Communication & Delegation Skills
Whether you are communicating with your employees, customers, or suppliers your ability to express yourself well and understand others is a major factor of your success. For this course, you will have the opportunity to take the DiSC Personal Profile and use the results to better understand your own communication style and strengthen your business relationships by learning how to better communicate with people who have a different style. You will leave the session with a personal plan for improving your communication skills.
The second half of the class will focus on developing delegation as a valuable skill that will allow you to enable your employees to willingly take more responsibility for performance and use their expanded authority well.
What you will learn:
- The most common causes of communication breakdown and the actions you can take to reduce them.
- What your DiSC behavioral profile is, how to interpret it and how to use it to communicate better with others.
- How to understand the different DiSC styles, their interactions at work and how you can use that to manage others.
- The what, why and benefits of delegation.
- The conditions necessary for successful delegation.
- The 5 steps of effective delegation.
Registration Information
Date: November 18, 2026
Schedule: 8:30 am – 4:30 pm
Location: Grainger Hall, Wisconsin School of Business, UW-Madison
Looking for leadership opportunities for your aspiring and emerging leaders?
See all GROW classes listed on our Classes & Training page. These affordable, skills-based courses focus on fundamental skills like conflict management, emotional intelligence, delegation, communication, and more.
We may also be able to bring training to your team!
Registration Summer 2026
Date: November 18, 2026
Time: 8:30 am – 4:30 pm CST
Location: In person, Wisconsin School of Business (Grainger Hall); room location will be sent within 24 hours of the class start time
Fee: $339
Registration Deadline Type
Early Bird
Late Registration
Course Registration Closes
Date
Early Bird Closes: 10/19/2026
Late Registration Begins: 11/4/2026
11/15/2026
Fee
Early Registration Fee: $306.00
Late Registration Fee: $362.00
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Cancellation Policy: Due to program costs and space limitations for these programs, participants are expected to cancel their registration at least 24 hours ahead of the program. Cancellations that occur less than 24 hours prior to the start of the program will be considered no-shows and may be removed from future programming and/or charged a course fee.
Disability Statement: Reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities will be made if requested at least two weeks in advance. Contact the UW-Madison SBDC office at sbdc@bus.wisc.edu to request accommodations.
The Small Business Development Center at UW Madison is recognized by SHRM to offer Professional Development Credits (PDCs) for the SHRM-CP® or SHRM-SCP®.
Jeff Russell, Instructor
Jeff Russell, (MS, UW-Madison) co-director of Russell Consulting, Inc., specializes in helping organizations achieve their goals by successfully responding to the challenges of continuous change. With a focus on leadership, strategic thinking, leading change, and performance coaching, Jeff has guided organizations as diverse as Fortune 500 firms, social and public sector organizations, and small family businesses toward their goals. Jeff received his Masters Degree in Industrial Relations from the UW-Madison where he serves as an ad hoc faculty member for the Small Business Development Center. Jeff also is an adjunct faculty member at UW-Milwaukee, and UW–LaCrosse.
Jeff and his wife and business partner Linda have co-authored nine books. Recent publications include: Change Training, Strategic Planning Training, Change Basics, Strategic Planning 101, Ultimate Performance Management, and, most recently, Fearless Performance Reviews (McGraw-Hill, 2012). For more information on Jeff and his work, visit Russell Consulting, Inc.’s website at www.RussellConsultingInc.com.
[I liked] learning how and when to delegate tasks, learning my DiSC style, learning my coworkers’ DiSC styles, and learning where I need to make improvements professionally and personally
[I found this class] extremely informative with a knowledgeable instructor! The DiSC profile is valuable and [taught me] how to embrace my strengths and others
[I appreciated] the depth of content [covered] in a short amount of time. Jeff had answer for every question. The resources provided are great tools to use in the future.
[I gained] a better understanding of myself and my leadership skills, and how to take that into account moving forward in my communication and leadership.
I liked that there were lots of resources to take home and re-read, as well as step-by-step processes [to follow].
Jeff made the class interesting and fulfilling; I learned a lot of new skills to apply to my everyday work life.
[I valued the] delegation framework, DiSC profile, and the ladder of inference. [This class had] a lot of great content – both discussion and handouts – to take back to my work and put into practice.
The Wisconsin SBDC Network is a proud part of the Office of Business & Entrepreneurship within the Universities of Wisconsin. It is funded in part through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. The Wisconsin SBDC at UW-Madison is also part of the Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Hub at UW-Madison.
The Wisconsin SBDC at UW-Madison helps entrepreneurs succeed at any stage. We offer no-cost, confidential consulting and business education across a wide region, primarily serving Dane, Sauk, and Columbia counties. SBDC services are provided in a nondiscriminatory way to all legal residents and citizens in the US.
Reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities will be made if requested at least two weeks in advance. Contact us at sbdc@bus.wisc.edu or call (608) 263-2221.