Customized Training & Coaching
Your team can learn to write more quickly, easily, and effectively with in-house professional development customized to your organization’s needs and your staff members’ strengths and challenges. With my help, your staff can learn to:
- Master the five-step writing process to produce better products in less time and with less effort.
- Understand your audiences’ needs to engage and inspire them.
- Separate “features” from “benefits” and motivate audiences by speaking to “what’s in it for me.”
- Write simply and clearly in language that humans can understand.
- Get straight to the point.
- Break down long documents, sections, paragraphs, and sentences into manageable chunks.
- Avoid common grammar, punctuation, and usage issues.
- Avoid the grammar, punctuation, and usage issues that plague their own writing.
We can address these and other goals in one-time workshops, ongoing coaching for individuals or small groups, or a combination of the two.
I don’t do “off-the-shelf” training. Grown-ups don’t need to be spoon-fed the same stuff they forgot from school. They need training that addresses their real needs here and now. Your one-day or half-day workshop will be customized to your organization and your people. The workshop will:
- Address the needs you and your staff identify
- Help your staff define the audiences for whom they write and what those audiences’ needs are
- Use samples from your own staff members’ writing in hands-on revision activities
In keeping with best practices in adult learning, all of my workshops:
- Start with where your people are now
- Get participants talking and thinking about their own writing from the beginning to the end
- Rely on hands-on activities based on real-world writing samples–usually participants’ own work
- Provide take-home materials participants can use tomorrow in their work
Personalized Coaching
Staff members who face more challenges when writing can benefit from one-on-one or small-group coaching. You can choose coaching sessions either in addition to or instead of a professional development session for the whole staff. The needs of the team members determine the content. Coaching focuses on what the participant is working on now, so both the participant and the organization get immediate benefits as well as the long-term growth.
Sessions can be virtual, though an initial in-person meeting is ideal if possible.