About Us
Focused Communications
Since 2001, Focused Communications has been providing “Business Facilitator” & “Presentation Effectiveness Training” to clients who would like to learn new skills to increase audience engagement, apply the science of effective questioning, design meetings/workshops that create a call to action and employ techniques to manage disruptive behavior in groups. Considered experts in this field, Focused is frequently asked to provide professional facilitation and workshop design strategies for strategic planning, internal meetings, focus groups and customer advisory boards. Marketing Directors, Brand Managers, HR Managers, Sales Managers, MSLs and sales have all benefited from our work. Our depth of expertise in behavioral sciences and our passion for excellence have been the cornerstone of our success.
Sylvia MacSpadyen
Sylvia’s success in managerial roles in both the public and private sectors, coupled with an educational background in psychology, communications, and business led to her founding Focused Communications in 2001. Sylvia has accreditation in Continuing Heath Education from the Department of Medicine (U of T), is a certified trainer from OISE (U of T), and has Training Certification through The Performance and Learning Institute. She also has specialized training in Human Resources and Neuroliguistic Programming (NLP) for business. She has been offering expertise in needs assessments, educational design and evaluation strategies for CHE and Training with a focus on measuring ROI and change. Her ongoing continuing education is spent taking courses in leadership, change management, persuasion and new advances in Learning and Performance. In her spare time, Sylvia can be found with her family, road biking, golfing, working out at the gym or walking her tireless Portuguese water dog, Charlie. Sylvia also mentors young students on “The Science of Persuasion and Leadership” and increases their skills in the psychology of non verbal communications. She is proud to have helped many students to obtain their first career after university or support those in career transition.
Click here to learn how to get in touch with Sylvia.
Services
Performance and Learning
Corporate training sessions are contextualized to the specific needs of the attendees and include comprehensive evaluation and follow-up. Sessions and workshops are flexible and can be offered in 2 hour, half day, full day or 2 day comprehensive programs. Workshops can be implemented during sales meetings, on site with teams or off site. Examples include:
- The art and science of persuasion
- Designing and facilitating effective meetings
- Facilitating groups and presentations with engagement strategies
- Facilitating groups and managing group behaviour
- Designing needs assessments and focus groups
- Train the trainer (developing corporate trainers)
- Designing Effective Seminars and Conferences
Continuing Health Education (CHE)
- Needs Assessments designed to assess perceived as well as unperceived needs
- Knowledge, attitude (beliefs), behavior and skill gap assessment
- Educational Design strategies and ideas (innovative and engaging strategies linked to the learning need)
- Evaluation levels 1-4
Professional Meeting Facilitation
- Design strategies and professional facilitation (innovative workshop ideas and tactics)
- Advisory boards and consultative meetings
- Brand and strategic planning (post it workshops, mind mapping, war games etc)
- Focus Groups and needs assessments
- Internal change management or mapping workshops
- Seminar Design and Facilitation for Investment Advisors
Advisory Boards and Consultative Meetings
- Innovative design ideas to gain depth, clarity and relevance of feedback from key advisors
- Professional meeting facilitation to evoke critical thinking
- Full service planning, recruiting, communications, invitations and all administration
- Detailed and comprehensive reporting of feedback
Testimonials
“Sylvia is the essence of positive energy combined with strategic thinking, excellent execution and customer service focus. She can design perfectly tailored training and deliver it in such a way as to engage all participants. She is gifted with a high EQ which enables her to facilitate very constructive sessions with KOLs, physicians and sales teams alike.”
“Sylvia has an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience, along with an infectious creative energy. The result is a continuous stream of sound ideas and possibilities which enhance any project and make it muchbetter than the original concept. Although I have been a sales trainer for 10+ years, working with Sylvia was a real learning experience. The final result reached well beyond the original expectations for the project and my bottom line didn’t suffer for it!”
“We have hired Sylvia for facilitation training, consultative meetings and strategic planning workshops. Sylvia brings unique ideas to meeting design and has excellent facilitation skills. She is a critical thinker, effective questioner and excellent listener. Her high energy approach and sense of humour are welcome by participants. During our strategic planning sessions, the activities were designed to keep all participants engaged and enthusiastic about working together. I always appreciate Sylvia’s enthusiasm toward the brand she works on and appreciate her dedication toward her work.”
“One of the best moderators I had the chance to work with. Excellent questionning skills and in-depth knowledge of adult learning principles.”
Sylvia is pure energy driven by insight. In the 10 years I worked with Sylvia, she has always delivered high value educational programs. I have always been impressed by her ability to design training tailored to my teams, making each session so interesting and relevant. Her strong facilitation enable her to completely engage each participant. I recommend her fully.
Sylvia is an amazing trainer. She is dynamic, energetic and really makes whatever concept she is coaching on come alive. I always learn so many great skills after a session with Sylvia and look forward to implementing them as soon as possible. I highly recommend her.
Sylvia brings a great combination of energy, outcome-focus, and structure to her mandates. Sylvia has regularly uncovered valuable new insights through her work, and my OLs have been impressed by the quality of the discussion and the level of engagement of their peers. A real pleasure to work with.
I recently had the opportunity to work with Sylvia for a brand planning session. Her creativity and unique approach made this one of the best brand planning sessions that I have been a part of. I would highly recommend Sylvia for her ability to provide creative out of the box options to help improve engagement within your group sessions.
Sylvia has engaged my Team in multiple training and learning sessions over the years. Her energy is contagious and the ideas, sharing and intense education that happens as a result of that has raised the bar on my personal skill set. There are endless books, TED talks and lectures that claim to have the key to being a more authentic and powerful ‘You’ however it takes an individual with Sylvia’s unique background to take theory into reality and embed that into your daily personal and work life!
Sylvia has a great strategic and tactical thinking. Very dynamic, energetic and sees opportunities in every challenge. Very focused on customers’ needs and satisfaction. Great execution of every project.
Sylvia has worked well with the diverse group of physicians in HIV. She has shown excellent tact and flexibility in working with a very special group and has been able to provide a continuum by working on our ad boards over a number of years.
Working with Sylvia is an experience and a pleasure! She brings a level of energy, enthusiasm, and expertise that distinguishes her whether planning, implementing, and or facilitating meetings, workshops, focus groups, and training sessions. Her ability to quickly read people and situations allows her to effectively keep participants engaged and focused in a productive environment. Sylvia is highly skilled at controlling sessions to ensure balanced input while making participants feel at ease.
Our Clients
Want to get in touch?
You can contact Sylvia directly at sylvia@focusedcommunications.ca or call her at either 416-900-0975 or 514-917-7558.