant interaction between participants and the facilitator.
• Variation in the use of games to deliver messages and learn skills.
• The fun value keeping participants engaged and energised
• The link between the game and the message – is there are a clear connection?
• Dynamic delivery! Even the best game or activity will fall flat if the facilitator is not able to bring their own energy and passion.

ACROSS 5 Training should be ______ (3) 6 Games are multi-? (7) 8 Role- ______ embed skills (5) DOWN 1 High training _______ is essential for a good ROI (8) 2 Alive & Kicking Solutions offer _____ training programs (9) 3 People _____ our training programs (5 4 Learn money skills from this      game (8) 7 It is essential that people can ____ the skills they learn (3)