Connie Dieken

Leadership

People crave a certain amount of structure and guidance. Without the influence of good leadership, organizational successes may stay in flux. Many organizations, especially those blessed with highly motivated, exceptional people, overlook the impact effective leaders have on organizational outcomes.

Connie focuses on and highlights various types of leadership, their traits and evaluates strengths and weaknesses. She speaks on tailoring any leader’s behavioral type to outcomes that empower people, give rise to successful performance, and influence positive actions.

Presentation Skills

Presentations today are deeply broken. The problem with the vast majority of presentations usually lies with the presenter’s failure to correctly understand what the audience wants and what we want from them. And all too often, people fall back on the presentation, which usually holds back engaging with the audience. Audiences use their eyes much more readily than their ears and when we understand that we can create visuals that enhance and accompany rather than compete; we can ensure our body language says confidence and power.

Connie shows audiences how important connecting with and engaging an audience is in order to motivate them to act the way you want. Audiences walk away with tools and knowledge to understand their audience in order to understand how to present to influence action.

Communication

In business and life, our ability to effectively communicate is the most important skill needed to accomplish anything, and yet it is the single greatest challenge in business today. When it comes to our people, so much more is expected from them, we need to reach them on the road just as much as in the office; and yet, this need also decreases their attention spans, makes people more distracted and eager to get to the point.

Connie talks frankly about the need to connect instantly in order to capture attention and gives useable tips helping anyone be heard and understood to influence others to action. Audiences walk away with the skills to achieve more in less words, cause less confusion communication and build more rewarding relationships. Connie inspires audiences to act knowing that the skills they learn will increase their ability to influence through communications.

Change

Change is hard, and it’s not something people or companies revel in. And regardless of the impetus for change, whether it’s strategic, operational or technological, effective communication and management tends to be the primary bottleneck to any successful change management plan.

Connie shines light on the typical and specific roadblocks to managing change successfully, from effective communication techniques to a successful implementation to dealing successfully with resistant attitudes and behaviors to successful leadership techniques to manage or integrate teams, or strategies to align expectations.

Sales

Selling in today’s economy is fraught with distrust and requires a new perspective on tried-and-true communication techniques. People have been captured by fear, distrust in companies and our government is high, but there is still a bright spot and it’s these same people. We all want to trust, we all want to be confident, we all can be motivated to act. We just need the right people to show us the way.

Connie shows audiences how selling through the fear is possible in today’s market by knowing the successful communication techniques to influence people to act. Sellers need to know how to listen and tailor their pitch to the customer; speak candidly and confidently to their needs; learn when to sell their expertise and nonpressure techniques; and convince the customer to move past the doubt to close the sale.

Employee Engagement

Employees don’t stay with companies like they used to. Recruiting and retaining top talent is now the most challenging issue in human resources. And while some forms of brain drain are unavoidable, there are ways to mitigate losses and maximize employee retention through sound methods to improve employee engagement.

Connie focuses her talk on work environments and behaviors that lead to dissatisfaction and teaches basic methods to identify the signs of impending disengagement. She gives ideas on communication and leadership initiatives that increase engagement, improve loyalty among teams.

Team Building

GDP isn’t the only casualty during economic hard times and when we start to look at our companies on the micro level, we see that the morale of our team has also been hit hard. People worry for their families, they worry for their jobs, but it’s the leader’s job to foster an environment for self-motivation to improve company morale.

Connie takes audiences through the importance of team building to improve communication and leadership skills within an entire organization. She gets audiences to understand company goals and the role they play in the success, which leads to a stronger working environment with improved collaboration, better performance, and increased retention of top talent.

Customer Relationships

Building and maintaining trust with customers should be the top on any organization’s list, yet more often than not, we find that companies will focus their efforts on new acquisitions rather than better cultivation of the relationships they have. And in today’s social media economy, this is more likely to face detrimental sales and service issues. People have grown accustomed to information on their terms, and if we’re to evolve communication and sales in today’s customer relationships, we must evolve how we sell and service today’s customer.

Connie focuses on a wide variety of customer service, engagement and relationship related issues affecting organizations today. Through her experience with communication and media, Connie gives actionable information to audiences from gaining trust through knowledge, to creating low pressure sales environments, to aligning service and expectations.

Business Etiquette

So much of communication is non-verbal, whether it’s body language, facial expressions, electronic communications, or even just an awareness to the reactions of others. Much of business etiquette really boils down to your acknowledgement and consideration to the people you are interacting with. And while there are many areas that can be construed as rules, and that remaining aware of the old adage “do unto others” is important to be mindful of, we benefit more by staying in the moment of those we are interacting with.

Connie highlights that the popular notion of etiquette can be solved through our consideration and respect of the people and situations we are engaging. Communications and business etiquette should always work to this end. When we engage with people as if they are the center of the universe, just by our behavior, we influence positive action and inspire confidence.

Testimonials

“Connie’s forward-thinking, actionable communication shortcuts can elevate anyone’s game.”
– Bruce Carbonari, Chairman & CEO, Fortune Brands

“Connie Dieken’s three-step strategy is a smart, practical guide for business leaders and others who want to create a high-performance culture.”
– Tom Swidarski, President & CEO, Diebold

“Connie is a true communications virtuoso and a genuine phenomenon. She is on a mission to elevate our ability to communicate.”
– Robert Johnson, Managing Counsel, McDonald’s

“Thanks to Connie’s communication expertise, she makes it easy for anyone to transform from a good communicator to an excellent one. Her three simple principles are based on real-world experiences and demonstrate the power of a strong communicator.”
– David Lingafelter, President, Moen

“Perfect. Exactly what we needed to be more on point, improve our presentation skills and win sales. I would highly recommend onPoint Communication for anyone interested in improving their business speaking or presentation skills. Connie is amazing in her personal approach and individually tailored each presentation to my specific industry.”
– Larry Jaeger, Director of Sales, Apple