Leadership Skills Training Programs & Workshops
Difficult Conversations: Practical Tactics for Crucial Communication
Conflict. Confrontation. Controversy. Disagreement. Tension.
Do these occur in your workplace?
Conflict at work is unavoidable.
Your employees, co-workers, and supervisors won’t always see things the same way you do. Differences in opinion can lead to tension, bruised egos, and exploding tempers. Joel’s leadership skills workshop will teach your people how to handle difficult conversations while minimizing conflict and tension.
This Leadership Training Program Will Show You How To:
- Talk effectively about touchy topics.
- Create a road map anyone can follow when preparing for and engaging in difficult conversations.
- Discuss what matters most with co-workers and employees in a non-confrontational manner.
- Make other people feel heard and understood so you can work together to come up with solutions.
- Use conflict as an opportunity to create a positive outcome
This leadership skills training program can be adapted to whatever format works best for you, from a 60-minute webinar to a half-day workshop. Participants will improve their communication and conflict-resolution skills so they can get to the root of problems—and resolve them—without damaging valuable work relationships.
Benefits of Having That Difficult Conversation
Whether conflict is minor or major, it demands one thing: initiating difficult conversations.
A misunderstanding between co-workers, or even something as simple as a disagreement in a meeting, happens regularly. For the sake of both personal and corporate well-being, it’s worth speaking up and working it through.
But here’s the flip side: workplace conflicts also present an opportunity.
Properly managed, conflict has an abundance of positive potential. If you learn to have the difficult conversations, you can stimulate performance improvement and promote creativity in ways that constant peace and harmony often do not. Productivity goes up as collaboration improves.
These statistics make the value of this leadership skills workshop very clear:
Managers say they spend 40% of their time dealing with conflict.
85% of workers say they experience conflict on the job.
50% of the employees who leave the company say it’s because of chronic conflict.
The average employee spends at least 3 hours each week dealing with conflict.
What Happens In This Difficult Conversations Workshop
Much of the negativity can be avoided when people learn to create a comfort zone for conflict resolution.
Here are a few of the difficult conversations this workshop will cover:
- I need to give more positive feedback
- My subordinate just blew a big presentation
- I need to confront my manager
- I’ve had my feelings hurt
- I want to ask for a raise
- I have to fire someone
- I want to get paid what I’m worth
The first step in managing difficult conversations is Preparation.
Here are some important questions each participant will learn to ask themselves:
- What is the problem?
- What impact is this situation having?
- How do I feel about the issue at hand?
- How does the other person perceive it?
- What assumptions am I making and are they valid?
- What do I want the outcome to be?
The conversation itself includes four important components:
- Listening
- Questioning
- Validating
- Agreeing (next steps and follow-through)
Joel draws participants into the process with stories and role plays in a highly interactive and motivational seminar experience. There’s not always time to prepare when a difficult conversation becomes necessary. This workshop provides your leaders with skills they can keep in their toolbox, ready to use whenever conflict or confrontation occur. The results you’ll see will be a workplace where difficult conversations are handled with creativity and compassion.
Difficult Conversations Books Are Available for Each Participant
Joel’s book on difficult conversations is an excellent companion tool to this presentation. Called Difficult Conversations: Practical Tactics for Crucial Communications, it will serve as a reliable guide through any type of tough conversation.
