Effective Interactive Communication

Minutes should serve as more than a record of who said what at a meeting. They should help organizations advance their goals and objectives and provide accountabilities. Building on PMC’s course Minute Taking for Better Meetings this day-long seminar provides participants with opportunities to craft minutes that focus on clear, concise writing designed to reach its intended audience — colleagues, board members, decision makers. Workshop participants will take notes in several mock meetings and write minutes in a variety of styles suitable for the audience. Active learning takes place in a relaxed and fun environment. Course participants will be encouraged to summarize their key learning points and prepare a short action plan to implement on their return to work.

If you are looking for a presentation skills course that will challenge you and build upon your existing strengths, this course is for you. Delivered in a 1-day workshop format, this course is aimed at experienced speakers who wish to leverage their influencing skills and hone their authentic speaker style. Learn the various intangible elements that will enhance your desired outcome. Become more aware of yourself and your audience and how to connect with them so they want to listen to you. Participants will practice their skills in the presence of other advanced students and will gain valuable insight into their strengths and areas for development. Class size is small to ensure individual attention.

Conflict is a part of life. But well-managed conflict can produce benefits and positive changes, both in productivity and relationships. Communication skills, specifically the ability to communicate assertively, are among the best skills to acquire for dealing effectively with the demands of people in conflict with us, whether they are employees, colleagues, our managers or our clients. In the workplace, whether we are in a position of authority or not, we need to manage our interactions with people. We need to know what power is and how to use it: to negotiate, to express our ideas clearly so people will listen to us, even if they don’t agree with us; to stand up for our convictions, even when they are unpopular; and to deal with the emotions created by situations of conflict. At this workshop you will practice what you learn to enable you to apply the skills more readily when you return to your workplace. You are encouraged to bring examples of situations you would like to resolve.

Managers often step in because it feels faster, safer, and more reliable than waiting for someone else to think it through. But when the same questions, errors, and follow-through issues keep coming back, quick fixes start creating more work. This course helps managers and supervisors use coaching conversations to build stronger employee ownership, judgment, and follow-through. Participants learn when to coach, when to give direction, how to guide thinking without taking over, and how to turn conversations into clear next steps. With better coaching habits, employees become more confident in handling real work situations, while managers spend less time solving the same problems again.

The ability to communicate effectively at work and in life is perhaps the most critical skill for anyone. Those who have demonstrated an ability to effectively communicate are more likely to receive promotions and job offers. Effective communication allows you to use all the other skills you have to the fullest. Your success in motivating, delegating, organizing, solving problems and obtaining information depends heavily on your ability to communicate with others. At this workshop you’ll learn how to influence and inform through the use of real life examples, group discussions, role plays and interactive hands-on exercises.

Whether you’re delivering bad news, giving a negative performance evaluation, challenging a colleague or client, objecting to additional workload, presenting options in the midst of a crisis, or simply letting people know that the direction on a certain project is changing — communicating difficult subject matter can be an emotionally charged event. Understandably, many people would do anything to avoid that situation. Yet avoiding critical and difficult conversations or mishandling them can result in many negative consequences. Learn how being assertive, open, honest and fair in your critical conversations, and fostering others to do the same, can develop alignment and agreement within your organization. Encouraging open and honest dialogues around important, emotional, or risky topics – at any level – can significantly reduce and resolve conflict, nurture relationships and boost productivity and efficiency. This workshop is designed to help individuals, teams and organizations improve the way they approach their critical conversations, with confidence, and manage the conversation skillfully so that feelings are spared and the organization’s best interests are kept front and center.

Of all the key competencies for supervisors and managers, two of the most important are learning to manage individual performance on a daily basis and learning to delegate. Both represent difficult learning curves. Without mastering delegation, it is impossible to expand your range of responsibility, to empower others or to grow into your role and responsibilities. For many, it is a difficult transition from being paid for doing it yourself to getting the work done through others. Delegation is a critical skill to assist time-starved supervisors and managers in becoming more effective for themselves, their teams and their organizations. This course offers a mix of self-awareness, guidance, skills, ideas, tools and methods to master this critical competence.

Learning how to deal with difficult people at work starts with better judgment: What is actually happening, what work standard is being strained, and what response fits your role? When difficult behaviour is left unclear, teams start working around it, participation drops, decisions slow down, and time is lost to avoidable friction. This course helps participants recognize repeated behaviour patterns, assess the impact on the work, and decide whether a direct conversation, raising the concern, or a pause-and-consult approach is the right next step. Participants leave with practical language for resetting expectations clearly and fairly, helping teams reduce workarounds, protect follow-through, and keep the work moving.

Most professionals don’t think of their day as a negotiation, but it is. Every time priorities compete, deadlines shift, scope expands, or expectations are not fully aligned, a decision has to be made. When handled with a soft yes, rushed compromise, or unclear commitment, the impact often shows up later as rework, missed handoffs, strained relationships, and avoidable escalation. Designed for Canada’s public, private, and non-profit sectors, this practical workplace negotiation course focuses on the everyday decisions that shape how work gets done. Using PMC Training’s MOVE framework, participants learn to define the outcome they need to protect, understand what may be driving the other side, identify realistic trade-offs, and build clear if/then agreements that prevent one-sided concessions. Through practical scenarios involving competing priorities, timeline pressure, changing requirements, and pushback, participants develop the judgment to respond deliberately instead of reacting. They leave better prepared to create clearer agreements, reduce rework, improve accountability, and support consistent follow-through across teams.

In matrix and cross-functional environments, results often depend on people, priorities, decisions, and handoffs that sit outside one person’s direct control. When ownership is unclear, decisions stall, or commitments become vague, shared work can slip even when everyone is trying to help. This course helps participants strengthen accountability around the work itself. They learn how to clarify decision paths, define stronger commitments, keep progress visible, and reset the path when priorities, capacity, or support change. The focus is practical: fewer surprises, less chasing, cleaner handoffs, and better follow-through across teams, projects, partners, and stakeholders.

Influence is a key skill that is necessary for having impact on organizations and communities, especially when you do not have formal authority. Being a leader means sharing your ideas and taking action, regardless of your position or title. This session focuses on how participants can have a positive influence on their personal and professional communities without depending on authority or organizational hierarchy.  Instead of considering influence to be a process of “persuading others”, this session focuses on building 5 key leadership qualities that will positively impact those you work and socialize with. Participants will learn communication strategies to improve influence. This session also includes a social styles assessment to help participants learn how to leverage their strengths. Even when in a formal leadership role, influence can motivate, engage and empower others, rather than relying on giving orders or using formal ‘power’. Instead of presenting traditional approaches to influence such as ‘networking’ or ‘ being persuasive’, this session focuses on authentic leadership, building relationships,  effective communication, connecting ideas to organizational values, and being a leadership role model. Myths around influence as applying pressure, manipulation, or requiring a social media presence will be dispelled. Participants will have the opportunity to develop communication skills, craft a vision statement, and create an action plan for making an influence in their community.

Management is frequently described as the art of getting work done through others. This requires a set of skills and talents that Administrative Professionals can develop to extend their influence, meet their manager’s expectations, create a professional image, take initiative, solve problems, resolve conflict, plan current and future activities, and have a springboard for career development. If you are in the role of executive secretary or administrative assistant you’ll find this workshop to be essential to your present job and critical to your future. This workshop is not a lecture. It is a “hands on” opportunity to identify your existing management skills, develop new skills and bring increased opportunity to your organization and to you personally. The list of practical exercises includes confidence & conflict resolution role-plays as well as a ‘guess my personality type’ exercise based on the True Colors personality indicator. For prioritization, students will learn how to create a Daily Map in order to prioritize tasks.

Influence without authority is a daily reality for individual contributors who need to move work forward through people they do not formally manage. A request may depend on a peer’s input, a stakeholder’s decision, a partner’s handoff, or a colleague’s follow-through, and even when people intend to help, work can stall through vague asks, soft yeses, competing priorities, delayed replies, or unclear ownership. This course helps participants make clearer asks, test whether agreement is reliable, keep progress visible, and choose the right next move when work starts to slip. Participants leave with practical tools to get work done through others with more confidence, while organizations benefit from fewer delays, clearer handoffs, stronger follow-through, and less unnecessary escalation.

Meetings are an important part of the group decision-making process. With today’s flatter, less hierarchical organizations, one week you could be asked to chair a meeting and the next week to record the minutes. Minutes are a record of the group’s decisions and action items and it is vital that they are clear, concise and accurate. This seminar helps participants to understand the full range of their role and responsibilities as Minute Takers, to work effectively with the Chair and to produce agendas and minutes in a variety of styles – formal, informal and action. Workshop participants will take part in a mock meeting to gain a practical understanding of the roles of Chair and Minute Taker, to practice taking accurate notes and producing correct minutes. Active learning takes place in a relaxed and fun environment. Course participants will be encouraged to summarize their key learning points and prepare a short action plan to implement on their return to work.

Emotions are a key component of what makes us human. While emotions have often been seen as less important than intellectual reasoning, emotions motivate us to act, inspire us to create and connect our relationships. Our experiences shape how we understand, process and manage our emotions. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to identify, assess and positively engage with one’s own emotions and the emotions of others. Many people have not developed the foundational building blocks to be emotionally intelligent, resulting in emotions getting in the way of our judgement, relationships, or careers. This workshop provides opportunities for participants to build emotional intelligence by focusing on developing understanding and skills in: self-awareness, emotional management, physiological and behavioural reactions, understanding the connection to values and motivations, overcoming barriers to communication, building trust, and exercising empathy. Participants can apply their new skills in EQ to their personal and professional lives.

This course follows Personal Effectiveness Through Emotional Intelligence – EQ1. It builds on the theory and tools presented in the initial program and dives deeper into developing the practical skills and behaviours that increase one’s own emotional intelligence both at work and in personal life. This course provides the opportunity to gain greater knowledge and skills to understand, express and regulate one’s emotions. In addition, participants will develop strategies to manage emotional interactions with others. Participants engage in a variety of self-reflective exercises, group activities, and discussion to explore and develop higher levels of emotional intelligence in a supportive environment.

In today’s workplace, training has taken on a broader role as more employees are now responsible for, or taking on the challenge of, training others within their department or organization. Recognizing that training and education is one of the key components to any organization’s success, whether you are providing new hire orientation, transferring knowledge or skills, or training a group of employees on a specific subject, some basic learning principles will apply. That’s where we come in. By guiding you through the ins and outs, the tips and tricks, and the do’s and don’ts of training others, we will help you to provide an effective and positive learning experience. This one-day course provides an essential tool-kit to help you acquire the underlying skills of an effective trainer. We will help you understand the learning and training fundamentals, and review the tools and techniques in designing and delivering training that will guarantee positive results from your audience. You will also learn how to evaluate your training effectiveness, while receiving practical feedback on how to improve and hone your training skills.

Supervisors make constant decisions all day long about when to step in, what to say, and how to respond when work or behaviour starts to slip. When these moments are handled inconsistently or too late, issues linger, expectations become unclear, and teams end up dealing with avoidable rework and frustration. This supervisor training course is built around PMC Training’s 3-Zone framework, a practical approach to everyday supervision that helps managers set work up clearly, adjust performance issues while they’re still recoverable, and reset missed standards when needed. It gives supervisors a simple way to decide when to coach, when to give feedback, and when to take more direct action. As a result, teams work with clearer expectations, stronger accountability, and fewer unresolved issues. It also helps your organization apply standards more consistently, fairly, and promptly in a way that supports stronger performance and team morale.

In today’s workplace, the administrative support position is the nerve centre of business, industry and government at all levels. Called upon to increase the effectiveness of the office environment, the administrative assistant needs to manage strategies, public relations, resources, time, stress, difficult people conflict and crisis situations calmly, effectively and professionally. This workshop provides management skills vital to today’s support position. This energetic, fun and fast-paced course will show you how to achieve respect as an indispensable member of your office team. In a comfortable and controlled learning environment, you will explore and expand upon techniques and methods, and learn the critical skills required to get the work done on time, keep the office running at peak efficiency, and balance work and personal life.

Stepping into management changes more than your responsibilities. It changes how people interpret your actions, how standards need to be applied, and how often you find yourself needing to address issues you may have previously overlooked, tolerated, or left to someone else. This course uses PMC Training’s Four Shifts framework to help new and experienced managers lead more consistently across role, relationship, communication, and routine. Participants learn how to communicate more clearly, apply expectations fairly, navigate changing team dynamics, and build the structure that supports team accountability. The result is a steadier approach that strengthens trust, visible fairness, and day-to-day performance for both the manager and the organization.

Leaders come from diverse backgrounds. Sometimes you report to them, sometimes they lead your project, and sometimes they are in charge of your kids’ sports team or the place where you volunteer. Some leaders naturally align with your preferred style of following, while others do not. Adapting to different leadership styles is key to maintaining your motivation, performance, resilience, and peace of mind. The instructor for this course trains, coaches and supports 2,000 plus leaders from every sector each year. He designed this program to help followers create a successful collaboration with the wide variety of leaders he works with.

As workplaces become busier, and organizational change becomes the norm, the art of effective listening becomes all the more valuable. Good listeners find themselves involved in interesting work, healthy working relationships and long term career success. This is no coincidence. Effective listening skills are a large part of personal success in the workplace. The difference between hearing someone and listening to someone is enormous. Making colleagues feel that you are truly understanding not only their words but their personal point of view and how they feel can change office dynamics in a profound way. Active listening has a way of making those you are communicating with feel valued and understood. In this highly interactive workshop participants can expect to not only learn the theory behind active listening but also to engage in participatory exercises and activities to practice the learned skill of active listening.

It’s easy to forget the “manager” part of your “project manager” title among the other range of activities you are responsible for. However, your management skills are an important part of your success as a project manager, so it is crucial that you grow both of those skill sets. There are also some advanced project management techniques that you can master to help bring your projects to successful completion. This workshop presumes that participants have a thorough understanding of project management, including topics such as preparing a statement of work, setting project goals, scheduling, budgeting, managing project risks, and executing a project.

More and more organizations are faced with the challenge of maximizing the time they spend attracting, inspiring and retaining top performers. That’s why the interview itself is such a critical step in the employee selection process. Quoting Dr. Paul Green, a pioneer in developing behavioural interviewing processes: “past actions predict future performance.” Behavioural interviewing focuses on the applicant’s past actions and behaviors, and not subjective impressions that can sometimes be misleading. This type of interviewing improves your organization’s overall hiring ROI (cost of hire or re‐hire, training and productivity costs, impact on morale, etc.) and competitive edge in today’s market. It also reduces risk in potential bias and is more legally defensible than any other type of interview. This one-day workshop provides a comprehensive guide to understanding and incorporating behavioural interviewing techniques to identify, hire and retain quality talent every time.

Most people hate performance appraisals. They think they are a waste of time and just try to get them over with. At their worst they can demoralize staff and damage relationships. It doesn’t have to be that way. When done right, PA’s are an enabling tool that operates at the center of your management practices. They help to recognize and reward staff. They set operational and competency development directions for the coming year. They serve as the framework for coaching, mentoring and feedback throughout the year. When done right, they save time, add value and create accountability in all the right places.

Canada is becoming increasingly more diverse, and this brings new opportunities and challenges to respond to. Employers and employees have the challenge of working in new ways with other team-members, of being part of an effective team where the members are unlike each other in race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, culture, language, generations or customs. Managers need to create an inclusive environment in which all employees understand, value, and respect each others’ differences. These opportunities and challenges remain the same with other stakeholders such as clients, customers and the community. This program is designed to address all these in an interactive session.

While many companies promise to deliver an incredible customer experience, some are better at delivering than others. This two-day course is designed around six critical elements of customer service that, when the company lives them, bring customers back to experience service that outdoes the competition.

The Fundamentals of Selling course is designed to equip sales professionals with the core skills necessary to excel in today’s competitive business environment. This three-day program provides a structured, consultative approach to selling, enabling participants to gather meaningful market intelligence, build strong client relationships, and propose tailored solutions that address customer challenges. Attendees will develop competencies in sales strategy, technology, prospecting tactics, consultative sales calls, negotiation, and self-management.

As human beings, we often hunger for feedback. However, many people will tell you that when they do get feedback, it’s often because of something they have done wrong. This one day course is designed to help workplace leaders learn how to provide feedback any time that the message is due. Whether feedback is formal or informal, and whether it is provided to employees, peers, or someone else, there are ways that it can be structured to be effective and lasting. This course will help participants learn why the way we deliver is feedback is important, how to deliver a message so that people accept it and make changes that may be needed, and how to accept feedback that we are offered.

Confidence is not just an asset that’s nice to have. It is a fundamental basis for success and satisfaction in your professional and personal life. Whether you are selling your ideas, taking calculated risks, responding to criticism, working as part of a team, interacting with co-workers or clients, applying for a promotion, or a myriad of other everyday activities, you will achieve more faster if you have self-confidence. This workshop explores the positive impact of self-confidence in your career and personal life. Through exercise, you will discover the sources of low self-confidence and develop new skills to increase your self confidence in order to increase your effectiveness and comfort in various areas of your life.

How do you manage a poor performer? What do you do if your feedback is ignored? How do you manage an individual who seems to lack a work ethic? How do you define the shortfall in an individual’s performance? How do you ensure that any positive change in work performance is permanent and lasting? This workshop gives you practical help and guides through a collaborative process that will produce many lasting benefits. Interactive and fun, you’ll learn a motivational style that you can practice in a risk-free setting.

Stakeholders are parties that will be affected by a project’s execution or results. Stakeholders can have their own expectations and objectives and have the potential to strongly influence a project’s outcome in positive or negative directions. Whether obvious or covert these stakeholders’ expectations must be articulated and understood before they can be managed. This workshop focuses on tools and techniques to discover the project’s stakeholders, identify and clarify their expectations, and develop a plan to manage these expectations. Attention is paid to stakeholders’ spheres of influence, including their influences on each other. Political, legal, and community influences will be examined along with strategies to mitigate or enhance such influences. Political and legal influences can include existing legislation as well as future trends and directions. Community influences could originate in the geographical, business and social community where the project is occurring, the professional/technical community that is involved in implementing the project and using its results, as well as other interested communities of people. Case studies are used as learning vehicles to develop an awareness of stakeholder expectations and expectation management plans, and to tie stakeholder requirements to the project’s scope management, procurement management, risk management, and resource management plans.

In today’s fast-paced business world, effective collaboration is key to success. Our Mastering Microsoft Teams workshop is designed to equip your team with the essential skills and advanced features of Microsoft Teams, transforming the way you communicate, manage projects, and collaborate. This one-day workshop covers everything you need to streamline operations, enhance productivity, and foster seamless teamwork. If you’re looking to improve group coordination and integrate powerful tools like Planner, OneNote, and Forms, this training will elevate your team’s capabilities and keep you ahead in the digital workspace.

Encouraging individuals to achieve their highest potential can be a challenging endeavor. Effectively managing for peak performance involves mastering the art of creating an environment where motivation thrives and individuals exceed their own expectations. This comprehensive one-day workshop is designed to equip you with essential skills and strategies to achieve just that.

This highly interactive workshop focuses on building stronger teams by appreciating the unique strengths each personality brings. Participants will gain a deep understanding of the DISC model, explore individual styles, and develop the skills to read and adapt to different personality types. Throughout the workshop, participants will reflect on their detailed personality reports, examining their strengths, areas for development, and preferences in various work situations. They will also consider how their personality style typically interacts with others. The workshop includes team-building activities and discussions, allowing participants to experience their personalities “in action.” These exercises foster stronger team connections and enhance awareness of individual communication and problem-solving styles. Origins of DISC Both DISC Personality Profiles and Myers Briggs (MBTI) are based on the work of Carl Jung, the psychiatrist known for founding analytical psychology and for developing key personality concepts such as introversion and extroversion. DISC and Myers Briggs (MBTI) both measure our “hard wired” behavioural styles – as in, how we behave naturally in our “comfort zone”.

Your organization’s success depends on the professionalism of its customer service people. Do you know how to deal effectively with difficult or angry customers? Can you confidently turn a negative situation into a positive one? Do you always create a good first impression? Do you build rapport effortlessly with your customers? This workshop will help you become a model of professional behaviour and skill. You’ll develop a system for staying calm, motivated and enthusiastic regardless of pressures and problems. Learn techniques for dealing effectively with angry or difficult customers, and for being creative in dealing with challenges and the unexpected.

During our career, we are all required to work with others to reach a desired goal, and while being a part of a team can be rewarding, it can also offer challenges.  Research shows that building a more positive team in the workplace makes a significant difference in both an employee’s success and well-being. This can have a significant impact on the success of your team, and organization. This one-day workshop discusses the skills and behaviors that are necessary to develop a cohesive team that can work together to build success. This program explores what is currently working on your team, identifies team challenges, and will provide you with an opportunity to better understand yourself and your team. Discussions will focus on how creating an effective and results-focused team begins with improving communication.

Most people who call themselves trainers today probably didn’t start out to be trainers. They often work in a field where they develop extensive knowledge and then are asked to share what they know. Many trainers have some experience with teaching, writing, or leadership, although they come from nearly every field. As such, people who work as trainers are often put into difficult situations without much understanding of what training is or how to do it well. We know that being a good trainer is the result of developing skills to bring information to an audience. This information will then engage, empower, and encourage continued learning and development. This three-day course will give you the skills that you need so that your students not only learn, but also enjoy the process, retain information shared, and use their new skills back in the workplace. Participants will also have the opportunity to conduct a short group training session that incorporates these training concepts.

Many people understandably dislike the concept of office politics since it brings to mind manipulation, questionable tactics and closed doors. Yet politics need not be dirty. In fact, an understanding of office politics is a critical element in gaining resources and information to do your job. To be effective in any organization, political skill is needed. Through facilitated discussion, group and paired exercises and brainstorming, this workshop will show you how to reframe the concept of office politics into a positive force. You’ll discover how to use different types of power; work effectively with others; build influence; understand the political give-and-take of any organization; and maintain high integrity.

Being able to get along with co-workers and cooperate effectively towards the achievement of common goals is a highly valued key competency that can open the doors to increased responsibility and opportunities in your career. This workshop will give you the insight you need to better contribute to your team’s success. Using an 18 point personal assessment tool you’ll gain a better understanding of your individual team style and learn how to identify team strengths and trouble spots. You’ll learn valuable skills to transfer knowledge and information to other team members in an effective way to maximize productivity. You’ll also learn how to improve communication and build rapid rapport using the True Colors model. Personalized Team Insights Report After the course completion, a concise synthesis of key challenges, solutions, and top-voted priorities generated during the World Café exercise, along with facilitator observations that highlight emerging patterns and potential areas for focus will be provided. It will be delivered as a clear, structured summary leaders can use to guide next steps.