Last week I spoke at a conference on People Skills for IT Professionals.   Like some of my older talks on the topic, this one included a semi-autobiographical account of how workplace people skills are learnable. But unlike my talks of a few years ago, this one also included some fairly solid details on what those skills actually are.

The material in the talk drew heavily from Getting To Yes and Crucial Conversations, and also from the work of Chris Argyris.

But skilled workplace dialogue is not something that can be learned, or taught, in one half-hour presentation.  Just like you can’t learn to cook, drive or play tennis from one 30-minute talk!  So, I’m going to post a follow-up series of posts here on my blog.  There’ll be one post each week, for at least 6 months.  If you subscribe, then each week you’ll be emailed the new blog post. My hope is that a weekly email, with each email including a little new information, will help you to learn more about workplace people skills.  I know it would have helped me, when I was starting to learn this material.

I’m no expert in teaching this material.  So far, the main person I’ve taught is myself!  But I know what’s worked for me in my learning journey, and hope to be able to  share it.  I hope it improves your working life as greatly as it has improved mine.

(Note: currently there is only one “subscribe” option for my entire site.  So while most of what I post in the next 6 months will be about Skilled Dialogue, you may also receive the occasional post on other topics. )