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"Sarah Read and The Communications Center devoted the right amount of time to tune into our vision and help us develop a nice, workable, common sense Strategic Plan.  We've increased our efficiencies and responsiveness as a result." (Manager)

"We first hired Sarah to work with out firm to facilitate Ownership Transition and broaden our communications ability with staff.  Sarah's work helped us find out better who we were, what we wanted and to understand how individuals communicate most effectively.  Her deep knowledge of the subject matter, understanding of our needs and her ability to really LISTEN stand out as a big reason why we have been successful in our plans and our understanding of each other.  She worked WITH us and made us better.  There is not a better facilitator or team builder than Sarah and I would highly recommend her to anyone interested in facilitation, mediation, or team building activities." (Business Owner)

“The Communications Center provided our administrative team with the insight, clarity and understanding that we needed to move forward in a very difficult time.”

“This organization helps you move forward by understanding how people think, which enables you to use this knowledge effectively and productively.”

"Knowledgeable, clear, helpful, valuable - can adapt to numerous working groups to improve their functions, success, and working culture."

“This is a very productive and efficient way to solve problems by simply exploring questions.”

“This program has helped us zero in much more quickly on how we can work together to solve problems."

"The interactive portions really made me think about different modes of communication."

“We are in a fast-paced business where quickly determined ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers are critical to success. In fact, a fast answer in our work is usually more valuable than a perfect answer. Fundamentally our managers understand that getting to the right answers is predicated upon asking the right questions, but we never took time to evaluate the quality of the questions.

Sarah introduced our leadership team to a totally new approach to asking the right question in last year’s planning session, and I’ve used this approach now several times with both highly technical issues and softer employee relation issues. The end results, regardless of application, have been fantastic.

In one instance our IT staff of 2 had struggled for several weeks with an extremely complex problem of data security and off-site backup. The “easy, but expensive” answer was to buy our way out of the problem. The more difficult, but least expensive answer, was to stay with our current systems and accept the increased risk (potentially expensive also). We didn’t know how to reconcile the opposing forces of risk and cost. It seemed an all or nothing deal until we decided to give Sarah’s circular questing technique a try.

Our end result was a blended solution requiring significant changes to in-house processes and some new equipment, but the initial cost was $20k lower than our first solution (with all of the benefits) and an even lower risk than we had anticipated. We were also able to keep the support for our solution in-house eliminating the recurring annual support of an outside vendor. Needless to say, the equipment vendor wasn’t too impressed with our approach, but we couldn’t be happier.”  (Business Owner)

"Thank you so much for meeting with our staff last week. It is always enlightening and creates such dialogue among us." (Assistant Principal)

"...after five minutes you realize she is so driven by her beliefs and her desire to make public education the best it can be... you subscribe to that passion." "We do such a great modeling for children on how to talk to each other, but we as adults sometimes miss the boat on how we interact..." (Principal)

"The Communications Center provided our administrative team with the insight, clarity and understanding that we needed to move forward in a very difficult time." (Assistant Superintendent)

"The Communications Center provided us with valuable insights regarding communications and community trust." (Senior Curriculum Administrator)

"In a time when we as an administrative team were struggling with communication, the Center provided support for us to understand the steps we needed to take to change the way we were communicating." (Assistant Superintendent)

“Thank you for your assistance it was the right dose of help and the exact right time.” (Operations Administrator)

“These sessions have and will continue to support me in my communication skills with the children in my classroom, my own family, fellow teachers, administration, and families I work with each day.  Thank you!” (Teacher)

“This organization helps you move forward by understanding how people think, which enables you to use this knowledge effectively and productively.” (Teacher)

“This is a very productive and efficient way to solve problems by simply exploring questions.” (Teacher)

“This program has helped us zero in much more quickly on how we can work together to solve problems.” (Teacher)

“Your perspective when having a conversation will change for the better after this program.  You will understand your communication partner better after this program.” (Teacher)

“I learned a great deal . . . very informational!”

“I was a little hesitant to attend when I learned the topic, but I am very glad I did.”“One of the best speakers I’ve heard.”

“Very interesting program—very informative.”

“The speaker had insightful examples and gave us practical skills to use right away.  This topic was outside our usual box and we needed to hear it.”

“Wonderful presentation—learned some new, helpful things!”

“I think this should be mandatory training in the workplace.  I’ve experienced different types of hate in former jobs!  The otherwise ok jobs became intolerable and I become physically ill before finally quitting.”

“Interesting—different slant than I thought it would be.”

“Topic important, needed to be presented—and was presented very well.”“An important reminder—very eye opening as well.”

“Very informative—powerful presentation.”

“No matter who we are in the workplace, this was great info for all.”

“It definitely provided good information on how to handle hate!  Good job!”

“Definitely worth my time.”

“Very thought provoking.”

“This was excellent.  It was geared to help us in what we do.  Communication is important and sometimes we take it for granted.”

“Enjoyed the session on the HBDI.  Good ideas on opening up dialogue.”

“Learning about the HBDI—I’d never learned about it before and it was fascinating helped me realize a lot about my own assumptions and our team interactions.”

“Thank you for customizing this for our group.  It’s always easy to simply generalize.  I appreciate the time you took to make this specific for our group.”

“Well done!”

“Focus on different types of communication—see this in the office (but) more importantly with clients.”

“Kept the content on a positive note—pointed out the positives of each category versus discussing things as being negatives.”

“Got a better look at how the people I work with think in relation to myself; lets me recognize my strengths along with others.

“New ideas for Firm development & employee job satisfaction.”

“I enjoyed the update on HBDI—it’s amazing to me how I can apply its principles to all areas of my life.”

"Loved all the interaction; group activities."

"It was useful to run through the different types of communication styles people use/listen with."

"The exercises were very interesting, especially when required to work outside preferred quadrants."

"The subject matter as a whole was fascinating to me."