Hi, thank you for joining me. We're here to talk about one of the biggest challenges organizations face as they try to change successfully. And the irony is that the challenge is something we do all the time. And it's communication. My name is Chris edge. Hello, that's a picture of me in my office.

I'm both two organizations, a consulting firm called Sundance consulting, and a publishing business called Lost Creek press. Where the last three decades I've been focused on helping people and organizations change, but a client base that really spans the globe, all three sectors not for profit, government and corporate. For that time, I've worked with hundreds of executives Lots and lots and lots of managers and project teams and countless thousands of employees. The common theme, my work has always been focused on change. And of course, communication is one of the biggest challenges. Got a graduate degree in applied behavioral sciences focused on leadership and change as well as communication.

And over the years, I've facilitated many communication skills and conflict resolution skills workshops. Remember, in the early years, colleague and I would do weekend retreats, called The Art of Fighting fair. And they were workshops, we would come in on a Friday night and leave about three o'clock on a Sunday, Sunday afternoon. There were workshops for couples who were working on their relationships and trying to learn how to fight with each other. One thing that I distinctly remember from those workshops was my drive home Sunday afternoon after what was usually a pretty tiring weekend. facilitating these conversations, and I was constantly amazed at communication really is hard work.

And if it ever does actually work, it's a miracle. I put together some resources to help you get the most out of this course, all of the slides that you're seeing, you can download and print off. So you don't have to worry about taking any notes. I will ask you on occasion to pull out one of the worksheets, and I would encourage you to print those off one page each. So you've got some room to actually apply some of the ideas that I'm sharing with you. Well, so put together an article called seven truths when communicating change.

And one other resource I would invite you to consider is some colleagues in your organization that might benefit from these ideas around communicating change. So you're not taking this course alone. Maybe it's all your project team if you happen to be on a project and maybe it's all of your management colleagues. So objectives for our time together. I'd like to explore the essentials around the WHO THE what the when, and the how that's involved in ensuring communication engages everyone in your changing organization. I've got some tools that I'd like to share with you to increase the effectiveness of your communication efforts, and throat that time that we discuss all this.

I'd like to invite you to utilize some simple approaches and assess the effectiveness of your communication in your changing organization and find ways to develop a little bit of an action plan. Find ways to improve. So that's the work. Thank you for joining me. Let's get to it.