Communications

The Workshop Survival Guide: How to design and teach educational workshops that work every time

by Rob Fitzpatrick and Devin Hunt

The Workshop Survival Guide is a straightforward guide to workshop design and facilitation. Author Rob Fitzpatrick teaches early-stage startups how to get customer feedback. Co-author Devin Hunt teaches mid-stage entrepreneurs on a variety of business topics. They’ve created and delivered workshops for audiences ranging from professionals to executives, undergrads to MBAs, disadvantaged youths to others.

The book has three sections. Part one covers design fundamentals. Part two is about facilitation. The appendix describes additional teaching formats and an example of a process for developing a new exercise.

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Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Third Edition

by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Emily Gregory

Relationships, careers, organizations, and communities benefit when the people involved have the skills to openly and successfully discuss high-stakes, emotional, controversial issues — when they have the skills to engage in and guide crucial conversations successfully.

Crucial Conversations walks you through an entire toolset for staying cool and getting results during these challenging conversations. In addition to the opening chapters that describe crucial conversations, the book is organized into three parts. Part one covers what to do before a conversation. Part two addresses how to manage crucial conversations, including managing yourself. Part three outlines how to wrap up crucial conversations and move from dialogue to action.

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The Narrative Gym for Business: Introducing the ABT Framework for Business Communication and Messaging

by Randy Olson and Park Howell

The Narrative Gym for Business provides a practical, effective framework for shaping any form of communication intended to connect with and motivate the recipient. The heart is a simple three-part model for framing messages using narrative structure, which resonates with recipients in ways that science has proven non-narrative messages can’t.

Dr. Randy Olson is a scientist-turned-filmmaker. He was a tenured professor of marine biology (with a Ph.D. from Harvard) when he moved to Hollywood and went to film school. Besides writing and directing films about significant issues in science, he’s on a mission to help scientists (and others) become better communicators.

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