Effective Business Communication: Master Persuasion and Influence — Online

NEW PROGRAM

In today's globally-distributed business environment, communication is perhaps the most essential skill managers can hone. Whether you’re pitching a new idea, selling to clients, motivating teams, driving change, or getting buy-in from stakeholders, conveying your message effectively requires superb communication abilities. Without the right communication techniques, even your most innovative ideas and important directives can fall flat.

In this executive communications program, you'll gain confidence in your ability to motivate and persuade. This program meets you where you are — and boosts your individual technique through frameworks, practice, feedback, and tailored guidance. You'll emerge a more effective and inspiring leader, capable of transforming ideas into impact for your organization.

This program is in partnership with Global Alumni.

Effective communication can’t be learned from a book, and everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. Gain confidence in your ability to motivate and persuade by acquiring impactful communication frameworks that can only be obtained through hands-on experiences and real-life practice. This program conveniently combines self-paced material with live-online sessions.

By attending, you will:

  • Enhance your ability to persuade people by using frameworks that will make your communication engaging, memorable, and compelling.
  • Become clear, concise, and confident when communicating your ideas and thoughts to others.
  • Develop a deep understanding of the process, structure, and style of effective communication.
  • Strengthen your executive presence: learn how to project confidence, empathy, and thoughtfulness when communicating both in-person and online.
  • Discover a range of tools to deploy in the real world, practice them, and receive detailed feedback.
  • Acquire the ability to analyze an audience quickly and identify how to win them over.
  • Learn how to structure your arguments to make them clear and powerful.
  • Gain experience in public speaking and learn how to improve.
PERSONALIZED PRACTICE AND FEEDBACK

Throughout the program, you'll have opportunities to grow your skills in real-time:

  • At the start of the program, you'll receive a communications map to identify areas you want to improve.
  • You'll engage in live sessions with faculty Hal Weitzman and risk-free practice. Exercises are tailored toward your goals. You'll receive detailed feedback on your performance and concrete guidance on how to improve.
  • At the end of the program, you'll be able to measure how your skills have grown.
This program is an excellent fit for managers who seek to improve their interpersonal communication skills while working directly with clients, colleagues, and stakeholders. It is particularly suited to leaders and emerging leaders across various industries and functions, including operations, sales, business development, technology, marketing, and relationship management.

Hal Weitzman

Adjunct Associate Professor of Behavioral Science

Hal Weitzman is executive director for intellectual capital at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He is editor-in-chief of Chicago Booth Review and host of The Big Question, Booth's monthly video panel discussion series. He was a reporter and editor at the Financial Times from 2000 to 2012, the last seven years as a foreign correspondent in South America and Chicago. As well as the FT, his reporting has appeared in The Economist, the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, New Statesman, The Irish Times, Slate and Politico.

Hal's experience in South America formed the basis for his 2012 book, Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the United States and Started Prospering. His time as a reporter in Chicago led him to write 'Chicago's Decade of Innovation, 1972-1982', a chapter covering the development of financial derivatives, which was published in the 2010 book Regulated Exchanges: Dynamic Agents of Economic Growth.

Hal grew up in Wales. He was an undergraduate at Leeds, gained a master's at Oriel College, Oxford, and was a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

His interests include rugby, tea, and gardening.

Life Is Not a TED Talk

  • Understand what persuasion is and is not. Analyze your current communication skills and identify areas to improve. Make your daily communication more deliberate and focused.

Not about What You Say, but about How You Are Heard

  • Learn about why companies so often misjudge their audiences. Develop tools to analyze the audiences you want to win over. Explore the power of good questions.

Building Up, Not Cutting Down

  • Discover the role of narratives in influencing your audience. Explore the narrative structure and process, beginning with the nutshell paragraph: the “big why”. Learn how to frame problems in a way that will make your audience want to help you solve them.

Narrative: Openings and Closings

  • Learn how to hook and engage an audience from the start. Explore communication techniques such as dropped introductions, calls to action, and outros. Examine how to close a narrative by framing the follow-up conversations.

Articulating Your Superpower

  • Discover how to identify and convey your personal brand. Explore how to capture the value you bring to the organizations for which you work. Learn how to build and maintain professional networks.

Turning Skills into Habits

  • Identify the skills from the program that will be most valuable to you. Evaluate how to turn those skills into habits through regular practice and reflection. Build a six-month personal development plan that sets goals, measures progress, and will hold you accountable.

This program ticked all the right boxes. I’m prepared to leverage the skills I learned in day-to-day operations.

—Opeyemi Familade, Senior Manager, Visa Directý

I enjoyed all the online learning as well as the live sessions. I was able to apply my knowledge immediately and see results at work.
—Christina Wagener, System Director, Clinical Service Lines

Professor Weitzman's teaching style is extremely engaging, which allowed easy uptake of the material. The communication strategies and supporting structures that he delivers in this program have given me a useful framework for presenting.

—Ken Nupert, Vice President Health, Safety, Security and Environment, Apache Corporation

Upcoming Course Dates

May 16 - June 26, 2023
October 3 - November 13, 2023

Fee: $2,800