Susan Heaton-Wright

Be a SuperStar Communicator

How to be a SuperStar Communicator and make a positive impact in all business conversations is essential. Being able to contribute to all business conversations; make an impact; share your opinions with confidence and clarity and to influence are essential. Whether you are a leader, managing a team or a team member, developing these skills are essential. This could be:

• Public Speaking Skills
• Presentations
• Meetings skills
• Pitching for business
• Interviews
• Negotiating
• One to one meetings
• Communicating virtually

The SuperStar Communicator™ methodology has identified key skill areas essential to develop excellent spoken communication skills. And this course highlights these five areas and how we can develop these skills to ensure we are heard and listened to when we speak. The course content would include:

• What is the purpose of you speaking?
• Who are you speaking to?
• How you show others you are listening
• The power of brief speaking
• Creating a great start to your contribution
• What’s your call to action?
• How stories and case studies assist
• What do you need in order to perform to the best of your ability?
• Discover how our spoken delivery and body language play a role in impact
• Play with the SuperStar Communicator Vocal Matrix to make your voice interesting so people will listen to you.

Networking for Success

Networking is an essential skill if you wish to raise your profile professionally and/or move your business forward, yet it is something many people dread. Being able to create and maintain a strong network is crucial. As an ambitious, talented individual, being able to develop a network at all levels internally, within your industry and externally is essential. But how do you do this?

This interactive masterclass provides the audience essential skills in face to face and online networking. Including meetings strangers, having interesting conversations, when to move on; following up and keeping in touch with your network.

Outcomes from this session include:

• Learn why networking is crucial for personal career success and business success
• How to create a plan and prepare for a networking event
• Planning your network; recognising where there are gaps and how to fill them with valuable contacts
• Discovering which network events – and other events that will be appropriate and valuable for you to attend and invest money in
• Having conversations and knowing when to move on to a new conversation
• The essential part of networking: the follow ups and keeping in touch with people
• Networking online: some clear tips

Career Acceleration: Being Visible to the Right People

How is it that some people rapidly climb the career ladder whilst others – who might be equally as good, remain at a lower level? Having studied very successful people; watching their behaviour, actions and attitudes, I have identified key engagements these successful people do in order to be visible to decision makers.  And in this time where cuts are being made, you want to be the go to person: the person who is positively noticed – and I don’t mean the loudest person: the last person standing when difficult decisions are made.

Outcomes include:

• Participants will have a plan in place of activities they can do in order to raise their credibility, profile and visibility within their organisation and industry.
• Plenty of ideas for raising their visibility: virtually – without this being exclusively about social media.
• Permission to ‘blow your trumpet’ and tell people your successes and achievements
• Decide what is newsworthy and find the right channels to ensure others notice this
• How working hard is not enough to be noticed in a positive way
• How to build and utilise an invaluable network

Manage your Fear and Show Up with Confidence

Being able to manage your fear and show up with confidence is essential for career development. Fear could prevent you from showing up with confidence for meetings. For presentations and public speaking. And doing examinations for professional qualifications. Fear could impact your career development and your credibility. It is important to learn how to manage your fear.

There are situations where we are affected by fear; this could impact on our performance, or we could avoid taking up opportunities that could progress our career. In this powerful masterclass, Susan shares techniques to understand and manage your fear so you can present the very best version of yourself in business situations. Using proven knowledge from Neuroscience as well as her experience as a professional musician, Susan delivers invaluable content.

Learning Objectives:

The aim of this course is that you will go away with knowledge and practical ways to manage your fear in specific business situations. This includes:

• Understand what fear does to your body.
• Creating a safe psychological zone, to ensure you are able to self care.
• Creating awareness of occasions when you are fearful and creating a framework of how to manage this
• Techniques to manage your fear and ensure you are in a calmer state
• Reframe your attitude to fear, and discover how you can use this in a positive way to increase your confidence
• Recognise when you are self sabotaging to avoid the fear

The session includes additional blended learning material for individuals who wish to discover more about this topic.

Break the Bias: Make Better Decisions

Many of our decision making is based on instinctive, unconscious bias. Within business this could impact our ability to make effective decisions. In this powerful session we discover why we rely too much on instinctive choices; why we stereotype others and provide solutions for making better decisions in future. This session challenges people to recognise we ALL have biases, why we have them and what steps we can all make in order to make better business decisions. This is a powerful way to demonstrate the power of an inclusive workplace.

Outcomes include:

• Why many of our decisions are unconscious – which leads to bias
• The challenge of stereotyping
• What is happening neuroscientifically when we make decisions
• The particular challenge of Affinity bias in decision making and organisations
• Tips on how to approach decision making in different ways
• Why building trust and good communication within decision making is essential.

How to be Positively Disruptive

We are trained to pass exams; to fit in; to ‘be good and keep our head down and work’. However, we are living in a changing world. In the last 3 years we have seen the world of work change for ever, and this has involved people challenging how we work; the systems we have in place to work in a hybrid work environment.Having the ability to challenge existing norms; to identify opportunities and bring these to the workplace are invaluable for companies. But is a fine line between being Disruptive and a positive disruptor. In this topic we will discover how to avoid being mediocre: but a positively disruptive, invaluable member of your team.

Outcomes include:

• What is disruption and what is positive disruption
• Discovering what is stopping you from being positively disruptive
• The best ways to share a positively disruptive opinion
• Adopting an open, positive mindset for growht
• Being able to create opportunities
• The best reasons for avoiding echo chambers
• Ideas for creating a positive disruptive work environment

How to Demonstrate and Develop Credibility

There are situations in business where we need to demonstrate your credibility or personal impact. This gives clients, prospects, stakeholders, colleagues and senior staff more confidence in your abilities. In this session I share key characteristics of credibility and how to use it in an authentic way in business conversations. I also build your awareness of how your presence and confidence plays a role in credibility, even  when you are not speaking.

Outcomes include:

• Understand what credibility is and how to demonstrate it
• Become aware of how you respond to questions and requests from others
• Discover how positive body language can increase your credibility
• Use of voice and increasing your credibility
• Creating a first impression that is credible and positive
• Improving your communication skills so you can show credibility in different business settings