Professional Business Communication
This Professional Business Communication workshop gives trainee lawyers the opportunity to review and develop their communication skills. If it is accepted that communication is partly about the words, partly about how we say the words, and partly about body language, this session can help with all three.
The session looks at communication skills as a whole to identify potential areas for development. It then drills down into tips and ideas for what words to choose and common pitfalls to avoid. It looks at the impact of changing how we deliver the words. And it looks at the power of body language. The ITD Work Style Model gives trainees a framework for how to more effectively approach senior lawyers, clients and colleagues.
The result is to give trainees a foundation of communication skills to take forward.
We look at the participants real work situations and explore how to improve communication skills within the context of these scenarios. How to interrupt a colleague who never stops talking? How to get more from a lawyer who never has time for you. How to explain a complex legal matter to someone who has no legal knowledge.
Trainees need to develop knowledge of the law in tandem with how best to communicate this knowledge.
Professional Business Communication details
Agenda:
- Introductions & objectives.
- Challenges in communicating in a law firm.
- ITD Work Style Model.
- Improving communication with senior lawyers.
- Assertive behaviour for trainees.
- How to say you have enough work for that day!
- Improving listening.
- Developing empathy.
- Questioning skills.
- Clarity in communicating.
- Developing better body language.
- Clear purpose or objective.
- Involving the other person / people.
- Improving eye contact.
- The power of Mirroring.
- Practice scenarios.
- Personal actions.
Duration
This workshop can be run as either a two hour or three hour workshop.
Participants
The participants can be junior lawyers, trainees, graduate trainees and paralegals.
Virtual or Live
This session can be either or virtual or live classroom workshop.
Participant numbers
The session works well with up to twelve participants.
Pre-workshop
Participants complete the ITD Work Style Model questionnaire.
Post workshop
You can purchase follow up support to this traiing using our WhatsApp WorkCoach.
Reviews
Read what participants say about our training.
Case Study
Enquire about our professional business communication training
Background
Trainees and junior lawyers tend to be very hungry for knowledge about the law. Communication skills training is about how we transfer our knowledge and give confidence to our colleagues and our clients. Trainee lawyers tend to be very bright, very quick and articulate. Training in this area is about fine tuning skills.
Need
The need with trainee lawyers is often about developing confidence in communicating assertively with senior lawyers. Senior lawyers are often under great pressure with tight deadlines and as a result their communication can suffer. It is for the trainee to adapt to this whilst at the same time getting sufficient detail in briefings to be bale to carry out tasks efficiently.
Activity
We developed a half day to full day workshop which covers the key areas of communication and focusses on the trainees personal communication challenges. It is a workshop with plenty of discussion and debate, resulting in each trainee developing their own ideas and actions to implement immediately. The session addresses questions including;
- How do we interrupt a busy senior lawyer?
- What do I do if my supervisor does not reply to my email?
- How do I ask a question without looking stupid?
- How do I know what I ought to know, before asking a question?
Outcomes
The main outcomes of this session are:
- The participants leave with clear and specific actions.
- Their questions are addressed.
- Each person has a set of actions and ideas to take forward.
What the participants said
- “Very good trainer who knows the subject and related it to us very well.”
- “The work style model is very thought provoking.”