Managing Difficult Conversations - Geelong
Managing Difficult Conversations Geelong
Course Outline
**Overview**
What if the conversations you are avoiding could actually be your greatest leadership gift? Ever wonder why some people seem to effortlessly sail down the highway of office clashes, while others trip over unrealised exchanges and just make everybody feel worse?
It's about to change how you think about (and tackle) difficult work conversations in this intense workshop. Instead of treating tough talks as challenges, these challenges are actually better survival guides for making teams stronger, solving problems, and transforming weakness into strength as you learn to build a healthy culture that empowers you and your team to achieve your business goals.
Developed for Australian workplace settings, this course covers the actual scenarios you'll deal with every day, from performance conversations with your struggling team members to challenging your clients' ridiculous requests. You'll leave with directly applicable skills, skills that work in Melbourne boardrooms, Perth mining offices and everywhere in between.
**Learning Outcomes**
After completion of this course, students will be able to:
Use a structured process to make hard conversations less scary and more productive
Use evidence based communication strategies to give difficult feedback without damaging professional relationships.
Model how to regulate emotion when you experience defensive, aggressive or emotional responses from colleagues.
Use active listening and empathy to defuse emotions and reach mutually acceptable resolutions
Economic power should be wielded with leadership skills, even when you're speaking truth to power with the boss or pushing back to staff.
Introduce follow up procedures that make sure that conversations result in long term new habits.
Adjusting communication styles for diverse personalities and cultures in the work environments, designed to meet the needs of our Australian cultural diversity.
**What You Will Learn**
**Foundation Skills:**
The psychology of why we fear hard conversations, and the struggle to overcome the natural urge to avoid them
Preparation Structure Detailed, confidence building preparation before difficult conversations
Language patterns and statements which either promote openness or inevitability for disclosure, as opposed to causing defensiveness
**Core Conversation Techniques:**
How to deliver feedback so people actually hear it and change their behaviour, according to 2 self made millionaires who've used it for years
Tips on how to keep centred when faced with an emotional or assertive other
How to look for common ground when you are in an impossible disagreement
Formats for powerful questions that convert resistant sniping into powerful dialog Formats for powerful questions that overcome resistance Provides effortlessly portable, easily customised models for exposure and practice opportunities.
**Advanced Applications:**
Giving bad news or disappointing results with grace
Difficult conversations: Tackling ongoing behaviour problems without destroying relationships at work
Conversing in the presence of great power disparities
Australia's diverse workplaces Cultural sensitivity in the workplace Population in the workforce and cultural diversity Employment opportunities and cultural diversity Integrating cultural diversity into Australian workplaces Transforming a growing diversity into success Communicating in a world of diversity.
**Real life Scenarios: Using role plays you practice performing:**
Stages Gift Giving Accelerated Reluctant Performance Management Conversations.
Pushing back on unrealistic deadlines or resource with the higher ups
How to deal with work related conflicts between fellow team members
Handling upset clients due to broken expectations
Handling a restructure, redundancy or organisational change
**Implementation and Sustainability:**
Follow up strategies after having a conversation to ensure the commitment is kept
Creating a workplace culture in which difficult conversations are the norm for solving complex challenges
Individual test analysis and personal skill development planning
**Course Structure**
**Morning Session (3 hours):**
Comprehending Natural conversation dynamics and interpretation of personal triggers
CLEAR: A framework for the preparation of a conversation
Core communication skills practice
**Afternoon Session (3 hours):**
Advanced de escalation techniques
Scenario based practice with feedback
Action planning and implementation strategies
**Who Should Attend**
Managers, Team Leaders, Project Coordinators, HR Professionals, and anyone else find it helpful when they are in the face of tough workplace situations. Whether you're a first time manager getting used to giving feedback, or a seasoned leader wanting to fine tune your methods, these skills will make you more effective at work.
**Concluding Remarks**
Why keep avoiding the very conversations that could strengthen your leadership impact? It is a relationship altering journey for workplace conflict that goes from something to avoid into possibilities for positive change. You will develop practical skills that work on the spot, you will gain confidence with each conversation, and a respect that is born of being the person who confronts issues rather than lets them sit.
Surely you will find that hard talks do not destroy relationships, if we are good at it, often they will strengthen them. These are not just workplace skills, these are life skills that will help you navigate any relationship or situation you find yourself in.
The question is not if you will face tough conversations throughout your career, but whether you will be prepared to approach them with confidence, competence, and skill when you do.