Some see people skills as fluffy or soft.  Truth be told, there's nothing fluffy about them.  They are skills and they can be learned, just as engineering, accounting, or any other technical area can be learned.  Strike-Force Coaching is our process for helping professional technical people approach people skills lilke they approach their technical area.  It's task focused, direct and results oriented. 

Technical skills are important, and they aren't all that's required to move up in a career.  Many people reach a level and get stuck, often because of their difficulty dealing with people, communicating or managing.  Strike-Force Coaching helps build those skills so that careers can fluorish.

What does it take to learn better people skills?  The same things is takes to learn any skill:
     A willing student
     Good instruction
     Practice
     Time

When someone doesn't know how to drive, we don't say, "That's just the way he is--he can't drive."  No, we teach him to drive by starting with fundamentals and letting him practice.  We don't expect new drivers to be perfect the first time out, and people learning people skills won't be perfect at first either.  They must be given an opportunity to practice and refine their new skills.

Altman Initiative Group coaches willing students on people skills.  We focus on behavior style models and help people learn to understand how they are perceived, despite how they think they are behaving.  With that knowledge and some good instruction, we've seen amazing results.  (See our testimonials below.)

If you or someone you know needs to improve your people skills and you really want to do it, give us a call and let's talk about a coaching plan to help you accomplish this goal. You can also read more at www.strikeforcecoaching.com .

Call us at (704) 315-9090 or email daltman@altmaninitiative.com.

Engineer

I wanted to thank you for all of your help over the past year. When we started our    
coaching sessions 12 months ago, I was in the middle of some difficult negotiations 
with a large customer and things had come to a halt. You taught me communication   and negotiation tools that enabled us to break the impasse and move forward with the project.

After witnessing the fruits of our coaching sessions being borne out with my customer relationships, I began to utilize the tools and techniques in every day life with my internal customers. In looking back, I can see a marked improvement in both efficiency and effectiveness in the manner in which I manage internal projects and coordinate change in these turbulent times. Your communication techniques have made this process so much easier.

The proof of your effectiveness can be seen in the results of a survey conducted by our Human Resources Manager. People in the organization were surveyed and asked to compare my communication skills and effectiveness as a manager today versus a year ago. The feedback was 100% positive, proving that your coaching abilities far exceed my natural management abilities. Thank you so much for your help. I am looking forward to continued growth in the future."

Administrative Assistant

I was recently coached by Denise Altman, and the benefits I gained were enormous.  She taught me to constantly focus on how I respond to situations and people.  She then suggested techniques that were comfortable to my personality and temperament. 

After applying these techniques to my everyday life, I was amazed.  I didn't have to change my personality; I simply had to adapt to make other people comfortable with me.  It was so subtle, people didn't even realize exactly what was happening. 

I hadn't realized that my own behavior and how I responded to people not only affected my life, but also my health.  Since her coaching, I'm much more relaxed and not as tired at the end of the workday.  Denise's reinforcement that no one is right or wrong helped me to learn to control my behavior willingly.  I would recommend Denise's coaching to anyone and everyone.


Office Manager

"My employer decided to change the format of my annual review this year by having those that I work with give me my review.   It was a real eye opener.  We discovered that there was a love/hate relationship with my co-workers.  There was no middle road.  Either they were very satisfied or very dissatisfied. 

Working with Denise Altman and the Altman Initiative Group has changed everything.  Making one small minor change in how I approached others made all the difference.  In making that one change, it made a complete difference in how I was perceived.  After 90 days, I was reviewed again by the same people and everything turned around.  There was not one negative report from anyone.  Thank you Denise for making it so much easier for me to smile again!"

Company President

As the President of a large EPC power/technology and manufacturing company, Jim had many responsibilities and pressures.  Being a task-focused individual, he tackled those responsibilities with vigor.  His people skills, however, left a bit to be desired.  Jim called us in to help him improve his upward evaluation scores in this area.

We met with Jim’s team to hear from them what they observed about his people skills or lack thereof.  They were very open and seemed glad to have an opportunity to share their feelings and concerns.  Several of them, however, made it clear that they didn’t expect anything to change as a result of our “little sessions.”  From these discussions, we developed a list of three items for Jim to work on.  They were:  improve listening and exhibit better listening skills, be more flexible with employees and understand their constraints, trust and empower your team.  We had the team score Jim on these items on a 1 – 10 scale.  His beginning scores were in the 4’s.

We met with Jim after reviewing his DISC profile (he had already been through a half-day DISC course) and worked with him on specific behaviors and tools that would address these three areas.  We assigned several books for him to read.  After the initial couple of meetings, we “met” via email by sending weekly hints to help him continue the behavior change.

At the end of 3 months, we had the team score Jim again.  His scores were up above 5’s on all three issues.  He was making progress.  We continued the weekly emails and had occasional brief telephone or face-to-face contact.  At the end of 6 months, we again had the team score Jim on these areas.  His scores were above 7.  We received comments like:  taking steps to give higher quality attention when talking to employees, I feel that I am trusted and empowered, gives us leeway to do our jobs most of the time, has shown real interest in the areas that needed attention, demonstrated much better listening skills and will take the time to talk, seems to appreciate the effort the team is putting in right now, has shown more patience and constraint and has given employees more latitude to do their jobs.

Since this experience, several people on the team have commented directly to me that they can’t believe the turnaround that took place.  Even those unbelievers who commented on their lack of hope in the beginning admit that the turnaround has been tremendous.