CEiL · Communication Essentials in Leadership
Be interested, not interesting.
Become harder to destabilize without becoming harder to reach.
Intensive training for team leaders in holding a room: attention, visualisation, message, emotion and objections, practised under rising pressure with individual attention for every participant.
CEiL trains team leaders: management teams, project teams, supervisors, any group small enough that everybody knows everybody. You learn to hold the room and speak to each person in it, rather than to a mass. Inspiration alone sends some people into a wall; CEiL trains the interaction that leaves them able and willing to act.
Seven steps, each one harder
- 1
The groundwork
A short pass through the theory, so the exercises that follow make sense.
- 2
Attention
You learn to see the audience while you talk, and to forget yourself in your interest in them.
- 3
Visualisation
You see what you are talking about, almost like a hologram in front of you, and describe it to the room.
- 4
Under stress
Thomas makes it harder step by step, until you hold attention and the picture while you think on your feet.
- 5
A one-minute message
You design a complete message and bring it alive, instead of reading it out like a checklist.
- 6
Emotional range
You test which emotion carries the message, and widen the range you can use.
- 7
Any objection
Comments, objections, personal attacks. You handle them without flattening the attacker, and turn that person into an ally.
By the top you own your position. Nobody can knock you off it, and the skill stays once you have it.
Every exercise has three seats
While one participant trains, the others give feedback. Then the speaker takes it again. Everyone sits in each seat, so you also learn to give useful feedback and to spar with a colleague.
Speaker
You get your message across while three colleagues watch.
Receiver
You feel how a message lands, and say when it bored you or when the speaker looked unsure.
Observer
You watch the message travel between two other people and see what made it work.
Why the group stays small
Each participant gets individual attention in every step, and that takes hours. Thomas sets the time to the result: two full days for four people, three for six. If you need to, you can split the days into four-hour blocks.
- 4 people
- 16 hours
- 6 people
- 24 hours
Thinking well, then saying it well
Thomas’s other interventions work on how a team thinks. CEiL works on how a leader gets that thinking across to the people who have to act on it.
A question to bring to the first conversation
“Where does our leadership communication become least effective when the stakes rise?”
Frequently Asked Questions
Fit, format, fee and how to begin with CEiL.
When is CEiL the right intervention for a team?
When team leaders need to get a message across so that people are able and willing to act on it. CEiL is for leaders of management teams, project teams or supervisory teams: any group small enough that everybody knows everybody. It helps the leader who inspires a room but loses individuals, who gets anxious when the stakes rise, or who answers an objection by flattening the person who raised it.
Why is participation limited to 4 or 6 team leaders?
Every participant gets individual attention in every exercise, and the others give feedback from the receiver’s and the observer’s seat. With more than six people, nobody gets enough turns to change how they hold a room.
What can participants do after CEiL?
Hold the room and pay attention to each person in it. Visualise what they are talking about while they talk. Deliver a one-minute message without reading it out. Use their full emotional range to carry it. Handle comments, objections and personal attacks, and turn the attacker into an ally. Once a leader has the skill, it stays.
What is the format, duration, and setting?
CEiL takes 16 hours for four people or 24 hours for six, in person. It works best as two or three full days; the hours can also be split into four-hour blocks. Location and travel arrangements are agreed separately.
How do we initiate an enquiry for CEiL?
Bring a proposed group of four or six team leaders and consider the diagnostic question: “Where does our leadership communication become least effective when the stakes rise?” Submit the enquiry form to arrange a nonbinding diagnostic conversation with Thomas Bothe to assess mutual fit.
Submit a Nonbinding Enquiry
Start a confidential conversation with Thomas Bothe about CEiL. There is no automated booking and no financial obligation.