Our Company | Niki Flacks | Our Clients | Satisfied Customers

The Bergerac Group is a training and consulting firm focusing on the hard issue - communication under pressure, when it makes a difference. We work with organizations all over the world in a wide array of industries. In business since 1986, Bergerac is based in Dallas, Texas. Our innovative training programs, PowerTalk, SuccessTalk, CustomerTalk, MeetingTalk and TrainerTalk can be custom designed to meet specific needs along with our Executive Coaching. So our prospective clients may experience a Taste, Touch and Feel of our training, we deliver a Showcase program as well. Bergerac offers a unique perspective of why and where there is a communication failure within an organization, and then provides the skills and knowledge to fix the problems.

We see ourselves emerging as the standard against which all other communication can be judged. Our approach is built on the most solid foundation of psychological research and an adaptation of theatre techniques. Studies demonstrate the power of emotions in all communication, especially in driving decisions. We teach people to be authentic and yet impassioned as they persuade, influence, negotiate, handle customer frustration, manage teams, coach subordinates, motivate and lead.

Named after Cyrano de Bergerac, our company strives to live up to the courage, eloquence and honesty of its namesake. Cyrano was a 17th century poet and swordsman with a very large, unattractive nose. Edmond Rostand's play, Cyrano de Bergerac, captures Cyrano's transformation from social outcast to hero, his physical liability becoming invisible in light of his great wit and verbal brilliance. We hope our clients will be inspired by our use of several quotes from Rostand's play.

To walk in my own way,
free to see things as they are
and never to speak a word
I have not heard in my own heart.

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Niki Flacks is Chairman and CEO of The Bergerac Group. Ms. Flacks brings a unique blend of expertise to the daily challenges of communication under pressure. She is an award-winning actress, respected psychotherapist and co-author of PowerTalk (Macmillan 1982). She is recognized as the creator of the most innovative training programs in the communication arena: PowerTalk, CustomerTalk, SuccessTalk, MeetingTalk, and TrainerTalk.

With the launch of the groundbreaking program PowerTalk, Ms. Flacks proved that presentations produce results, drive decisions and enhance careers when they are delivered with passion, energy and a psychological understanding of each audience's needs. SuccessTalk and CustomerTalk followed, rooted in the psychology of how emotions drive interactions. Flacks adapted the skills of improvisational theatre to produce agility of thinking and flexibility of response, no matter how challenging the situation.

Ms. Flacks, an assistant professor in theatre at Southern Methodist University for several years, earned her bachelor's degree in theatre from Northwestern University. As an actress she starred in the television soap opera One Life to Live, and on Broadway worked with Maggie Smith, Sir John Gielgud and Harold Prince. As a theatre director, she has worked both in London and the US. To round out her understanding of the connections between theatre/psychology and verbal communication, she received her masters in social work/psychotherapy from the University of Texas. Continuously learning, Flacks works with a noted neurologist to enrich her understanding of how the brain receives and processes information, how it copes with performance anxiety, and how tapping into emotions can influence the function of memory.

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