Strategic Action Group

Are you concerned that you’re not as influential and credible as you should be with senior leaders?

You spend so much time in your cube cranking out copy that you don’t feel like you have the time to be more strategic.

Plus, you feel lonely in your role.  You are so busy that you don’t have time reach out, connect and find out what others are doing.  It is difficult to be sure if you are on the right path to becoming a more trustworthy coach around communication change.

If you’re committed to organizational life, you’ve probably recognized that doing great work within the communication craft isn’t enough for you to succeed and be valued by leaders. For you and your career to flourish, you’re expected to do more than write well and get things done. You also need to be a coach, teacher, and strategist for leaders as well as know the business.

How do you show your value and be valued?  

CEOs and other leaders are requesting more and more strategic support, yet they continue to report in surveys that the advice and internal communication support they receive is ineffective. Even strategic communication advisors admit that communication professionals often miss meeting leaders’ expectations because the communicators have low business acumen, poor consulting skills and inadequate political skills.

Why aren’t more communication consultants taking on the role of strategic advisor for their clients?

The survey Being a Strategic Communication Advisor conducted by Connect Consulting summer of 2011, showed that strategic communication advisors believe that leaders and communication professionals both share the fault for the significant gap between what leaders say they want versus what they get. In fact, strategic advisors feel leaders’ attitudes and actions contribute more to the gap than do advisors’ mindsets and behavior.

Yet, the survey results also showed a divide between advisors. About a third of advisors in the survey spend 50% or more of their time advising leaders. These Absolute Advisors enjoy what they do and they consider it a career choice. By contrast, the other two-thirds of respondents, the Accidental Advisors, tend to have fallen into their role.

The Absolute Advisors don’t just spend more time advising; they have taken the initiative to adopt more disciplined and targeted practices in three areas.  Specifically, they put more effort into building relationships, measuring the value of their work, and getting professional development, especially around networking, mentoring and coaching. As a result, they consider themselves more confident, capable and credible strategic advisors.

These actions–relationship-building, measurement and professional development–are relatively simple things you can do too, whether you consider yourself already an Absolute Advisor or an Accidental Advisor who’s ready for your next move.

You now have an easy way to get help adopting the mindset and practices of an Absolute Advisor…a way that acknowledges the faster work pace, the smaller staffs, and the limited time available for reflection…all the things that get in the way of taking advantage of traditional training.

You can take part in the Strategic Action Group.

The real-time problem-solving plus the discussions, case studies, and exercises will give you valuable tools and practical ideas that you can start using immediately.

How you’ll benefit

By participating, you’ll:

• Learn how to switch your mindset from doing communication to being a communication advisor through personalized, flexible, and action-oriented training—without having to leave your work place.
• Enjoy the camaraderie of learning from and networking with other communication professionals who work at different companies and industries.
• Experience first-hand the value of having your own personal sounding board to help solve problems, bounce off ideas and get new ideas and inspiration.
• Work on identifying and refining your personal brand, which will help you have more courage, confidence and credibility as a communication advisor to executives.
• Feel more resilient and better equipped to deal with organizational complexities.

Extra benefits

• Discover the one thing that executives truly need from their communication leaders. (Hint: it doesn’t have to do with writing.)
• Learn why it’s often important to think like a sociopath yet act like a saint when advising executives.
• Get tips on how to prevent fires rather than always be fighting fires.

What’s covered

This five-session tele-workshop addresses topics that concern my clients, senior leaders, as well as other leaders. These topics also were top of mind of the communication professionals who participated in the prior groups and those who took the recent survey, Being a Strategic Advisor.

In particular, we’ll cover:

1. Adopt the mindset of a trusted advisor

Be able to earn the 5 As:

• Acumen
• Anticipation
• Adaptability
• Availability
• Affability

And know how to leverage another critical A: self-awareness.

Bring the outside in, examining the results of the new research study about the role of strategic advisors as well discussing what’s happening with:

• Customers
• Communication trends
• Emerging business issues

2. Build credibility and trust

• Learn your communication style and how to optimize it
• Walk in others’ shoes
• Speak truth to power

3. Be authentic

• Identify your personal brand
• Be a verbal billboard so you can speak succinctly, specifically and truthfully
• Influence others and make a big impact, especially when you’re not at the table

4. Coach, advise, and teach leaders how to use

• Data
• Stories
• Social media

5. Advise, facilitate and oversee

• Curating conversations
• Measuring results
• Leading change
• Building communities
• Managing reputations

We’ll hit the highlights, giving you exposure to subjects that all strategic communicators need to know about and practice. By getting an overview, you’ll be better equipped to go deep and narrow later in the areas that most interest you. You’ll start to sense how you can combine your skills with your passion to become an indispensable strategic advisor, an Absolute Advisor.

Also during each session, we’ll provide real-time problem solving for participants and the communication challenge they bring to the session. As a result, you’re getting in-depth help for your situation as well as helping others.

What you’ll experience

The action group combines personal skill-building, group interaction, and convenience. It’s unlike any other training program you’ve experienced to date. For example, you:

• Participate in a selective group session limited to 12 people and one person from an organization. This allows for individual attention as well as candid interaction with like-minded peers.

• Join by phone from the convenience of your office or other location.

• Meet every other week for 75 minutes for five sessions.

• Take part in a combination of problem-solving sessions, short lectures, exercises, and group discussions. You’ll learn skills you can apply immediately PLUS get immediate help on your particular on-the-job challenge.

• Interact closely with other action group participants who can become your ongoing trusted peer network and mastermind group.

Because of its special design, this Action Group will provide you with new skills, one-to-one attention, and meaningful feedback that you can immediately apply on the job.

What you get

This small, focused yet fun action group consists of:

CORE CURRICULUM: The 5 live sessions

In five interactive, 75-minute tele-classes over 10 weeks, we’ll cover the key steps to get you to become competent, credible, and confident about advising and coaching leaders about strategic communication issues. We’ll use thought-provoking exercises, tools and templates to get you thinking and acting like a strategic advisor for your business and your leaders. Plus you’ll enjoy the power of group problem-solving getting new ideas for at least one of your work challenges.

In addition to these tele-classes, you’ll enjoy these 6 bonuses:

BONUS #1: Private group-only discussion forum using Basecamp, the online collaboration software

Network with other group members, post questions, test ideas, and collect feedback on your exercises!

You can form lasting, valuable relationships with your fellow action group participants. During the action group, they can serve as a focus group, mastermind group, and accountability partners.

BONUS #2: What’s My Communication Style Assessment?

Take the HRDQ online assessment to determine your communication style. Knowing your style (Direct, Spirited, Considerate, or Systematic) will help you be a better communicator as well as a communication advisor for leaders and others. Plus, the experience of taking and interpreting this assessment will give you helpful experience you can apply as you coach leaders.

BONUS #3: Copies of exercises, strategies and resources

You’ll get copies of all the materials we use plus additional tools and templates that I use in my consulting and coaching work. These materials can become part of the toolkit you use for your strategic communication advising.

BONUS #4: Online archive with downloadable recordings of all sessions

If you miss a session or want to review a call, you can do so at any time.

BONUS #5: One personal coaching session on a topic of your choice

This is your opportunity to explore an area that’s of interest or concern to you more in-depth. This session will take place at your convenience in the second half of the tele-classes.

BONUS #6: Your personal action plan to help you jumpstart your progress

To support your personal coaching session, we’ll work on your personal action plan to help you keep the momentum to develop your skills, know-how and experiences so you become a more resilient strategic advisor.

Schedule

All calls run about 75 minutes. They’ll be held on Fridays at 9 AM Pacific /12 Noon Eastern.

• September 21
• September 28
• October 5
• October 12
• October 19

All calls will be recorded in case you can’t join us live.

The investment for the course is $875

About your action group facilitator

“I loved the interactive aspect of the session, especially the group discussions.”

Liz Guthridge will be your facilitator, advisor and coach. I’m a seasoned, results-oriented consultant with diverse change communication and leadership experience.

As an external consultant, I combine strategic thinking with strong problem-solving skills. I’m known for my ability to assess new situations quickly and thoroughly and get things done. This includes coaching leaders to communicate more effectively, influencing employees to take appropriate actions, and turning resistance of controversial change initiatives into acceptance.

I’m the Managing Consultant of Connect Consulting Group, an independent coaching and consulting firm focused on  change leadership and communication.

Connect specializes in supporting leaders who are introducing complex new initiatives and other major changes to their organizations. We work with leaders to clearly explain the initiative, its link to the business, and the actions needed so that leaders can inspire employees to understand, accept and adopt new ways of working.

Connect also works with Communication leaders of Fortune 1000 companies when they need to retool their department so they can provide more strategic support to executives. The executives are requesting communication support that’s more deliberative, less reactive, and more consultative to the business. This often requires staff members to adopt new skills, adjust their ways of working (including identifying and eliminating non-value add work) and change their organization structure.

Before I founded Connect in 2004, I was a principal with Mercer Delta, Mercer HR and Towers Perrin. I also was a consultant with Hewitt Associates. I started my career with Amoco in its public and government affairs department as a writer and editor. (By the way, all of my former employers have experienced ownership and name changes, which are par for the course these days.)

Over my career, I’ve served a broad range of industries including financial services, telecommunications, high tech, consumer products, hospitality, aerospace, and health care. Some of my recent clients include Advantech, AAA of Northern California, Nevada and Utah, Bayer HealthCare, Betfair, Central Garden & Pet, The Clorox Company, DirecTV, DRS Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, Hilton Hotels,  Kimpton Hospitality, Marin Healthcare District, Hewlett-Packard, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, salesforce.com, VeriSign, Xilinx, USEC and ZS Associates.

In addition to doing award-winning work for clients and serving as a trusted advisor to leaders, I frequently speak and write on communication and change topics. For example, I was a lecturer on organizational communication for a graduate program at San Francisco State University. I also teach interactive workshops on change and communication topics.

I’m the author of LEAN COMMUNICATIONS: The 5-Step System for Doing More With Less and Getting Great Results (Ragan Communications, 2009). Along with Kathryn McKee, I’m the co-author of Leading People Through Disasters: An Action Guide for Preparing for and Dealing with the Human Side of Crises (Berrett-Koehler, 2006).

For four years, I wrote and edited the monthly eNewsletter, The LEAN COMMUNICATOR. I also have written many articles, which are posted here and here.

As for my formal education, I have an MA in communication management from the University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism; an MBA from the University of Connecticut; and a BSJ in journalism from Northwestern University, the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing. Currently, I’m participating in the Results Coaching System’s Intensive Coaching Training, offered through the NeuroLeadership Group led by Dr. David Rock.

Affiliations are important to me. Some of the organizations I belong to include IABC (International Association of Business Communicators), CCM/The Exchange (Council of Communication Management/The Communication Leadership Exchange), SNCR (Society of New Communications Research), Bay Area OD Forum, Bay Area Society for Organizational Learning, Organization Design Forum, and SHRM (Society of HR Management). (Yes, there are more….)

I live in the San Francisco Bay area with my husband David Matthews (not the musician) and our dog Gustav.

Apply Now!

Any questions, email me at liz.guthridge@connectconsultinggroup.com or call me at 510.527.1213.