Masterclass – “a total lifechanger” for internal communications

Published by Tony Quinlan on

I was talking with a client recently who asked me about the internal comms masterclass where we first met. Ark Group had asked me to run a masterclass that had got some great feedback and he wanted to know when he could send some of his team on a similar one.

We’re talking about running a tailored version of the original one in-house for him, but I’ve decided that we’ll run a public masterclass ourselves as an experiment as Ark have pulled out of the communications arena altogether.

As it’s the first one and we want to keep it tailored to participants’ needs, we’re going to limit attendance to 10 people in the first place. I’ll be leading it, but we’ll be having some guest speakers along the way.

Date: Tuesday 22nd March 2011

Venue: Central London

Time: 9.30-16.00

Cost: £310
Early bird registration (before 8th March): £250

You can book online at Eventbrite: More for less – a one-day masterclass in internal communications

And we can adapt and offer it for in-house communications training – just ask.

The details:

In the current climate, individuals and organizations are under increasing stress. As a communicator, you are being asked to deliver more results in less predictable environments with fewer resources. Whether an experienced professional or a recent recruit, this masterclass will equip you with ideas, practical techniques and clear next steps.

It is perfectly possible to deliver “more for less” – what it requires is a new set of persepectives and tools to address employee engagement and internal communications.

This one-day masterclass will help you

  • Understand and define the realities of internal communications in the current climate
  • Generate understanding, buy-in and collaboration inside the organization
  • Deliver and evaluate real behavioural changes
  • Collect more content than you know what to do with
  • Understand the limits of what you can do and can’t do

Previous comments about Narrate masterclasses:

Totally innovative! I’ve never done anything like this and enjoyed it. Am bursting with ideas for how I can apply this in my workplace – thanks for showing me all these things!

A total life-changer!

• Excellent away-day. Practical and theoretical. Grounded in lots of examples and stories. Liked that it was a small group as lots of opportunities to share and network.

• A very useful course and I have learnt a lot of things that I can take back to the office re. communications.

• A very good course that I will recommend to colleagues.

An interactive day, focused and adapted to meet participants’ specific situations and challenges, it includes practical tools, principles, guest speakers and examples of communications from different sectors – to ensure that as a participant, you come away with pragmatic, useful material to put into action the minute you get back to your desk.

Masterclass leader:

Tony Quinlan, Principal Consultant and Chief Storyteller, Narrate

Tony is a business alchemist who founded Narrate in 2000 to create more effective, healthier organizational cultures and communications. He’s passionate about breaking out of rigid, purely rational communications to create real cultural and behavioral change. A member of the Cognitive Edge network, he is always exploring new ideas and practices, looking at current business practices from a different perspective. If you want 12-step models and the “same old, same old”, then you’ve got the wrong man.

A frequent keynote speaker and conference chair, Tony writes on communications, branding and culture for international publications and blogs at www.thenarrateblog.com. Today, he is a writer, keynote speaker, communications coach, masterclass presenter and international consultant. But he has also been a radio presenter, radar designer, TV tuner, dishwasher, lift attendant, software programmer and presented live public roadshows to 8,000 people at a time. Needless to say, he has stories about all of them.

Overall agenda:

9:30 Registration and refreshments

10:00 Introductions and objectives

  • Making the course relevant

10:15 Thinking about internal communications

  • Principles and goals

10.45 The role of the internal communicator

  • Opportunities and obstacles
  • Skills and support
  • Collaboration and confidentiality

11:20 Morning Coffee Break

11:50 Communications in challenging times

  • Mergers, redundancies and acquisitions

12:30 Innovative internal communications

  • Better results on lower budgets
  • The communications mix

13:10 Lunch

14:10 Dealing with major comms projects

  • Values, change and organisational myths

14:50 Understanding the internal audience

  • Using internal surveys
  • Evaluating with meaning

15:30 Discussions and Next Steps

16:00 Close of Masterclass