About Intelligent Communication

I created the Intelligent Communication (IC) approach to be a flexible yet comprehensive model for teaching communication skills that are easy to learn and apply.  I have developed multiple applications for the Intelligent Communication approach, including communication, behavior, relationships, and an integrated insider threat model.

Black Hat 2019
Online Learning

The IC Story


I am a retired Army lieutenant colonel.  I served in the Army for 20 years as an armor and intelligence officer. I completed my career as the deputy brigade commander and the chief of counterintelligence operations for all allied land forces for Phases 1 and 2 of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  I completed post-graduate programs from the Army Command and General Staff College and the National Intelligence University.  I also hold an MS in forensic psychology.  I am a certified Master Practitioner Psychological Type and have training in mediation, negotiations, and other assessment tools.
Since my retirement from government service, I have focused on developing and delivering training programs on communication, focusing on the application of communication skills to various aspects of both our personal and professional lives.  I have provided training to the intelligence community, military, law enforcement, and the corporate world both in the United States and abroad.

The Intelligent Communication Approach

Everyone communicates, but not all communicate intelligently. Intelligent Communication is a simple yet comprehensive approach to interpersonal communication that helps people be quick to hear and slow to speak.  This leads to becoming better communicators: achieving better rapport, influencing more persuasively, identifying deception more accurately understanding others and making yourself understood more clearly, teaching more effectively, and negotiating more successfully.

Iceberg
Image by MoteOo from Pixabay

Intelligent Communication begins by helping us understand both ourselves and others.   In some ways people are like icebergs: what we see is only a small portion of all that exists.  There is so much more below the waterline.  Similarly, there is much more below the surface of both ourselves and others that we cannot readily see when we communicate.  We need to uncover what lies beneath by carefully considering what we perceive above the surface.

Intelligent Communication Skills

Intelligent Communication 3.0, the latest version of my model, seeks to help communicators do just that.  Understand both what lies beneath us and those with whom we communicate.  Intelligent Communication looks at all people by considering their body/behavior (what we can see) and their inner person (what we cannot see).  Using a simplified structure based on some ancient philosophy, we label the inner person the heart.  The heart is made up of our perception, our mind (thinking), our gut (feeling), and our will (choosing).  Like the water line to an iceberg, there is a line that separates our body and our heart.  That is life and at the far end are our goals, which impact both our behavior and the inner workings of our hearts.

This approach is designed to create better listening, understanding, and talking. Becoming a better communicator requires understanding yourself and others. Further, it requires becoming a better listener (Perception). Becoming a better listener leads to better understanding (Mind+Gut). Improved listening and understanding results in better choices (Will), which, in turn, leads to better communication. Good communicators get things done. They achieve their goals.

Live Seminar Training

I offer all sorts of training; all based on the Intelligent Communication model. Training includes basic communication skills, rapport building, personality profiling, elicitation, questioning, deception detection, narrative analysis, influence and persuasion, mediation, and negotiation. All of my training programs are designed as individual modules that can be grouped together with additional practical exercises into 1-5 day courses. Presently, I am only offering live training remotely via webinars.

What Live Training Do I Offer?

  • Intelligent Communication Fundamentals:  This course provides an introduction to the Intelligent Communication 3.0 model/approach to interpersonal communication and teaches how to apply the approach specifically in both professional and personal contexts.
  • Rapport Building:  This course teaches academically sound techniques designed to develop rapport, which involves the creation of a sympathetic bond of trust.  The establishment of trust is a precursor and essential element of effectively applying influence techniques.
  • Personality Profiling:  Everyone categorizes others with whom they communicate automatically.  This course provides tools to accurately understand people in ways that will enhance abilities to apply the appropriate communication skills to meet specific objectives.
  • Elicitation and Counter-elicitation:  This course teaches an understanding of the psychological basis for elicitation and various tools to use to collect information from an unwitting source.  It includes instruction on how to identify attempts to elicit information and counter-elicitation techniques.
  • Influence and Persuasion:  This training presents effective influence techniques based on both academic research and practical experience.  The course includes a framework for persuasion that takes advantage of the Intelligent Communication approach and Intelligent Personality Typing.
  • Narrative Analysis:  This course provides instruction on multiple tools, derived from academic research and years of experience, for understanding and detecting deception in others, based on their written and oral communication.  This course focuses on verbal indicators of deception.
  • Negotiations:  This course provides students with tools to enhance their abilities to negotiate in order to obtain a favorable outcome.  It includes instruction on how to apply influence techniques in both distributive and interest-based approaches to negotiation.
  • Questioning:  This is a new course currently in development.  Intelligent Questioning takes students back to the basics to understand the fundamentals of good questions and apply these fundamentals with other skills in the Intelligent Communication approach.
  • Insider Threat Identification and Mitigation: This course shows students how to use Intelligent Communication tools to identify and mitigate insider threats on the Critical Path to Insider Risk. Versions of this course were taught at Black Hat 2017 and 2019.

Pick and choose from these modules to design your custom course, then contact me.

What Our Students Have to Say

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Whether in your professional or personal life, good communication skills enhance relationships and help you achieve your goals.