Training

Ploch & Team offers programs supporting the development of your corporate core competencies. Our philosophy is based on our experience that successful corporate and management development programs are fully anchored with your corporate objectives and specifically tailored to the requirements of different management levels. We define a project as a mandate for improving desired competencies in “your” organization and “your” targeted management group. All Ploch & Team programs are well founded in academic research and delivered using the most appropriate technologies.

We are using a variety of tools, videos, small group approaches, interactive learning, reflection tools, double-loop-learning, or online-tools, tailored to the situation you encounter. The most appropriate tools are determined after discussion with the client, other stakeholders, and participants. Ploch & Team draws on more than 20 years of experience and validated feedback from a large number of organizations across a variety of industries, ranging from non-profit to SMEs to some of the largest and internationally most recognized companies. References provided upon request.

Seminar Rhetoric and Presentation

This seminar focuses on improving participants’ public verbal and non-verbal speaking, presentations, interacting with online and traditional media, and strategies to mitigate interferences in such interaction. The seminar draws on the participants’ existing knowledge and builds on fundamental issues that any individual in any organization has to address with such as “What is important in general? What do I have to consider generally? What is to be recommended in this situation?”. After setting the general framework, the seminar goes into individual aspects such as “What is appropriate for me? When do I feel content? How can I improve my behavior?”. Participant and management feedback is very positive.
In the Rhetoric and Presentation Seminars, Ploch & Team focuses on real-life business challenges; the seminar is video-taped, and the video replay greatly facilitates participants’ learning progress. Academic concepts are brought in throughout the seminar to broaden the theoretical understanding, and applied situation-specific, emphasizing important aspects such as behavior, advantages or disadvantages of the chosen media, language and word choices, structure of a speech. Methods employed during the Seminar will depend on the specific situation of the group and the pedagogical assessment of the participants, and typically draw on group and individual work, participant videos, or video examples. Ploch & Team offers tailored small groups and individual training seminars upon request.

Management Development

The systematic and targeted development of the executive team is a strategic success factor for any organization. This has been shown in academic research, and demonstrated by companies who define consistent management development their top priority.  Management development starts with a skill set assessment.  The analysis of future challenges and skills required to meet such challenges then leads to the content of the management development programs.  These programs and tools are subject to continuous development, and adjustments to the programs arise from many factors, such as new scientific knowledge, the development of the organization, new or changed requirements in the market, new internal requirements, or changing demands from employees.

Communication

Our communication seminar aims at raising an individual’s communication skills.  The seminar starts with the analysis and discussion of an individual’s specific communication skill set, and how to build on these existing skills for more goal-oriented, person-centered communication.  Seminars include the analysis of one’s own style of verbal and non-verbal communication, interdependencies in communication models, and a systemic analysis of the communication framework.  Depending on the project definition, Ploch & Team can build a basic communication framework with add-on modules, or define areas with the client for improvement.  During the seminar, typical work situations will be reviewed under different communication theories and communication models; we prefer participants sharing past difficult, real life work situations such as failed conflict resolution, negotiations, or appraisal interviews.  Together with the participants we analyze these situations, and work towards individual solutions and improvements tailored to the communication skill set established in the beginning of the seminar.  This approach allows us to combine sound theory with daily experience and an individualized approach to improvements while participants, being walked through the process, much better assimilate the new skills of the communication seminar.  
We recommend and prefer working with modules tailored to the participants’ identified needs over a defined timeframe, or the integration of modules into the coaching plan of a participant if this is part of a project.  This allows a gradual but effective use of new skills in the participants’ daily work routine.

Negotiating

This seminar aims at a constructive approach, and teaching of a diverse skill set for successful negotiations.  Participants will learn negotiating beyond traditional bargaining and beyond hard or soft negotiation positions.  Participants will learn and apply the use of the Harvard “principled negotiation” method.
Participants will also learn how to deal constructively with difficult or unfair negotiation partners, how to deescalate situations, and how to handle verbal attacks in general. Using the negotiation techniques acquired in the seminar, and learning to anticipate intense confrontation and possible destructive conversation partners, participants learn to negotiate better outcomes.  A large portion of the seminar consists of real-life work situation and role plays.