There is an urgent need for better communication skills training.
The idea for Learn Teach Explore came about as a response to an urgent need for better communication - and better communication skills training.
Quality Communications International is the body of what we do. Learn Teach Explore is the heart.
Our Story
Faced in 2008 with a room full of participants, Derek Rowe looked at the multiple pages of content on 'active listening' - and looked at the clock which told him he had only 15 minutes to cover it all in.
Used to thinking on his feet, Derek had an idea - the kind of idea you get when you REALLY need a good one.
His experience as a drama teacher kicked in. He decided to run a role play. He told people to pair up and that one of them was going to be a restaurant customer with a complaint, and the other a waiter. He asked the waiter to have the word ‘busy’ in their head when hearing what their partner had to say.
The results were hilarious. Some waiters walked away while their customer was still in mid-sentence. Some defended their restaurant against attack. Some offered a free meal, anything to get the customer to go away. Then, he made one change - he asked the waiter to put the word ‘help’ in their head, and for them to have another go.
Here's what happened.
![happy boy play in the tin can phone happy boy play in the tin can phone](https://qualitycommunications.training/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/listening.jpg)
Every waiter in the room started:
- Showing interest in the other person
- Directly facing the other person
- Maintaining eye contact
- Nodding their head
- Smiling.
By simply putting a word in their head, every one of them embodied every single dot point on being a good listener in the workbook. This role play has since been run many times as part of a Learn, Teach, Explore workshop, and the results are always startlingly similar.
What Derek accidentally tapped into that day was this - people already have the skills they need to communicate better. They just needed a system to activate them.
Pages of dialogue in many workbooks have since been replaced through training people to be great communicators in this simple way.
It's been so transformative that we've built a whole business around it.
An introductory LTE workshop runs for around 90 minutes - and people leave with confidence to practice their new skills back at work immediately. This is great news for any Team Leader, HR Manager or Learning and Development Manager who are trying to balance providing their staff with the best possible training possible with minimal down time and maintaining high productivity.
Our mission is to deliver high quality, cost effective and time efficient solutions to anyone who wants to improve their communication.
So while Learn Teach Explore is taking up more of our bandwidth as time goes on, QCI is also the springboard for our holistic presentation skills training as well our our Training Design and consulting services.
![Derek Rowe Derek Rowe](https://qualitycommunications.training/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Derek-high-res-square-e1590389158240.jpg)
Founder
Derek Rowe is the founder, creative director and lead educator of Quality Communications International, and the creator of Learn Teach Explore Holistic Communication.
Derek entered workplace training with 10 years of high school teaching under his belt, instilling in him his passion for the quality of the learning experience in any classroom. He spent the next six years developing his expertise in workplace training design and delivery, working for organisations including Coles and Bi-Lo supermarkets and Country Road.
For the last 17 years Derek has been a freelance training consultant as the Director of Derek Consulting. His training design and delivery skills have been used by organisations including Coles, Schweppes, Child Wise, Ramsay Health, CGU, NRMA, the Australian Institute of Management (AIM), CSL Behring and the Red Cross Blood Service (Lifeblood), where he also sits on the in-house Instructional Design panel.
Derek is the creator of the Point Wrapping Presentation Skills system, as well as CSAR, a complete end to end system for designing, delivering and evaluation workplace training. One of CSAR's more notable achievements is it's application for the design, delivery and evaluation of all public HSR safety training courses by WorkSafe Victoria.
He intends to spend the rest of his career making quality, cost effective workplace training accessible by as many people as possible, while spending his spare time for the rest of his life writing professional musical theatre.
Manager
Lisa Rowe is the General Manager of QCI. Lisa is the glue of the business, having developed a wide range of very useful skills over many years working in executive level administrative support, customer service, writing and editing, online course design and project management.
For the past few years Lisa been running her own solo venture as a Virtual Assistant, helping small business operators in Australia, Europe and the UK run their businesses efficiently and effectively.
Lisa has recently done some tertiary level study in proofreading and editing, as well as completing a Diploma of Leadership and Management.
She is very happy about the opportunity to use her skills and accumulated experience to help QCI achieve our objective of helping people to communicate better, and be more effective in every area of their lives as a result.
![A2082_JDHS_117 - Copy Profile photo of Lisa Rowe](https://qualitycommunications.training/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/A2082_JDHS_117-Copy-e1595382649564.jpg)