Alex Birch

Alex Birch is the Solution Director at a technology company - Cloud Software Group (Citrix). Alex’s responsible for a team of architects who design solutions for their global system integrated partners.

After completing the program himself with fellow Citrix leaders earlier in 2022, Alex was keen to empower his team present in a more impactful manner; build confidence in those who were shy, and enhance the power of speakers who were already brilliant presenters. Alex was confident our methodology would help the team understand their audience, and deliver messages that were relevant to the outcomes they were trying to achieve. Driving success.

Which training program did you team participate in?

Alex’s team enjoined the Mastering Communication Program, over the course of 5 weeks. They’re a global team and participants were based in countries including India, USA and Japan. To ensure everyone could join we we conducted the training virtually over 4 x 4 hour sessions. “We had a global team on the call, so obviously we did this virtually, each one of those segment was around 4 hours long. It was an amazing session, and everyone actually fully focused in on it.”  

What were the training objectives and what impact did the training have on your team?

Alex noticed areas of potential improvement in his team when they were presenting, and wanted them to hone their skills and think about things differently. “One of the guys in my team, is very, very confident in what he does, but like myself, he has a tendency to go off on a tangent. I remember him saying to me that, you know, “I don’t need this, I’m a brilliant presenter”. As soon as the first session was done and he went “oh my god, this is the most amazing thing I’ve done in years. This is the most relevant thing. I can see absolutely how this is going to help me become even better at what I do”. “For him, it really helped him focus in on what was important, narrowing that message, and then delivering it in a way that was more impactful.”  

What were the results of this course on your team?

Alex experienced some push-back, as there were many people who were initially skeptical about the training program, however after taking the program, Alex received “100% positive feedback from everyone” and transformational results. It helped everyone with something they could improve on. “In some cases, they’ve adopted the methodology in 100% and we have some great videos now from these guys who have just gone out and delivered the most amazing messages. Through to people who were super confident anyway, we just tweaked things, so that they now communicate in a lightly different way, that is more impactful.”  

Who do you recommend this training to?

According to Alex, anyone could benefit from this training. He remarked that “it’s an amazing course, with amazing facilitators, that make it super interesting, and make it super relevant”. The Mastering Communication Program is designed to be applicable universally, whether you’re a senior leader or a graduate entering the workforce. “Would I recommend it? Absolutely, and it works for anyone.” “In my team, I’ve got people that are super nervous, very shy, not natural presenters, that have used this, and as a result come out of their shell, they feel more confident in what they do, and even the people that were super confident presenters, had to stand up in a group of 500 or 600 people and present - they got a lot from this as well.”