Making Difficult Conversations Easier

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As human beings one of our core tools for communication is “the conversation”. Many times those conversations with family, friends and business colleagues can be light-hearted, inquisitive and pleasant. It’s one of the important elements of developing understandings and forming relationships.

But sometimes conversations go awry creating conflict situations, causing strong emotions and damaging relationships. This can lead to playing the “blame game”, creating a conflict trap and casting people in victim and villain roles.

Other times difficult conversation may not involve a conflict but are nonetheless uncomfortable such as circumstances where bad news needs to be delivered, you have to say "no" to someone or you need to confront the other person about something impacting you.

Knowing how to engage in and manage difficult conversations is a skill that can be learned. Our approach is to use the “understanding” model which we use in our mediation training and mediation services as the foundation for engaging in better conversations.

With our approach you will learn:

• the DNA of conflict and how attribution theory creates a conflict trap for the conversation
• the 3-part structure of all conversations and how each makes a contribution towards conveying our message
• how to use “looping” as an effective method to change the conversation from one of conflict to one of learning
• why personality styles can be an effective indicator to managing difficult conversations
• how words and their structure can influence a conversation from destructive or productive 

Contact us to set-up a training program for your organization

or

Book a 15-minute introductory meeting to discuss how we might help