Maximise the positive impact of your expertise!

Whether you’re an individual contributor or in a leadership position, you must communicate your expertise, your ideas and your views.

Communication touches every aspect of your work, be it with clients, suppliers or colleagues.

That’s why effective professional communication has a huge positive impact on the quantity and type of work that you’re assigned, the feedback you receive, your ability to influence others and, ultimately, your life.

ICONDA’s Professional Communication coaching and training is supported by 20+ years experience in technical management, sales and field support. Since 2009, we’ve been helping technology professionals better manage the complex relational environment that we all work in.

Choose a program for your situation

  • For new employees, providing coaching programs and training courses can be an effective way to welcome them to the team and help them develop their skills. Group events can also foster team cohesion and help everyone strengthen their skills.
  • If you are working on a new project, coaching support and workshops sessions may be particularly useful. External assistance and group work using methods such as Open Space Technology and Design Thinking can help individuals take on new roles and unleash the full potential of your team.
  • If your organization has ambitious growth goals, it may be beneficial to seek an outside perspective, fresh ideas, and practical support to help you achieve your ambitions. Investing in external help can be a wise choice.

Don’t delay!

When you’re thirsty, it’s too late to dig a well.

The best approach for you?

 

Individual focus

Personal coaching with possible participation in training courses or workshop sessions and independent learning. Online, 45-minute sessions fit easily into busy schedules and combine extrememly well with occacional group work.

Team focus

Certain tools and methods – for client communication and conflict management – are best tackled at a team or even a cross-team level, at least to start with. Live courses can then be complemented with job-centric coaching and workshop sessions.

Application focus

Sometimes, there is a special need: a company takeover, a change in software, a customer crisis …?  Though a custom solution is required, we would leverage a wide range of existing tools and methods in putting it together.

What can be learnt?

Given that all technology professionals have highly developed skills in their domain  …

Excellence in learnable, cross-disciplinary skills is differentiating

Such skills include the ability to:

  • clarify, share and follow through on objectives
  • understand and profile clients – both colleagues and customers
  • learn from clients, influence them, confront them without conflict
  • coach, train and lead others in complex, matrix organisations
  • quickly switch between tasks and calls
  • solve problems without necessarily understanding how they arose
  • manage six tons of email each day yet arrive home with the energy to enjoy family life!

And, of course, people with such skills are what make outstanding organisations.

 

What’s the best way to learn?

This is the wrong question!

There is no, single best way.

Whether the preferred approach be coachingtraining, independent learning or simply on-the-job-experience, most people need some kind of mix.

Furthermore, no particular mix will suit everyone.

Our solutions all start and finish with individual interviews (checkpoints), whether they have:

  • an individual focus (in which case the predominant learning support is coaching)
  • a team focus (presentations and workshops)
  • an application focus (no predominant mix).

They all benefit from a solid base of core material. In our opinion, these elements are essential for effective learning.

The rest depends on our clients’ learning objectives, potential and needs.

What is the result?

This is what our customers tell us about the results of our work together (for details, please see the references page) …

  • Increased confidence and growth
    • People are better able to list their faults than their strengths. By clarifying both, we encourage a healthy balance of confidence and humility.
    • By reframing old problems, we enable our clients to be more observant in their daily work and this results in greater on-the-job learning
  • Increased productivity
    • We use simple tools to model how we work and interact with others
    • This both improves awareness and augments productivity for both individual and team – shared models and terminology are key to effectiveness!
  • Improved management and leadership
    • For example, work on objectives and plans is greatly accelerated using specific tools and methods
  • Team autonomy
    • The above results have important benefits for manager-leaders – increased maturity of team members allows manager-leaders to spend more time on high-value tasks and enables teams to grow in size and capability

Deep Knowledge, Simple Tools

Difficult Conversations of the Professional Kind helps professionals with one of the most important aspects of their work: dealing with critical situations promtly and effectively. It combines a simple flow with profound concepts.

Imagine how much time and energy you could save by improving your capabilities in this area! The conversation may be with your boss, with a peer, with team-members or with a client.  Whichever it is, being able to say what’s really on your mind is an invaluable skill. The tools and techniques described provide a safe way to start, allowing you to develop your own repertoire and style.

 

Client Encounters of the Technical Kind demystifies communication for field teams and, in doing so, renders a great service to high-tech companies. Its simple tools and processes promote productivity and effective business results. It’s the ONLY product I have seen that is effective in developing the ‘technical sales team.

Jack Dunnigan

Senior Director, Worldwide Sales, Xilinx

Our Latest Post

The Task Management Canvas (free download)

The process of brainstorming sources of Things to Do and ways of dealing with Manageable Tasks helps us to see flaws in our current system. Sometimes, systems that made sense in the past have got past their sell-by dates, and we need to update them. Occasionally, we see the need for more discipline with regards to certain tasks, and the potential benefits of making this effort can motivate us to find it. Frequently, we notice one or two things that should simply be eliminated.

Just like your personal task management system, how you fill in the canvas is up to you. However, if you take your brainstorming seriously – perhaps going back to it now and again, over a few days – it can work wonders!

... read more and get the canvas

In brief

I am Andrew Betts and ICONDA Solutions is my company.

I have worked in the semiconductor industry for over 25 year’s, the first half in design roles, the second in the field (Sales, Marketing and Applications).

A confirmed trainer, I am also an experienced coach.

But that’s enough text! I’ll introduce myself in this video…

Coby Hanoch, CEO, Weebit Nano Ltd

I know Andy for over 10 years and we got to work togehter when I was managing Verisity Europe and he was managing Qualis Europe. Today he is part of the EDAcon Partners network and is helping me provide technical services to many customers.

Andy is a very strong engineer with a very broad knowledge. He has the ability to pick up a new technology and understand it quickly. He also has very strong marketing skill and can prepare very good presentations, demos, whitepapers or training classes. He is a great mentor, helping to ramp up Application Engineers on new technologies.

Claire Idelot, Product Leader, Deezer

With his calm and ability to listen, Andy was able to enlighten me and give me tools at the right time.

As a product manager, I have multiple challenges, including growing a team, carrying the product vision and strategy, and generating impact for customers.

Andy has helped me to structure my ideas, to consider each individual on my team as a whole, and at the same time, to take care of myself. In difficult moments, he helped me reduce stress, better manage my emotions and say what was important to me with honesty.

I now feel more self-determined and mature.

Thembani Nyoni, Automation Engineer, Cully Automation Ltd

Andy’s coaching truly made a difference in my career and I am grateful for his help. Thanks to Andy’s guidance and encouragement, I gained confidence in myself, explored more opportunities, and realized that my capabilities were not limited to Zimbabwe.

Following valuable work on my approach to interviews, I landed a job in Ireland!

I highly recommend Andy to anyone looking to take their career to the next level.

Sameer Kondejkar, Offer Leader, Fortune 500 company

Andy was my coach for about 6 months, and he helped me with a complex challenge of driving internal change.

We were shifting our offer to next generation digital technologies and, with Andy’s assistance, I was able to envisage new, actionable alternatives.

He also helped me with managing difficult conversations. Following his guidance, I was able to tackle actual situations, review outcomes with him and learn how to refine my approach. Being equipped to deal with difficult conversations in multiple ways liberated me from a feeling of being stuck!

Alèna GILI-TOS, Human Resources Business Partner, Dolphin Design

As the Human Resources Business Partner at Dolphin Design, I have the challenge of implementing a new organization and fostering more cohesion within some of our teams.

Andy’s business-oriented training addressed several of these issues. It provided valuable tools to our business development and marketing team, allowing us to move forward together with a shared set of methods.

Andy’s participative training approach, including workshops and feedback, was highly effective and exceeded our expectations. I have no doubt that Andy will be a valuable asset to any organization looking to improve alignment and achieve their objectives. We plan to utilize his expertise on a larger scale in the future.

Caroline Fourniol, Conseillère auprès d'un Recteur d'Académie, l'Éducation Nationale

As an advisor to a senior education official, one of my biggest challenges is to identify the potential of executives and support their professional development.

Andy has helped me a lot to meet this challenge thanks to his collective coaching of a class of High Potentials. His availability, his listening skills, the accuracy of his diagnoses as well as his facilitation tools have been a precious operational help.

Thanks to my increased self-confidence and professionalization, I had the great satisfaction of helping our executives to clarify their commitments in line with their human values centered around the success of students and the education of new generations.

Maria Belem Aguero, Portfolio Projects Manager, Japan Tobacco International

With Andrew, I had the chance to have great insights in a very enjoyable, entertaining and positive way!

He helped me to grow outside of my comfort zone, to explore my emotions and adapt my actions. This allowed me to get a new and more open perspective and, as a result, I’ve overcome some important mental barriers.

I feel a better professional and a better person overall.

Evan Pandya, Marketing lead, Intel

As a Platform Strategist and Marketing Lead at Intel, I deal with a wide range of stakeholders and it can be challenging to ensure that every meeting is productive and adds value.

Andy’s ICON9 tools and methodologies have been crucial in helping me better understand the landscape of working within a large organization and anticipate common communication pitfalls. With his help, I have come up with my own personal flowchart to ensure that every meeting I call brings all parties valuable information and tangible results.

His guidance has given me the confidence and competence to be a leader within my organization and I now know that I can drive successful business outcomes in any circumstance.

Alessandro Pintaudi, VP Product, Amenitiz

I had the pleasure of working with Andy in coaching sessions and found him to be a valuable resource in helping me assess my current situation and find the answers within myself.

He has a keen ability to guide and support, leading to an increase in my confidence and resourcefulness.

I highly recommend Andy for his supportive and effective coaching style.

Dejan Damljanovic , Holcim, Head of Industrial Performance Europe

I took coaching with Andy when preparing for a corporate position (outside of my comfort zone!) and we worked on the challenges of leading/influencing and preparing for difficult conversations. He made me aware of points that I have to work on, gave clear guidance and support and addressed issues I’d not been even aware of!

I really appreciated his strong support and amazing advice, all of it at the right time and extremely beneficial. It gave me full confidence in myself and belief in success in my new role.

Régis Vivier, Inspecteur, l'Éducation Nationale

Accompanying National Education executives in their career development projects is one of my main challenges today. I was therefore pleased to be able to co-facilitate a recent workshop for our high potential executives in Grenoble.

Andy brought a very interesting communication tool in terms of methodology and self-knowledge.

Moreover, his external expertise is very complementary to what we can bring internally, which resulted in a constructive and effective training.

Farid Mayilov, Production Manager, Holcim

Andy has been a great resource for me in managing my challenges as a Production Manager at Holcim in Azerbaijan.

His coaching helped me improve my people management, time management, stress management, and delegation skills. Not only has this helped me on the job, but it has also improved my personal life.

I highly recommend Andy for anyone looking to enhance their management skills and increase their overall satisfaction.

Owen Beillevert, Responsable de support Workplace, La Société Générale

Andrew has been a valuable resource for me as a Workplace Support Manager at La Société Générale. He has helped me to step back and assess my long-term personal direction.

As a result, I have been able to better define my position in the organization. I am more straightforward in my communications and decision making.

I highly recommend Andy to anyone looking to clarify and improve their professional situation.

Anto Pradeep, Sales Manager, Burckhardt Compression, India

Andy has been a great help to me in improving my confidence and ability to handle meetings and discussions.

His tips on how to handle people and express my thoughts have allowed me to build stronger relationships and feel great about my own character and ability.

I highly recommend Andy for anyone looking to improve their communication and relationship-building skills.

Elodie Deckert, Global Privacy Manager, Schneider Electric

I highly recommend Andy as a coach for anyone looking to improve their communication and relationship building skills.

As the Global Privacy Manager at Schneider Electric, I have a number of important challenges to manage, including building and managing a team, interacting with multiple stakeholders, and improving processes.

Andy listened and helped me take a step back and gain perspective on these challenges. He encouraged me to think about different ways to handle difficult conversations, influence others, and solve problems. Working with Andy has left me feeling better equipped to tackle the problems and challenges that come my way, and more confident in my ability to do so.

I highly recommend him to anyone looking to improve their communication and relationship building skills.

Natalia Coronado, Strategic Business Development Manager, Intel PSG

I enjoyed working with Andy on my communication and presentation skills, and I found his training to be invaluable in my current role as a Strategic Business Development Manager at Intel PSG.

Andy provided me with the tools I needed to have effective conversations with both my peers and customers, and as a result, I am now more confident in speaking up, presenting, and driving meetings, even when I don’t personally know most of the audience.

I highly recommend Andy for anyone looking to improve their communication skills in the professional world.

Giovanni Murialdo, Global Product Manager, Holcim

Andrew helped me navigate career transitions, identify and highlight key skills, and create a clearer career outlook.
I found Andrew to be exceptionally flexible, responsive and easy to work with; he helped me gain a different perspective and pointed me to readings and areas of personal and professional growth that I had not known. His advice was practical and simple and thus easy to implement in real life.
In particular the preparation of specific meetings translated into better outcomes for me and for the team. Also, the further literature, including his excellent guide to difficult conversations, has proven very valuable in my interactions, and I use the frameworks he introduced to me regularly.
Andrew has my highest recommendation as a coach.
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