Managing Difficult Conversations

If you’re a HR manager or leader of a team, this event will give you a toolkit to pass on to your team to manage difficult conversations.

Because disagreement happens all the time. At work with colleagues. In relationships with clients. At home with family. Or sometimes a situation just gets to the point where you can’t put up with it any longer – and you need to call it out.

For these conversations, the cost of failure is high. But these are the very conversations that fail most often. And they are the conversations that we put off – sometimes for weeks. If you could enter into these conversations knowing how to manage the process, what would that do for your wellbeing and resilience? And how much stronger do you think your working relationships would be?

In this session, let me introduce you to a negotiation technique pioneered by a former FBI hostage negotiator to help you to speak up assertively and respectfully when there is a difference of opinion. These techniques will help you to find common ground.

And when you’re working through a screen, these conversations can be even more challenging. When life is reduced to two dimensions instead of three, then your virtual communication skills are tested to the limit.

You’ll walk away from this event with a playbook to manage those conversations that cause you the biggest stress. We’ll look at approaches to help you get your head in the game before you enter into your conversation. And we’ll give you techniques to help reduce the empathy gap that hijacks so many of these conversations. The result? You will build stronger relationships, bounce back from difficult encounters more quickly and feel equipped to make your voice heard.

We’re hosting this event with Causeway Chamber as part of a series of events to help members and non-members to build virtual communication skills.