How to Communicate with Diplomacy, Tact and Credibility

How effectively you communicate directly affects your professional reputation and image. This ability shapes how colleagues view your work quality and performance capacity, and it significantly influences your career advancement opportunities and professional mobility. Unfortunately, being diplomatic, tactful, and credible does not come naturally to everyone. Even for those with strong instincts, communication effectiveness can easily be undermined by emotional reactions and interpersonal conflicts. To become a communicator who excels in all three areas, you need awareness, proper training, and the ability to apply proven techniques to a wide range of business situations.

This seminar teaches you how to select and use the most fitting words and appropriate emotional tone for every business interaction. You will develop greater insight into your own communication style and the styles of others. You will build your capabilities to clearly receive and transmit information, ideas, perspectives, emotions, and needs in professional contexts.

How You Will Benefit:

• Apply diplomacy and tact to become a credible and effective communicator
• Manage the impact your communication style has on your professional image
• Identify and leverage your unique communication style
• Strengthen and develop better listening abilities
• Recognize the importance of perception in business relationships
• Understand communication style differences and learn to adjust your style appropriately
• Recognize how stress affects communication and adjust your approach accordingly
• Recognize what defines effective, powerful communication and develop the ability to demonstrate it

What You Will Learn and Cover:

The Importance of Perception

• Understand how perception and professional image impact how others view you and your work performance
• Recognize how diplomacy, tact, and credibility are conveyed through communication

Communication Style Differences

• Recognize how your communication style influences the image others develop of you
• Adapt your style to communicate with greater diplomacy, tact, and credibility
• Complete the Insight Inventory assessment to better understand your communication style and its impact on effectiveness
• Adjust your style to reflect differences in gender, generational background, and organizational position
• Recognize how stress influences the way you use your communication style traits

Effective and Powerful Communication

• Identify and overcome the obstacles that interfere with effective communication
• Learn to positively influence the visual, verbal, and vocal elements of your communication
• Explain the Know-Feel-Do Model of communication
• Practice and implement strategies for powerful communication
• Recognize nonverbal communication as essential to the overall communication process

Effective Listening Skills

• Use active listening techniques to communicate with diplomacy, tact, and credibility
• Identify and address the barriers and obstacles that prevent effective listening
• Use strong listening skills to build and strengthen your professional image
• Understand the organizational costs of ineffective listening

Diplomacy, Tact, and Credibility

• Define the five key actions that create credible communication
• Apply diplomacy, tact, and credibility skills to improve communication effectiveness
• Identify how "hot buttons" cause people to lose their diplomacy and tact, which damages credibility
• Become aware of your own "hot buttons," and prepare strategies for these triggering situations

Course Outline and Learning Objectives

• Apply diplomacy and tact to become a credible and effective communicator
• Identify and leverage your communication style effectively
• Apply effective communication skills in your work
• Demonstrate active listening skills

Communication: A Matter of Perception

• Define diplomacy, tact, and credibility in the context of communication
• Discuss how perception and professional image shape how others assess you and your job performance
• Explain the PIE Model and its relevance to communication effectiveness

Applying Diplomacy

• Explain how to positively influence the visual, verbal, and vocal elements of your communication
• Apply active listening skills to strengthen your image and your ability to communicate with diplomacy, tact, and credibility
• Identify the barriers and obstacles that interfere with effective listening

Communicating with Tact

• Explain how your communication style influences how others perceive you
• Assess the strengths and challenges of your own style when interacting with different people
• Adjust your style to communicate with greater diplomacy, tact, and credibility

Demonstrating Credibility

• Define the five actions that create credible communication
• Identify and remove obstacles to effective communication
• Apply the Know-Believe-Feel-Do Model to your communication

Putting It All Together

• Address barriers that hinder effective communication
• Apply diplomacy, tact, and credibility skills to improve your communication