How to have successful courageous conversations at work
What you'll learn
- How to prepare for a courageous conversation
- How to hold a courageous conversation with someone who made a relational or communication mistake
- How to hold a courageous conversation with someone who has made a procedural mistake
- How to identify the strengths you bring to the courageous conversation
- How to be clear on your mandate for the courageous conversation
- A range of tactics for opening a courageous conversation
- Three key positive psychology principles that support this approach to a courageous conversation
- How to follow up on a courageous conversation
- How to use a four-part model to support careful planning for a courageous conversation
Requirements
- No prior experience is necessary
Description
This course will help you prepare and conduct difficult conversations with your staff, or possibly even your boss! The course is distilled from the experience of the presenter, Sarah Lewis, in helping and training leaders and managers in many different situations plan and prepare for such conversations. It offers a comprehensive framework for preparing for a courageous conversation through to conducting the conversation and how to follow them up. It explains how, by attending to both the relational aspects of the conversation, as well as the behaviour at hand, you can substantially increase the likelihood of having a successful and productive meeting.
The course looks at two sub-categories of courageous conversation in more detail, that of correcting procedural errors, and that of repairing damage caused by poor communication or poor relationships. Beyond that, the course offers useful ways of thinking about preparing for any difficult conversation.
The course recognises that the very thought of having a courageous conversation with someone can raise anxiety levels, and that such anxiety is not helpful to the conversation. To help with this challenge, the course spends some time helping you work through exercises that will help lower your anxiety and create a more useful mental state from which to approach the conversation.
The pathway that is presented, from preparation to post meeting follow up, is supported by a preparation model and three specific areas of positive psychology research. You should come away from the course feeling that you have a route map for preparing and conducting a courageous conversation that is supported by both research and practical experience. You should also feel that you now have the confidence to enter your next courageous conversation equipped to create the best opportunity for a successful outcome.
Who this course is for:
- This course is appropriate for leaders and managers in any industry or sector who need to offer difficult performance development guidance to their staff. It explains a way of conducting courageous conversations drawn from the presenter’s experience in this area, and on key principles from positive psychology research. It offers full guidance on identifying the nature of the mistake that needs addressing through to preparing for the conversation, holding the conversation, and following it up. The course takes the time to help participants understand how the conversation can be framed as being a helpful, rather than punitive, intervention and to be clear on how holding this conversation fits with their values. In this way the course acts to lessen the common anxiety experienced when thinking about holding such a conversation and offers a clear framework for the conversation itself.
Instructor
- 4.3 Instructor Rating
- 3,531 Reviews
- 11,694 Students
- 8 Courses
Initially a social worker, Sarah built her expertise in helping people change their ways of thinking and behaviour by working in child protection. Since then she has worked for nearly 30 years with organizations from production and service sectors as well as with higher education, not-for-profit and local and central government across Europe and further afield. A chartered organisational psychologist, Sarah is an experienced facilitator with special expertise in creating individually designed large or whole system interventions based on Positive Psychology, Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space and other key collaborative transformation methodologies. She works in the areas of team development, whole system change and organisational development. She helps organizations to address their issues, meet their challenges and achieve their desires in areas of organisational life such as performance, change, strategy, relationships, morale, engagement and motivation, working together, process improvement, leadership, co-ordination, and effectiveness. She is often asked to help when things are ‘stuck’ or dysfunctional at a team, organisational or individual level, yet is equally able to help make good better.
She is the author ‘Positive Psychology at Work’, Positive Psychology in Business', 'Co-creating planning teams for dialogic Organisational Development and ‘Positive Psychology and Change’. She is also lead author of ‘Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management’. She is a recognised expert in these areas and speaks regularly at National and International Conferences. She currently teaches at a post graduate level in the UK in Cambridge on a Masters in Applied Positive Psychology.