December's workshop entitled 'Branding and Communication: It's not what you say it's how you said it' raised a question for me - of what relevance was it to me? As an employee of a firm already with branding in place did I need to know about communicate a companies message throught it's brand?

Still with questions in my mind, I signed up, knowing that JCI Reading trainings were always of use, whether it be a nugget of information that I didn't know before, or the learning of knowledge and skills that I may draw upon in the future. After all, JCI Reading is all about 'Tomorrow's leaders today!'

The workshop presented by Wesley Buss of Yewtree Marketing, also a JCI Reading member, covered many aspects of branding and communication, a topic I had not given much thought to previously. Out of what was all round an interest and thought provoking workshop, the topic of Communication Management presented itself as one of great relevance to me. Being an Associate Solicitor, BNI Oracle Member and JCI Reading Board Member, the amount of communications I need to be doing often causes me worry and stress as I have no way of managing them.

Now armed from the workshop with an understanding of all the communications that I am expected to do as well as those that I want to do, from JCI Minutes, BNI Visitor Invites, work marketing campaigns and many more, I set about listing them all, their frequency and identifying the steps that I need to put in place to make such communications easier to complete and in turn easier to keep up with.

Now as I work on setting up my Microsoft Excel spreadsheet 'Communications Dairy' I realise how from a workshop I went along to as it 'might' hold something of interest, has in fact given me a much needed tool that as it develops will change the way I handle, plan and complete communications, bringing calm to the otherwise busy and sometimes unordered thoughts of 'I must do that', 'I must email them' and 'I forgot to send that this week'.

Therefore I would encourage you to look at all future events with an open mind as to how they can help you, for I am sure there will always be something.