Managing Difficult Conversations
This workshop is designed to help participants face difficult situations of interpersonal conflict at work and deal skillfully and effectively with them through conversation.
With our extensive knowledge of the different software currently on the market, including all Microsoft and Adobe applications, ON-TRACK Corporate Training Ltd. has a diverse and flexible schedule that can be customized to your needs – we offer group course (both public and corporate), one-on-one training, and on-site training options. We also have easily accessible on-line training videos available.
Duration: 1 Day
Objectives
After this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Move from an adversarial to a collaborative approach in conflict resolution
- Initiate and conduct skilled conversations leading to behavioural change
- Understand and manage their reactive emotions during on-job encounters
- Identify and alter unproductive conversational habits from reaction to response
- Use calming communication skills to bring upset people to the point of reason
- Use persuasion and negotiating skills effectively
- Develop positive language patterns
- Conduct and survive difficult problem-solving discussions
- Manage the dynamics of effective problem-solving in one-on-one interviews
Outline
- Part I: A New Approach to Conflict Management
- Why we dread certain types of conversations
- Results when we deliberately avoid these encounters
- Personal and professional accountability
- Understanding and changing our conversational habits
- Three modes of defensive behaviour when we are confronted with conflict
- Finding common ground: replacing blame with the collaborative approach
- Keeping our eyes on the prize: setting and sharing conversational goals
- Part II: From Reaction to Response
- Perceptions and the attribution of motive
- Understanding our emotions and emotional payoffs
- What are common Hot Buttons?
- People’s general reactions to having a hot button pressed
- A key to understanding difficult behaviour: thwarted intent plus focus
- The Intent Model
- Strategies for dealing with difficult behaviours based in intent
- The Four-Dee plan for effective conversational response
- More strategies for dealing with specific types of difficult people
- Part III: Calming Skills
- Moving toward a respectful workplace
- Five respectful, non-defensive response approaches
- Checking out our assumptions and perceptions
- The skill of blending and redirecting
- How to ask questions that yield useful information
- Active listening skills
- Assertive skills
- Non-verbal alignment
- Using NLP and the Pygmalion Effect to calm others (and ourselves)
- Four ways to handle anger
- Personal relaxation techniques
- Part IV: Persuasion Skills
- Two sides to effective persuasion: reason and emotion
- The psychology of effective persuasion
- Steps to changing a person’s conviction
- Five effective persuasion techniques
- Negotiating as a means of persuading someone
- The alternatives to persuading
- Part V: Developing New Conversational Language
- Using decisional language
- Five words that can change your life
- Delivering criticism in a constructive manner
- Developing the negative approach with positive expression
- Using provisional language rather than absolute language
- Valuable phrases to use in seven difficult situations
- Using “crediting” to deliver positive feedback to a person
- Part VI: Preparing for the Problem Solving Interview
- When we have the time and authority
- When we want the other person to change
- Use of proxemics
- Structuring the interview
- Four phases of a problem-solving conversation
- One-on-one tactics to avoid
- Following up and following through
- Part VII: Personal Action Plan
- Course evaluation and course closure