Our new booklet: 104 Tips on How to Ignite and Optimize Your Business and its Leaders is now available. Filled with great tips on Leadership, Managing Others, Communication Skills, Strategic Planning, and Creating and Igniting Change, 104 Tips makes a great gift for your vendors and customers. You can even have it customized with your logo and business name on the cover. for details and a price list. 50% of all profits will go to help the survivors of Katrina.

Bonni's newest article: "Does Your Company Have the N.O.M.A.R Syndrome?" appeared in Executive Excellence in Sales and Service in December 2004. The article (yes, it was written before the World Series championship!) challenges leaders to look at themselves and their executive team, and ask the tough questions like Theo Epstein might have to ask to select and groom a winning team.

Do you find yourself without a strategy or action plan to keep your business pipeline flowing? This eight-week workshop will get you back on track.

Who: For Professional Service Providers or Consultants: Lawyers, financial planners, management consultants, coaches, etc.

What: An eight-week Business Development Program to expand and strengthen your business

When: Meets every other week for eight weeks
Tuesdays: 8:30AM-10:00
Tuesdays 5:30PM-7:00
New Groups begin every other month
Next group begins October 11.

Where: Wellesley, MA

Facilitator: Bonni Carson DiMatteo, CMC. President of Atlantic Consultants. Bonni co- founded Atlantic Consultants in 1982 and provides coaching, training, and consultation to entrepreneurs and their companies.

Fee: $495

by Bonni Carson DiMatteo, © 2005

How many times have you given a call for action and been disappointed with the results? How many times have you given a state of the company address only to be met with muted applause or glazed looks?

Be honest with yourself. It happens to the best of us. Delivering our message to large groups challenges all of us to understand how people learn and respond to communication. Someone once wisely noted: The greatest mistake in communication is the assumption that it has happened.

Leaders do not necessarily come with communication skills, and yet those skills are one of the keys to success as a leader. As you recall, only 31 percent of employees surveyed believed their leaders were effective in communication, and only 52 percent thought their leaders were able to draw a line of vision from their job to the corporate goals. (Watson, Wyatt, Worldwide 2002 [based on 12,750 employees])

When presenting important information to an audience, it is important to remember what William Glazer discovered about retention of information:

10 percent of what they read;
20 percent of what they hear;
30 percent of what they see;
70 percent of what they discuss;
80 percent of what the experience; and
95 percent of what they share.

If you want to capture the enthusiasm of your audience, get them from the passive (read, hear, see) into the active (discuss, experience, share). That creates a call for action.

You also have to engage them in what Boyd Clarke (The Leader's Voice: How Your Communication Can Inspire Action and Get Results) calls the three channels of communication: facts, emotion, and symbols to garner response from the different "stations" inside the brain.

And remember the wise words of educators whose business it is to communicate information:

1. Tell them what you're going to tell them.
2. Tell them.
3. Tell them what you just told them.

You can improve your ability to get your message across by remembering to ask yourself these questions in preparation:

• Begin with the end in mind — what do I want to convey, inspire, challenge?
• Who is my audience?
• How will I create buy-in?
• How do I want to get the message across?
• What do I hope they will do as a result of this communication?
• What is the most effective way to communicate?
• Which channels should I use to reach my audience?

If you deliver your message with passion and conviction, balance the methods of communication, and practice practice practice, you will differentiate yourself and create an enthusiastic commitment to your vision and a powerful call to action.

"Executives are focusing on how to build a flexible and responsive organization to more quickly detect and respond to market opportunities," according to Forbes editor John Dobosz and GartnerG2 Research Director Neil McDonald (April 2004). What are you doing to build your leadership competencies?

• Are you looking for a cost effective solution to developing management and leadership competencies?
• Do you want something that has an impact and extends the learning into the culture of the company and the expectations of management?
• Do you want something that is deeper than a weekend quick fix, that sustains and implements the learning?
• Do you want a guarantee that is based upon an agreed measure of success that you establish?
• Do you know that to replace a key employee is estimated to be 1% to 2.5% of company revenue or between $10K and $100K per employee depending on level? (source: ASTD)
• Do you know that the TRS (Total Return to Shareholders) on training that increases development, communication, and morale is up to 200%? (source: SHRIM)
• Do you know that research indicates that there is an average of 5.7 ROI for coaching key employees? (source: Manchaster Group)
• Do you want to retain top talent and groom them for the next level?

Then you want the Next Level Leadership Program. This cutting edge program combines:

• Leadership/management training (3 workshops)
• Assessment of core competencies
• 360 assessment telling people how others see them
• Assessment of personality style and its impact on communication (DISC)
• Goal setting
• Individual coaching to develop and enhance competencies, meet goals
• Group coaching to extend learning and build the team
• 6-month, 8-month, and 12-month programs bring your leadership to the next level

And all for less than it would cost you to send a manager to an offsite three-day leadership program.