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PLEASE NOTE: This course is for in-company groups of four or more attendees only.
- Live, trainer-led training
- Can be run in person OR remotely, in the virtual classroom
Course overview
Your board steers your organisation – and they make crucial decisions based on information and recommendations you and your team supply in a board report.
If your team’s reports are poorly written, lack clear structure, and bury key messages or recommendations, there’s a real risk that their time and hard work will go to waste. The board won’t act on information they haven’t read or understood.
This course will give anyone writing or contributing to board reports the techniques they need to make sure this doesn’t happen. We’ll tailor the training materials using real examples from your organisation, which means you can be confident the training will be targeted and relevant.
- This is live, trainer-led training.
Who's It For?
This course is for any team who write or contribute to reports for the board, in any department.
What you'll learn
By the end of the training, attendees will be able to:
- profile your board of directors and identify what information is crucial to the report – and what to leave out
- build a logical structure to communicate ideas clearly and succinctly
- write executive summaries that get their key message or case across – even if board members read no further
- present technical information, data and assessments of risk so they’re meaningful for all readers
- create consistent documents, even with multiple contributors
- use correct grammar and punctuation to avoid any embarrassing mistakes
- write in your organisation’s tone of voice.
Study method
- In-class
- Virtual
- Blended
- Online
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Duration study load
- 1 day
Course features
A key feature of this course is that all attendees receive our unique pre-course writing analysis. This covers 15 different areas of writing skills and helps us ensure the training meets attendees’ precise writing needs, while allowing for rapid, targeted improvements.
Additional information
Frequently asked questions
Can the training be tailored to us specifically?
Definitely – in fact, bespoke group training is the main thing we do. One course programme doesn’t look exactly like what you need? No problem. We can combine elements from any of our courses to fit your needs exactly.
Your course can also be part of a blended programme that will support your team in changing their writing for good.
Note that our scheduled course materials cannot be tailored in the same way as our bespoke training. But our trainers will always adapt their delivery based on the individual writing samples which attendees send beforehand – as well as on what people share during the day.
Is the training suitable for non-native speakers of English?
Our courses aren’t ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) courses. They’re not designed to introduce new second-language speakers to the basics of the English language. What they are about is the best ways to use the English language to create effective writing in the professional world.
But our trainers’ experience does mean that they understand and can support the typical challenges learners of English face.
Many of our trainers have experience as ESOL or TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) teachers, and enthusiastically welcome the presence of non-native speakers on courses. Not least as this tends to best represent our workplaces in our globally connected world!
In short, non-native English speakers with a proficient grasp of English will certainly benefit from the courses, even in some ways that native speakers don’t.
Why are group sizes in courses so small?
We limit the number of attendees on our live in-person or remote courses to ten. The reason is simply that we find people learn best in groups of no more than eight to ten.
Having larger groups affects how long activities take and changes the group dynamic: it can discourage shyer attendees from taking part and limit sharing in discussions.
Effective training happens through active learning, including supported (and tailored) practical elements. Increasing the group size compromises how personalised and practical courses can be.
I’m dyslexic – will this course be OK for me?
Yes, certainly. Dyslexia affects around one in ten people, so we often have attendees with dyslexia on our courses.
All of our trainers have received training from the British Dyslexia Association. They are also very experienced at adapting their approach in any course to the needs of the individual learner.
And we produce the materials for each course ourselves, which means we can make accommodations to help. This includes providing manuals printed on coloured paper or a PDF ahead of the day. For in-person courses, we can also provide coloured reading aids.
It’s entirely up to you whether you mention your dyslexia during the training. Some attendees do, some don’t. It can help the trainer to be aware, though, and you’ll have the opportunity to share the information in the run-up to the course. Your trainer will keep it confidential, and you can decide whether you’d like to talk about it during the course.
About Emphasis Training
Writing is still the leading form of communication. Even in today's workplace, most employees will spend 50–70% of their working week on written communications, whether that’s writing board reports that drive decisions, pitches that win business, or strategies that lead. Yet, as a skill, writing is the form of communication that gets the least attention.
At Emphasis, we are writing and communication experts, and we understand why more than 70% of businesses list communications as their key challenge. We show people how to communicate through this critical medium that is so often ignored. We teach them to use up-to-date tools like AI to bring out the best in human writing. And we reveal the crucial part writing plays in all communication – how it connects to how you think, talk, and – ultimately – succeed.
Emphasis has been training companies and individuals in how to make their writing work for over 25 years. Our methods are supported by neuroscience and psychology research on how humans really take in, process, and react to information and how it’s communicated.
