Presents a format for designing and running workshops to train personnel employed in positions of high customer contact, focusing on the practice of patron contact skills, i.e., communication with problem patrons. Describes opening exercises, attitude exploration, integration skills and attitudes, stress management, and evaluation. (WAS)

A person centered communication workshop was developed to help aspiring facilitators achieve a set of listening and responding skills with which to initiate and/or sustain facilitative interactions. The workshop has been helpful to teachers, teacher aides, counselors, speech-audiology therapists, and pupil personnel workers. (LBH)

Counselors are being challenged to expand their role in the school community. This article discusses use of workshops to teach specific skills applicable to the participants' setting. Specific focus is determined by participant needs and counselor skills. (JAC)

This book examines the use of an experiential (participative) learning approach in training people in areas that are particularly emotionally challenging. Each of the nine articles focuses on the design and conduct of workshops in which the principles of experiential learning are used to help trainees acquire knowledge related to and cope with…

Counseling mothers of small children in effective growth monitoring and promotion is both an art and a science. Virtually all primary health care programs contain a Growth Monitoring and Promotion component (GMP). It is vital that supervisors and community health workers of GMP programs have a clear understanding of why communication skills are…

A study examined the effect of social style training on the workers of a state agency in the midwest. The Social Style Training Workshop was a half-day session designed to provide participants with an assessment of their social style as perceived by their coworkers. In addition, participants examined the meaning of various social styles, their…

The effectiveness of a social skills training workshop was assessed by comparing the rated competence of participants in an Interpersonal Skills Training Program to the rated competence of nonparticipants. Subjects' self-ratings were included. This comparison was operationalized through a pretest-posttest design with 12 experimental and 22 control…

Describes the employment interview as a communication situation in which skill in communication is the important determinant of success. Presents a workshop format that focuses attention on interview communication skills. Discusses what makes a competent communicator and describes possible workshop components and their integration into successful…

This training guide is intended to assist Head Start staff in meeting their communication goals and enhancing their relationships with parents. Each of the guide's modules details module outcomes, key concepts, and background information. Module 1 addresses communication in the Head Start community and is designed to help participants focus on…

A workshop type method of training teachers in the use of counseling techniques for facilitating parent teacher conferences is described. It is based on the Carkhuff model of attending, responding, initiating, and communicating. At each of the four stages, the leader first discusses its purpose and the specific behaviors to be encompassed in the…

Although much is written about the importance of parent/teacher communication with emphasis on the significant impact of parent/teacher conferences, teachers report a lack of formal training. Neither institutions of higher education nor the public schools appear to provide clear policy and procedure for parent/teacher conferences. Thus, teachers…

Adults learning at a distance at Athabasca University (Alberta, Canada) make use of telephone tutors. Concerned over the lack of time and/or effort spent in training tutors, and recognizing that tutors had emerged as an important component of distance delivery at the university, a joint effort went into the development of a training manual that…

Outcomes of a workshop to develop specific skills for observing and coaching classroom teachers in the Atlanta (Georgia) Public Schools are described in this report. The workshop was designed to train teacher leaders, mentors, peer coaches, and administrators in nonconfrontational communication skills for conducting teacher evaluation composed of…

Teaching critical treatment-related skills to behavior change agents is an important task. One such treatment-related skill is the ability to observe and specifically describe ongoing appropriate and inappropriate behaviors. In this study, the effectiveness of a training package in teaching behavior specificity was demonstrated in two experiments.…

A suicide intervention training program is described which was developed as a three and one half hour presentation to small groups of paraprofessionals or professionals who might serve as telephone hot-line staff members. Theoretical assumptions upon which the program is based are listed in the areas of communication-skills training models, crisis…