What would it mean if your organization could provide one simple, repeatable process – that everyone could remember and apply – that would make a valuable impact?

So many of the challenges that organizations face today stem from poor communication skills. Though it may seem that some internal problems are complicated and hard to solve for, they can almost always be traced back to ineffective communication. Whether the dialogue is around roles and responsibilities, navigating change, or performance issues, effective conversation skills are critical to ensuring successful business outcomes.

At Velocity, we’ve designed a simple, scalable process to help individuals navigate conversations more effectively. Most businesses have a process for hiring employees, marketing new products and services, billing clients, etc. but how many organizations have a step-by-step method for conversations? A tool that truly supports the dialogue around every important discussion and ensures that interactions are more on target, consistent and efficient.

WHAT IS 4S™

Our 4S Conversations® model taught through learning modules, is designed to gain alignment for all parties around the goals of conversations and help them see what success looks like for everyone involved. It also addresses the situations and sources that may be getting in the way of the goals and finally, maps out a straightforward solution that is understood and agreed to.

In addition to providing a concise, clear path to objectives, practicing the 4S™ method often leaves individuals feeling more empowered, supported and well, more optimistic about their role and intentions within the organization. This leads to a culture of improved conversations, performance and ultimately more successful business outcomes.

OUR APPROACH

Velocity’s 4S Conversations® programs have been providing skills training worldwide for over 20 years with translations in 9 languages. They are effective across a myriad of company sizes, cultures, and operational functions because the process is easily implemented, customizable to the unique needs of organizations and provides sustainable behavior change.

Whether there is an existing leadership model or another training program in place, achieving conversational excellence is critical to the success of all organizations. Velocity’s programs can work in conjunction to accelerate the application of current plans or as a standalone independent process for improving performance conversations.

TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

As 4S™ is practiced and applied, effective conversations drive communication levels and become embedded into the culture of organizations. As a next step in sustaining behavior change and development, we offer higher-level, more advanced programs that increase clients’ agility with 4S™. They expand on the model’s core principles and development plans are customized to businesses’ needs.

In our most recent initiative with a global leader in diabetes healthcare, we developed a “Conversational Excellence Journey” for their clinical trial (CT) managers, who provide clinical trial results and interact with internal and external stakeholders. Velocity partnered with them to create a tailored, modular approach that measured participants' current skills, clarified gaps and objectives and offered a clear plan to address developmental needs. This provided stakeholders the opportunity to enhance interaction skills with colleagues, to uncover what is most important to them so they could positively and productively navigate difficult conversations, to prioritize work activities and help others prioritize theirs, and to work effectively through organizational changes. The CT culture is now rich in personal accountability for growth, supported by peer coaching and collaboration.

This is one example of how 4S™ can explore a fully collaborative process that engages leadership, stakeholder, participant, and vendor partners and support organizations with hard to anticipate and changing learning needs. We are adept at optimizing these unique approaches while offering pull-through strategies to create a culture of communication and learning, that can be replicated again and again.