Communicate with Impact
The Client
BASF is a European multinational company and the largest chemical producer in the world. Their ability to create chemistry for a sustainable future is rooted in how they communicate with impact, combining economic success with environmental protection and social responsibility.
The Brief
Creating the Impact you consciously choose to create is harder than you think, especially if you aim to communicate effectively. For impactful communication, as leaders or role models, we’d suggest there are three things you need to keep in mind:
- On the catwalk of business life, you’re always on show.
- Your body never shuts up.
- Never forget rule 1 or 2.
Our client, BASF, ‘The Chemical Company’, understood that premise and asked us to create a Five-Day Communication Skills Programme for its global team of senior managers to help them communicate with impact.
Our Tailored Solution
Impact Factory created a five-day Communications Programme for a global team of senior managers, transforming their lives through their ability to communicate and make an impact.
Once we began to unpick the skills and behaviours required to achieve that goal, they, and we, realised we had our work cut out. We had the luxury of a week-long programme to address these challenges and ensure they communicate effectively.
The core objective of the workshop is to create an initial environment. In this environment, these highly skilled and experienced leaders would feel comfortable and trusting enough to ‘play’ with us while learning to communicate impactfully.
Impact Factory loves to ‘play’, but that playfulness has serious intentions. It always aims to offer people pragmatic tools, awareness and benefits. Our delegates must return to the real world and demonstrate role-model behaviour not only internally, but externally and often on a global stage.
A Challenge For All
The five-day workshop is as much a journey for us as for the delegates. Although we have our core objective, people are different. Therefore no two workshops are ever the same, and each aims to help participants communicate with greater impact.
And that’s the way we not only like it but also how we believe any Communication Skills-based workshop should be. It should be as challenging for us as for the delegates, ensuring everyone learns to communicate with impact.
We are the first to acknowledge that inviting highly-skilled, mostly science-based professionals into the world of Impact Factory can present challenges. To use a chemical analogy, mixing two inert yet potentially explosive mediums requires great care to avoid a disaster.
Soft Skills Are Hard to Master
The first three days represent a journey into the world of environments, behaviours, and personal insights. We focus on how we say things and the all-important ability to ‘see’. These initial days introduce delegates to the concept that softer skills are sometimes the hardest to master, particularly the ones that enable impactful communication.
Our suggestion to begin that process is to first accept and recognise their current patterns of behaviour. Then, with input from us, we work to disturb automatic knee-jerk reactions and encourage delegates to replace them with conscious choices aimed at communicating with impact.
Defining Presentations
The final two days are designed to consolidate the experience gained in the first three days. This is done in the solid, practical, and ultimately serious world of the chemical industry. Delegates are asked to make presentations and work together in teams to pitch ideas in a high-pressure environment.
Our skill comes to the fore during this time. We endeavour to encourage delegates not to fall back into previous patterns, triggered as soon as the ‘suits’ go back on.
Invariably, the task is a tough one for any development organisation. Especially for those which deal with the entrenched patterns of behaviour we all have. These patterns are only too easily demonstrated on a daily basis, in both our personal and professional lives, and overcoming them is crucial to communicate with impact.
See What We Can Do For You
If you like what you’ve seen and would like to know more please contact our team.
Feedback and Testimonials
Our success was to have the delegates acknowledge that the surface has been well and truly scratched. The way is prepared for them to be reminded to ‘see’. They begin consciously creating the impact they choose, ensuring their communication is impactful, when they choose to create it, with self-awareness, energy and passion.
