Sixty Minutes That Will Change How Your Team Communicates

Our Communicate to Connect Taster Session is a free, experiential session in the human skills that make the difference in client-facing professional life.

Available for CISI CPD events and in-house delivery

CISI CPD Endorsed: up to 1 hour per participant

The Skills That Screens Take Away

Five years of hybrid working and screen-based communication have quietly eroded the informal skills that build client trust - the confident handshake, the genuine eye contact, the quality of attention that makes another person feel genuinely heard.

Research tells a striking story. Thirty per cent of financial professionals now experience anxiety about unscheduled phone calls. Thirty-eight per cent report anxiety about face-to-face small talk. Six in ten firms have avoided hiring a candidate because of communication concerns.

These are not character flaws. They are the predictable consequences of formative professional years spent on screens. And they are learnable

What you'll experience in sixty minutes

This session is practical from the first minute. There are no slides and no lecture - only structured exercises, immediate feedback, and the felt experience of what changes when you communicate with genuine presence and attention.

The Handshake and the Hello. How the first seven seconds of any professional meeting are won or lost and what to do about it. Participants practise a greeting that signals confidence, warmth, and genuine interest before a word has been spoken.

Eye Contact and Presence. The difference between looking at someone and genuinely seeing them and why your clients feel the difference immediately, even if they cannot name it. A structured exercise demonstrates, in real time, what full presence produces in the other person.

Empathetic Listening. A three-round exercise that makes the gap between hearing and attending to someone unmistakably felt. Participants consistently report that within the first twenty minutes, something they recognise as important has already shifted.

The Goodbye. How you close a conversation determines whether someone comes back, refers you to a colleague, or forgets you existed. This is the skill most professionals have never been taught and one of the most immediately applicable.

This Session is for you if...

Your people are client-facing and need to build trust quickly — in meetings, on the phone, and at industry events

You have early-career or Gen Z team members who are technically excellent but find in-person communication harder than their more experienced colleagues

Your team has been working hybrid or remote, and the informal trust-building has quietly eroded

You want a low-risk, high-impact way to experience the Communicate to Connect approach before committing to a full programme

The session accommodates groups from eight to ninety participants and runs for sixty minutes. It is available as part of CISI CPD regional events — and for standalone in-house delivery at your firm.

Your facilitator

Christopher Jones-Warner, Chartered FCSI,

I have taught and coached communication and leadership for financial professionals since 2007. I’m a former Army officer, a former private client wealth manager, the Founding Chairman of the CISI Wealth Management Forum, and a CISI CPD contributor since 2007.

I am also a Certified Level 1 Ananda Meditation Teacher — and I seek to bring to every session the quality of presence and attention that I teach.

Pricing Information

This workshop is FREE one day, in-person, in-house, interactive, experiential communication and leadership workout:

In-person, on-site from 4 to 75 participants

1 hour CISI CPD available per participant

Email Christopher, or book your taster session below.

“I have heard nothing but excellent feedback from the communication course you kindly ran for us on Friday. I know that many of the attendees needed help, and they really appreciated your confidence building measures. You clearly were effective because they have returned, buzzing and ready to try it for real. That’s a great result.”