Rick Brinkman, Ph.D.

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A doctor of human behavior and a master of humor, Dr. Rick Brinkman is best known for his Conscious Communication program, which is based on the belief that good communication skills are the foundation of relationships and the lifeblood of effective leadership, teamwork, and organizational performance.  He has been touring nationally and internationally since 1980 sharing his human behavior insights and practical communication strategies in his trademark entertaining and educational style.

SPEAKER TOPICS
ABOUT Rick Brinkman, Ph.D.   (+/-)

Creating the New Standard in Communication

Dr. Rick Brinkman literally wrote the book on communication. His book, Dealing With People You Can't Stand, How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst has been an international bestseller for over a decade. It has been translated into seventeen languages and is available in English in 20 other countries. It is used as a text for communication courses at many colleges. He is the author of numerous other books and video and audio training programs.

Award-Winning Speaker, Educating through Entertainment

Dr. Brinkman has received several awards including "Funniest Speaker of the Year" by the Sales Forum and the Institute for Management Studies Distinguished Faculty award.  In 1988, he was one of only 15 people selected by the Tom Peters Group to present the "In Search of Excellence" and "Thriving on Chaos" programs. He is a regularly featured speaker for Young Presidents Organization, and many associations and corporations.  As a keynoter and trainer for over 20 years, he is known for his unique style of educating through entertainment to make the program engaging and the material memorable.

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SPEAKER TOPIC DESCRIPTIONS    (+/-)

DEALING WITH PEOPLE YOU CAN'T STAND

This program is also known as Conscious Communication: How to Bring Out the Best in People Even at Their Worst

Dr. Brinkman's most popular program.  In an energetic, humorous manner, Dr. Brinkman's message hits home with situations that people find themselves in every day and empowers them with practical solutions. Communication is like a phone number, we need all the digits to get through and we need them in the right order. When we don't pay attention to our communication and its effects on people, we often create difficult situations. By becoming a Conscious Communicator - having the skills and knowing the specific strategies to handle various problem behaviors - we empower ourselves to be successful in bringing out the best in people.Dr. Brinkman's compelling communication tactics include: 

  • Understanding: Why do people act like they do? Why does one person throw a tantrum and another become quiet and withdraw?
  • Good Communication Skills: Recognize the basic skills that you use unconsciously when you get along with people and learn how to use them on purpose with difficult people.
  • How to use the power of your projections to influence people.
  • The secret that opens the door to people's mind.
  • The 4 essential skills that will prevent most conflict.
  • Strategies to eliminate the 10 Most Unwanted Behaviors: * Tank attacks * Grenade tantrums * Snipers  * Whiners  * Know-it-Alls * Think-they-know-it-Alls  * Yes people * No people * Maybe people * Nothing people
  

LOVE THY CUSTOMER: Conscious Communication for Customer Service

This lively and fun presentation takes the one-on-one game of customer service and shows your people how to win over customers no matter how they behave. To build and keep the truly loyal customer, you need to go beyond mere customer satisfaction. You've got to shoot for nothing less than customer delight, every time. Dr. Brinkman reveals how Conscious Communication techniques create a feeling of being loved for the customer and satisfaction for the service professional.Dr. Brinkman's compelling customer service tactics include: 

  • Specific strategies to deal with tough, upset customers
  • Surefire trigger words and phrases you can use or not use to either delight or annoy your customers.
  • The 5 personas of the service professional and when to use them: Host, Healer, Detective, Teacher and Advocate.
  • Don't take it personally! How to deal with the emotional reactions of upset customers without becoming equally upset.
  • How to stay out of a common and innocent trap that turns customers off.
  • How to make a customer happy and give them what they want, even when there is no way you can give them what they want. (This is not a misprint.)

Using Conscious Communication to Bring Out the Best in People at Meetings

There is a great mystery that cries out to be solved: why are most meetings so awful, and what can we do to change them? According to a Wall Street Journal survey, 98% of people agreed that 50% of their time in business meetings is wasted. Over the last twenty years, Dr. Brinkman has developed and taught organizations how to have great meetings that are shorter, more effective and more enjoyable!Dr. Brinkman's compelling meeting tactics include learning how to: 

  • Communicate in a way that bypasses conflict and creates an environment where everyone can really hear each other.
  • Make sure that the more aggressive types can't dominate and the more passive types feel compelled to participate.
  • Appropriately involve people in decisions that affect their work.
  • Allow new ideas to evolve in a group process, instead of just being shot down.
  • Integrate people's opinions and make it easier to make decisions.
  • Shorten meetings while getting more accomplished.

LEADERSHIP IN ACTION : Conscious Communication for Empowering Others

In a time of rapid change and the need to do more with less, leaders must create an inspiring environment, empower others, give useful feedback, create an attitude of continuous improvement, and rally people around greater visions and goals. With Dr. Brinkman's Conscious Communication program for leaders, people are empowered to be great communicators and bring out the best in their teams.  Participants will learn: 

  • How the world has changed and why the old communication style of top down hierarchy no longer works.
  • The eight key communication strategies every leader has to influence and inspire people.
  • The importance of clear information on overall morale and performance.
  • Neutralizing conflicts between members and uniting them around a common purpose.
  • The leader's role to create an environment of continuous improvement and comfort with change.
  • The top ten motivators of people.
  • Vision: how to clarify it and bring it into the awareness of your team so it turns into action.

THE CONSCIOUS ORGANIZATION: Bringing Conscious Communication to the Enterprise

Applying Conscious Communication training from the CEO to the mailroom has a stunning impact on motivation and morale, trust and respect, retention and productivity. Unconscious communication causes business losses, losses that often go uncalculated. Consider email misunderstanding - how much time is lost being concerned about it, trying to work it out, and clarifying what everyone really meant? When people work together, each interaction sets up the next. Conscious Communication training for the entire enterprise creates profound change in an organization and its employees.Dr. Brinkman's Conscious Communication training reveals: 

  • Why do people act like they do? What is the difference between behavior and personality?
  • How to use the power of your projections to influence people.
  • Four essential skills that will prevent most conflict.
  • Strategies to eliminate the 10 Most Unwanted Behaviors:
    • Tank attacks
    • Grenade tantrums
    • Snipers
    • Whiners
    • Know-it-Alls
    • Think-they-know-it-Alls
    • Yes people
    • No people
    • Maybe people
    • Nothing people
  • How to communicate in a manner that prevents problem behaviors from occurring.
  • How to move people out of problem behaviors if they exhibit them.
  • How to positively influence the behavior of your sphere of contacts on a daily basis.

Conscious Communication for Inspiring and Delivering Great Service

Designed for leaders of customer service teams, this program provides the foundation for how to inspire and deliver service excellence. By learning key strategies, your team will rally around a service vision and create an environment where everyone is constantly thinking of new ways to delight customers. Twenty years of Dr. Brinkman's research has resulted in the discovery of 10 traits of all great service organizations. 

  • Learn the #1 reason why customers stop doing business with you and how to avoid it.
  • Discover five simple communication tactics to find out what your customers really like, don't like, and what the customer would love even more!
  • Have the ability to turn an upset customer into your most loyal customer.
  • Use these skills to always see your organization through the customer's eyes.
  • Become a communication master by dropping Dr. Brinkman's Magic Words, guaranteed to make your customers happy.
  • Why customer service is a moving target and how to constantly find ways to continuously delight your customers.
  • Internal Customers: keep your team happy applying service principles to the people you supervise.

CONSCIOUS COMMUNICATION SECRETS: Increasing your Influence, Persuasiveness & Effectiveness

You may realize the importance of a particular project or idea, but how do you communicate effectively to others so that it is not only understood but embraced? There are many verbal and nonverbal clues that persuasive people utilize to influence and motivate others. If your job is to communicate effectively to groups or individuals, this training will give you the communication power you need. 

  • Understand the fabric of communication in a way that the participant can use it intentionally to produce the desired results.
  • Be able to establish rapport quickly with all types of people.
  • Learn the language of influence to positively affect the behavior of team members on a daily basis.
  • Understand and utilize the different advantages inherent in face-to-face, telephone and written communications.
  • Apply the fabric of communication and the language of influence skills to group communications.

Life By Design: Managing Time with Conscious Organization

Some clients have nicknamed this program, "How to Get a Life." Dr. Brinkman shows people how to organize for success, establish clear priorities, separate work and personal time, recover time to do what is important and eliminate procrastination. It is based on Dr. Brinkman's many years as a counselor in private practice, helping people remove the obstacles to moving forward on what is dear to them in life.Audience members learn how to: 

  • Recognize, clarify and stick to their priorities.
  • Master being here now, and eliminating low priorities.
  • Recover time for what is important to them.
  • Know when they are winning, because they can be winning and think their losing if they're are not keeping score.
  • Understand how health and energy is connected to feeling in control.
  • Use time management techniques that continually work.
  • Recognize and dump pseudo-procrastination

SAFETY FIRST! Conscious Communication to Inspire Safety

You know the importance of safety, but how do you and your safety personnel communicate that to those on the front line who come face to face with safety issues every day? Dr. Brinkman will show you how to communicate in a way that makes your safety message stick. With his entertaining, stand-up comedy style, Dr. Brinkman demonstrates compelling communication. People in the audience are amazed by the level of communication power they are capable of, and Dr. Brinkman helps them apply it to influencing safety.Dr. Brinkman's compelling safety tactics include: 

  • Anchors are associations - like the song you hear that takes you back. How to purposely make anchors to safety.
  • Using your entire body as a communication device.
  • How to utilize blending to get past people's resistance to "having heard this already"
  • The Power of Positive Projections in influencing people's behavior.
  • How to eliminate any nervousness you might have being in front of the group.
  • The hidden power in language: how to subtly but firmly move people in the direction of safety by the structure of your communication.
  • How to get rid of "it's always been that way" mentality.
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