New teamwork training program materials now available to businesses.

Vital Enterprises Working With Others (WWO) training course materials prepares people to work together in improving business success. The program teaches skills critical to successful workout teams, project teams, and all efforts of people working together. The materials include an instructor guide, participant course book, prompt cards, visuals, handouts, and a set of electronic tools.

(PRWEB) May 28, 2004 -- This one-day training course prepares people to work with others in ways that elevate the success of all. It teaches participants how to understand the ideas and information others are sharing and express their own ideas in ways that keep them and whoever they are working with connected and moving toward their common goal. The Working With Others (WWO) skills are clarifying and confirming, which work together to build an accurate picture of what another person is sharing, and constructive criticism and hitchhiking, which allow a person to add his or her ideas in a way that builds better solutions while maintaining positive relationships.

The training is conducted in an action-learning format where participants take up and resolve a problem together while learning and applying the Working With Others (WWO) skills. The materials include a problem to be solved, but are structured to allow you to substitute another problem specific to the context in which the training is conducted.

Intuitively, if one cannot communicate effectively, one cannot benefit from the information and ideas of others nor leverage his or her information and ideas by transfer to others. Empirically, a wealth of research indicates that communication skills training is the most cost-beneficial training investment one can make in the workplace (Brannick, 1987; Burke & Day, 1986; Carkhuff, 1983; Leddick,1987). Evaluative research of the Working With Others (WWO) skills training program supports these experimental findings. In one study of 22 different training groups, learners judged that the effective use of WWO skills accounted for 64% of the success they achieved in their jobs. In another study of benefit to the business units within which these learners worked, the return on investment for learning and using WWO skills was found to be 10:1-that is, for each dollar spent in learning these skills, the business received $10 of measurable benefit. To take advantage of these benefits, the WWO skills are taught in the context of accomplishing an actual business purpose within the training setting. A default application exercise is included, but the materials are easily modified to address an issue specific to the setting within which training is conducted. See WWO case examples in the Information section of Learn for ways in which WWO skills training has been tailored in the past.

Brannick, J. P. (1987) A meta-analytic study of human relations training research. (Doctoral Dissertation, Bowling Green University), Dissertation Abstracts International, 48, 3439B. (UMI No. 8800429)

Burke, M.J. & Day, R.R. (1986) A cumulative study of the effectiveness of managerial training. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71, 232-245.

Carkhuff, R.R. (1983) Interpersonal Skills and Human Productivity.

Amherst, MA: Human Resources Development Press, Inc.

Leddick, A.S. (1987) Effects of training on measures of productivity: a meta-analysis of the findings of forty-eight experiments. (Doctoral Dissertation, Western Michigan University), Dissertation Abstracts International, 48, 910A. (UMI No. 8714649)