Coaching Skills

Seminar on "Coaching Skills for Empowering Employees"

תרגום לעברית

An experiential introduction to coaching and its applications

It has become common knowledge in the fields of business and technology that we should empower others in order to bring out their best. It is less known how to actually empower employees. Professional Coaching includes specific skills for empowering others.

The Coaching Process is a unique blend of creating an empowering context, increasing awareness, and taking action. Through coaching people expand their thinking paradigms to see new possibilities, which are then directly linked with specific plans of action. The coaching process adds value when people want something different from the way it is now: to address a particular problem or situation, to accelerate a person’s movement toward a desired role or impact, and to assist with people’s overall personal and professional development.

Specific coaching skills contributing to this process can be applied by non-coaches. We will look at how the way we approach an interaction can be empowering or not, get a glimpse at some common thinking paradigms, and consider alternative empowering paradigms such as inquiry toward discovery rather than inquiry toward proof. We will look at characteristics of “powerful” questioning, and the benefits of this skill in increasing awareness. And we will look at how to link this awareness to action through brainstorming and invitation that lead to increased accountability.

About the Speaker

For over 20 years Carolyn Tal has been working in human development with both individuals and systems. Her professional experience includes psychology, organizational consulting, and mediation, in hi-tech, bio-tech, service industries, the US Navy, and hospital settings. Dr. Tal currently works as a business and personal coach. She coaches individuals and teams, conducts workshops on coaching skills and bringing a coaching approach into organizations, and partners in equine-assisted learning for effective communication.

Trained in coaching at CoachU, Dr. Tal has Ph.D. in Psychology from Northwestern University and is a member of the International Coach Federation. Born in Chicago, Carolyn moved to Israel 12 years ago.

Community Building

Community Building

Sarah Shadmi from Oranim College spoke about the changes in modern society that have created a need for "Community Building" and how "Social Capital" affects a community's ability to function during difficult periods. During her lecture, Sarah explained how social capital and a "community" provide can assist us with seemingly unrelated problems. After the lecture, she responded to questions relating to nongeographic communities, such as "professional communities" and "social capital" in the work environment. The discussion was both interesting and provided a framework for analyzing the dynamics of how we as technical writers get the information and assistance we need, when we need it.

The meeting included a good mix of experienced and fairly new TWs, as well as a graphic artist. There was also an interesting mix of freelancers, in house writers, TW companies, and documentation managers.

2004 Events

May 5, 2004 > "Working with Technical Translators" presented by Eliezer Nowodworski at the Morad Winery

March 31, 2004 > "Working for the US Market" presented by Henry Morgenstern at Synel Systems

February 23, 2004 > "Problem Solving" at Arad Tech

January 28, 2004 > "VBA and Word Macros" presented by Srul Alexander at Osem

December 29, 2003 > "Community Building" presented by Sara Shadmi of Oranim College at Lumenis

November 26, 2003 > "Wine Tasting and The Learning Curve" at Surf Technologies

October 22, 2003 > "First Meeting"

VBA and Word Macros

VBA and Word Macros

The meeting was held at Osem. Moshe Chertoff, who managed the meeting, quickly turned the chair over to Srul Alexander, who gave a very informative presentation on macros and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Srul opened with a real life scenario, a document with hundreds of tables that need to be reformatted. He described how a macro that finds all the tables and reformats solved this problem quickly and consistently. The presentation included details on how to create macros in VBA, the programming language used in Microsoft Office applications. The presentation included explanations on some of the basics of programming.

About the Speaker

Srul is a former programmer and systems developer. Four years ago Srul made a career change to technical writing and has been working for Dr. Text ever since.

Problem Solving

Problem Solving

After a short round of introductions, Svi Ben-Elya asked the QA manager of Arad Tech (Orly) to open the discussion with a brief description of the documentation needs of Arad Tech.

Orly described her goal as having someone come in and "magically" document everything  and leave behind an infrastructure that would continue on by itself.

The documentation needs are enormous because  Arad Tech is a fast growing company , which is  likely to outgrow its ability to manage and retain information on each product  unless it improves its documentation infrastructure. The discussion covered a lot of ground, from document and file management systems to ISO and other structured mechanisms for maintaining information, to how to get started. The Tech Writers present drew on their own experience in similar situations to provide a starting point.

Well before we were ready to leave this topic, the Product Manager from Oplus (Jacob Appleblat), requested that we turn our attention to problems that he has had in the past with Technical Writers and their documentation. He came prepared for a hostile audience, with real examples to back up his positions.

Again, the discussion was both interesting and productive, but certainly not hostile. He had some real concerns and hopefully we were able to help him do a better job of selection and managing Tech Writers. Lack of feedback and failure to create documentation that meets the needs of the target audience are real problems that are often symptomatic of inexperienced Technical Writers or misguided use of Tech Writers. Solving these problems are in everyone's interest and I hope that the dialog started Monday night will continue off line. In any case, before the meeting broke up, both Orly and Jacob made a point to request contact information from those present.

All in all, the meeting was a success and the Forum reached a new stage, where it is no longer a forum of Tech Writer's, but rather of both sides of the Technical Writing equation. 

Wine Tasting and The Learning Curve

Yaakov and Ettie Morad, owners and founders of the Morad Winery opened the meeting with a the history of their winery in Yokneam. The move from being a 9-5 employee in a large company to opening and running an independent business was interesting in itself. I think it also provided insight from a different industry on one of the few constants in the TW profession; we constantly need to review and redefine our position in the company and the marketplace. Our profession is neither stable nor clearly defined. It is rare that the job description of an individual TW today resembles that of 5 years ago or 5 years from now. We are constantly forced to face many of the decisions that the Morad's made when they started the winery.

The wine tasting itself was an enjoyable and interesting experience. For many it was the first time tasting wine (or Sachar) made from cinnamon , and all were happy to have discovered one of Yokneam's hidden treasures.

After the wine, Moshe Chertoff's humorous presentation of translation bloopers set the stage for a round table discussion. Much of the discussion revolved around misperceptions that hurt both the tech writing service providers and purchasers of our services (employers and customers). The importance of the "learning curve" and the added value functions of the TW not directly related to producing a document were at the core of most of the discussion. Real life examples discussed included:

• Companies that are trying to save money by changing writers every few months based on the lowest bid per hour, but unknowingly pay for many more hours due to the repeated learning curve. Even without factoring in the hidden costs of wasted developer time, delays, and loss of quality; the total amount of money paid to technical writers is increased dramatically.

• Companies insisting on per page quotes. While appropriate for translations or technical editing (formatting and grammatical edits only), this method leads to paying a premium for poor quality worked with many pages at low per-page prices. This price structure penalizes clear, concise and properly organized presentation of technical material to the point where the less competent the writer, the more competitive the bid becomes. Because these "cost savings" are usually made up front where the information is gathered, the initial investment cannot be recovered later by using a different and more experienced writer to upgrade the documents. any upgrade would most likely require a repeat of the information gathering process. Only the formatting and stylistic design time could be recovered.

Other topics discussed included the importance of the actual writer as opposed to the (tech writing) company supplying the writer, and a common marketing brochure listing multiple writers and the differences between them. While this may be a useful idea for freelancers, it can be perceived as a threat to TW companies for whom the ability to offer and market a combined service is a competitive advantage.

Finally, there was general agreement that "educating the market" as to proper TW processes and the true role of technical writing would be beneficial to all parties (individual TWs, TW companies, and customers/employers).

The discussion could easily have continued for a while longer, but in my opinion, it would have been preferable to break earlier to allow some of the participants to leave earlier without undue embarrassment.

After the discussion, many of the participants continued the discussion in smaller groups. During these informal discussions the issue of whether the participation of TW companies (as opposed to freelancers, in house writers) is appropriate or desirable. It was generally agreed that the benefits of their participation far outweighed any inhibiting affect they may have on discussions relating to group marketing strategies that facilitate direct contact between individual writers and customers/employers.

Working for the US Market

Prepared by Jonathan Matt and Barbara Claman

Following introductions and a show of a few new faces, Svi quickly turned over the floor to Nira Barak, who presented a brief overview of Synel Industries.

Henry Morgenstern - The evening continued with Henry Morgenstern of "In Other Words" relating his impressions of the US Market for Technical Writing - telling us things we didn't expect to hear. Henry drew quite a crowd, with over 20 of Israel's most experienced Technical Writers and Translators present.

For the past year, Henry has been living in Tampa, Florida, considered the sixth largest hi-tech center in the US - with its large data processing industry, aerospace, and large IT depts., plus Disney, and a wide variety of small Internet companies.

Henry's comparisons between technical communication in Israel and in the US were fascinating. He observes a deep contrast between the technical writing scene in the US and Israel, the most obvious being the fact that the vast majority of Americans are native English speakers.

Throughout his lecture, Henry emphasized that the US technical writing market differs tremendously from place to place. Even within the state of Florida there are great differences. Henry concentrated on describing the South Florida market and comparing it with the Israeli market.

Henry feels that Israel offers a relative advantage for TWs, as a hi-tech country where English is not the native language. In general, Israeli TWs use more advanced authoring tools and techniques than those he found in Florida. However, he pointed out that this is not necessarily true of other US markets, such as the Silicon Valley, Boston, or Houston.

In his opinion, the work standards of Florida writers are seemingly less professional than those in Israel, with a lower demand for tools, and a
higher use of temp agencies. Henry was especially surprised to find that Word is still the most frequently used tool in Florida. In many circles,
single-sourcing and Framemaker are just now becoming hot-topics.

Henry also found it strange that while there are US universities where one can study Technical Writing up to the PhD level, the average US TW does not see technical communication as a high status profession.

Henry discussed the current state of off-shore documentation going on in the US. He said that it has been increasing and has become a very sensitive issue. Outsourcing to India, where writers demand a mere $3 to $5 per hour has become quite common for companies with huge amounts of documentation because the apparent savings are tremendous. On the other hand, he found that many smaller companies and those where documentation was needed by their customers are determined to keep the work in house because of the importance they place on the quality and accuracy of their documentation. These companies have little interest in outsourcing, and even less interest in offshore outsourcing.

Henry also made comparisons between Ireland's growth as a hi-tech powerhouse and Israel's relatively modest growth during the same period. According to Henry, there is some outsourcing of documentation to Ireland despite the fact that their rates are as high or higher than American rates. Henry attributed Ireland's success to their willingness to learn, as opposed to an attitude that has been typical of many Israeli companies that we know best.

Regarding salaries, Henry stated that in-house writers in Florida earn between 40-50K, but without all the benefits that Israeli in-house writers
have come to expect. Henry found that rates for freelance writers in the US generally ranged between $20 and $45/hour. He also found that there was a
successful high-end market for TWs and TW companies who offer value added services, such as Version Management. When asked why Words has not tried to introduce that into the Israeli market, both he and others in the audience didn't feel that Israeli companies are willing to pay for this kind of service.

As far as lifestyle is concerned, Henry noted far greater mobility amongst US writers, with their willingness to move from state to state to pursue even a 10-month writing position. Henry also mentioned witnessing an extensive use of networking. Henry ended the talk by observing an overall higher status, professionalism and conditions amongst writers in Israel than in the US.

About the Host:

Synel is a market leader in the field of data collection equipment, with full service solutions for Time & Attendance and Access Control. Synel is publicly traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, with over 20,000 installations and over 120,000 terminals installed worldwide.

Effective Presentation Skills

Prepared by Avner Greenberg and Carolyn Tal

Last evening at the meeting of the Yokneam Forum of Technical Writers, Barry Katz, who passionately believes that improved communication has the power to better our lives, mesmerized the packed audience of Technical Writers at Yokneam’s City Hall with his lecture on Effective Presentation Skills. The writers came with high expectations and were not disappointed.

According to Barry, a presentation should never merely be an exercise in transferring information; the effective communicator must define what he wants the audience to do, think and feel. "Thinking is not enough because feelings last longer than facts”. Barry ably demonstrated the principles of effective presentation in his talk, capturing the audience’s attention from the outset and maintaining a high level of interest throughout the evening.  No ‘Power Pointless’ tedium here; the audience was totally involved, not only through the content of the message but also through non-verbal means like making eye contact with each person, addressing them by name, and through the liberal use of humor and personal anecdotes.

Barry recommends that we pay attention to what the audience is paying attention to. He says that there is no right and wrong way to present. What is important is whether it is appropriate to your audience, location and time. Barry emphasized that presenting is always a sales event, where we want to take the opportunity to sell ourselves and have people buy our message. His approach is that "It's all about people." and that you "cannot not communicate". In order to succeed, all presentations need some type of interaction.

There are 5 parts to every successful presentation:

1. Planning and Preparation

2. Timing and Structure

3. Personal Delivery Style

4. Visual Aids

5. Question and Answers.

Of the 5, the most important part is Planning and Preparation. Always begin with your objectives, stated and hidden. If you don't know whyu, you can't figure out how to present. What do you want your audience to do, think, and feel as a result of the presentation? Who are you talking to? Focus on the WII.FM that your audience wants to hear (WII.FM = What's In It For Me?). Barry strongly recommends that we always have a "Plan B", that we prepare for different eventualities, and that we rehearse before any presentation.

Regarding Timing and Structure, Barry adds two parts (Entrance and Exit) to the tradional three part model of an Opening, a Body and a Closing).

Studies conducted on retention show that audiences only retain 5-10% of the content after 48 hours, so you need to choose the message that you want the audience to retain and hammer it in throughout all parts of the presentation. People's attention fades in and out throughout the presentation, but there are two points when you can expect to have the full attention of the entire audience, at the start and end. Therefore, as you approach the end of your allotted time, skip to the Closing even if you haven't covered everything in the Body.

Personal Delivery Style is just that, personal. You have to feel comfortable so be yourself and don't copy someone else's style because it doesn't work. However, there are techniques that you can use, such as recording participants' names during introductions so we can relate to audience members by name during the presentation. He emphasized that having at least some eye contact with everyone in the room is a way of acknowledging participants. Pay attention to what you wear, how you stand, and especially what you do with your hands - always keep them visible because it enspires trust.

Visual Aids should aid the presentation. They should follow the KISS guideline - Keep It Short and Simple. 6 lines to a slide and 6 words to line is a good rule of thumb. Other tips include adding the date of the presentation to the first slide to make it appear up-to-date, have the agenda on the second slide, show less than you present, make sure you know what all of the acronyms mean, and give contact information at the end to make the audience feel that you are approachable (few actually contact you so there is a large gain for a small investment).

Questions and Answers are the most difficult part of any presentation, because you can't control the questions. However, they are important to the success of your presentation. You can use both words and body language to invite questions, for example, raising your hand when you ask for questions invites questions (Monkey See, Monkey Do), while preparing to leave discourages them.

While talking about specific presentation skills, Barry made sure to include the heart of presenting as well. He peppered his presentation with sayings from his grandmother, such as "Attitude, not Aptitude, determines your Altitude" to impress upon us the importance of overcoming our fear.

How to Win Contracts

On Feb. 21 over 60 Technical Writers from all over Israel gathered in Yokneam City Hall for an meeting of the Yokneam Forum of Technical Writers and a workshop in “How to Win Contracts and Influence Clients” given by Ron Bowman, President of Dale Carnegie Training in Israel.

The workshop began with an explanation of how small changes often have a significant effect. He gave examples of top performers who, though only slightly better than their competitors, made history, while their competitors remained virtual unknowns. In the world of business, being just 5% better makes all the difference. Providing 5% more or better service is enough for customers to feel a 100% difference.

An analysis of how people react to change shows that there is an inherent resistance to change. Change is uncomfortable and feels funny. People tend dwell on what they give up, and often causes us to feel alone even when everyone goes through the same process.

Ron also pointed out that despite the rapid rate of change, people can handle only so much of it. Not everyone reacts the same and many are at different levels of readiness to change. One of the great fears is that we do not have enough resources to make changes. Furthermore, even when people decide to change, once you take the pressure off, most of us revert to our old behavior.

Ron reminded us that we are all salesmen, all the time, and that no one is naturally born a salesman. To be a top class salesman one must excel on all three sides of the Triangle of Success: Knowledge, Skill, and Attitude.

While Product knowledge is certainly necessary, it is not the key. Ron reviewed the factors that affect our influence on others. We are judged:

1st by Our Appearance

2nd by Our Communication

3rd by Our Attitude

4th by Our Relations to Others, and only

5th by Our Professional Competence.

Ron emphasized the importance of remembering that selling takes place in the buyer's mind; he called it an "away game". The skills needed on the side of the seller include:

• Rapport and trust - we need to get the buyer's conscious and favorable attention, otherwise we are likely to lose the sale.
• Interest in the buyer - We need to find out about the buyer, we need to understand - really - what the buyer wants so that we can tell them how the product/service will fulfil their needs. In 70% of sales, prospect and product are only accidentally brought together.
• Solution - once we understand the buyer's needs, we give them relevant facts about the product in a way that offers a solution to these needs.
• Motivation - buying is emotional, the mind must be satisfied but we must also appeal to the heart of the buyer. Keep checking to see if the buyer is ready to buy using the thermometer of "trial closes". Encourage the buyer to make minor decisions as steps to making the bigger decision to close the sale.

Ron then addressed the handling of objections. He describes them as unanswered questions in the buyer's mind. When all the buyer's questions are answered, there are no more objections. There are two types of objection: 1. real / genuine, and 2. all the rest (smokescreens). Ron used imagery as an aid in remembering steps to determine the real objection.

These steps included:

• Cushioning the objection - getting in step with the buyer, perhaps by agreeing with how the buyer feels).
• Smoking out the real objective - asking "why" type questions to clarify the buyer's unanswered question.
• Thinking "how" you are going to answer the objection.
• Checking if you handled the objection before you go on.
• Determining which step of the sale the buyer is at.
• Checking “in addition" - is there anything else. § Meeting the objections.

Ron reminded us that in talking about objections, and throughout the sale, we should be emphasizing value and not price - we must show value before we show price, and we should handle objections before we mention the price.

Ron ended with some general tips:

• For each salesman there is a best way for that person to sell, and that is what that salesman needs to find out.
• We are not dealing with creatures of logic, rather people are creatures of emotion, bustling with prejudices, and motivated by pride and vanity.
• The biggest obstacle to change is you; avoid the disease of analysis-paralysis in making changes.

2006 Events

Dec. 13 > "Using FrameScript"

David Schor's presentation will be posted soon.

Download Shlomo Perets' presentation

Download Paul Schnall's presentation

Nov. 14 > "Do Marketing Writers Always Lie?"

Gallery Block

These are example images. Double-click here to replace these images with your own content. Learn more

Aug. 25 > "2nd Annual Picnic for Tech Writers and Families" at Kibbutz Hazorea

Feedback from people who attended.

Support elephant.org.il - become a member!

June 13 > "Coaching Skills to Empower Employees"

May 9 > "Meeting With Jonathan Friedland, US Consular Agent"

Feb. 21 > "How to Win Contracts and Influence Clients" presented by the President of Dale Carnegie Training in Israel.

Dec. 14, 2005 > "Effective Presentation Skills" presented by Barry Katz - mingling during the break.

Nov. 13, 2005 > "Indexing Seminar" presented by Paula Stern.

First Meeting

First Meeting

The Yokneam Forum of Technical Writers began Oct. 22, 2003 at the home of Svi Ben-Elya, when some of Northern Israel's finest Technical Writers decided to meet on a regular basis in Yokneam to discuss issues facing Technical Writers in order "Bridge the gap between Technical Writers and their customers."