Breast Cancer Care
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Communication Concern
As a charity Breast Cancer Care places a high important on communication skills for all its staff from nurses to fundraisers to helpline operators so that everyone involved with the charity’s work understands how important their involvement is. Alex Dawson of Breast Cancer Care was looking for a course which would be suitable for a mixed group of people who present to very differing audiences such as corporate sponsors, clients, volunteers and donors.
Alex had had the opportunity to attend a sample Partners With You workshop and had found it to be extremely useful on a personal level. “The straightforward structure and good quality feedback gave me a chance to work on how to improve my presentation skills based on the insight I was given as to why I presented as I did. It was a fun safe environment which really enabled the learning points to be taken on board and I felt that other members of staff would also benefit from this approach” said Alex.
Solution
Alex set up a two day course with Neil Roberts of Partners With You which would cover not only how to deliver presentations with impact but would also help the team create a rapport with their audiences and also build their own confidence. During the two days all the delegates were given the opportunity to give a presentation and receive specific feedback from the workshop leaders.
“The feedback the delegates received was very powerful and really helped everyone to boost their performance. At Breast Cancer Care we pride ourselves on providing a supportive caring environment and this sometimes makes it difficult to give accurate and honest feedback to each other. Everyone really appreciated the honesty of the feedback given to them by the trainers.”
The course covered how to portray an image of confidence and competence, coping with nerves, working as a team, inspiring others and delivering with impact to enable the delegates to have a raft of techniques to engage with the audience, control their voices and communicate more effectively. Partners With You also supplied a tool kit for use on Breast Cancer Care’s intranet and as an aide memoire.
Result
The nine delegates on the two day course learnt great skills and have since put them into practice. The breathing techniques and the mental preparation techniques were new to most people and as innovative tricks of the trade, have definitely lodged themselves in the delegates’ memories. The memorable lemon squeezing tip is also still firmly on every presenter’s personal preparation agenda!
One delegate has told Alex that giving a presentation to what was previously felt to be a daunting corporate audience is now not such a stressful occasion. An improvement in self confidence when dealing with the media is another tangible example given by another delegate attending the course.
Alex concludes, “The customer care shown by Partners With You is exemplary. We were very happy that they met our specific needs by adapting the content of the course so that it would work for us. They’ve ticked every box for us and the follow up post course has been great showing that the high levels of support don’t end once the course is over.”