Managing Difficult Situations — A 2-Day Course

 Open Public Course Closed In-House Course

Course Synopsis

• Hate having to deliver difficult messages?
• Shy away from giving feedback even though it is needed and perhaps wanted?
• Avoid confrontation at all costs?
• Do senior people / 'different' people intimidate you?
• Do people take advantage of you?
• Shy away from delivering embarrassing messages
• Agonise how to give a message that you do not totally understand or agree with?

If the answer is "YES" - this is the course for you!

Confident and capable communicators will share knowledge and create clarity in whatever forum they operate in. Improving your message delivery will give you massive benefits in terms of the speed and comprehension of your message.

Be prepared to discuss the particular situations that cause you the most concern / worry.

Course Objectives

On completion of this training course, delegates will be able to:

• Discover why certain messages or situations make you uncomfortable
• Understand the 3 golden rules of communicating and why this helps give difficult messages
• Understand how to introduce difficult messages using structured thinking techniques
• Assess your motivational standpoint (using SDI)
• Understand other people's motivations
• Realise how you may be seen by others with different motivations
• Assess your current level of assertiveness
• Realise the best (and worst) strategies for dealing with different conflict styles and understand how your own style effects outcomes
• Identify the information that is essential to the message you want to carry to the recipient
• Structure your response to support the message
• Understand the key stages in preparing and delivering effective messages
• Increase rapport and trust with colleagues through understanding their motivations (whether they attend or not)

From the Practical Workshops, students will:

• Complete a self-assessment of your position on the SDI Triangle
• Understand how people in other areas of the SDI Triangle are motivated and what frustrates them
• Practise using the 6 levels of assertion
• Practice using influencing strategies to get your views understood
• Understand what conflict looks like / sounds like / feels like for others and how to pick up the signs
• Build confidence in having performance discussion with your team
• Understand how to give positive and negative feedback constructively
• Gain feedback on your conflict style in a safe environment
• Practice delivering messages that you find difficult

Intended Audience

This course is intended for:

• Anyone who wants to communicate confidently and capably regardless of the message content, to ensure that the receiver of the message is communicated with clearly not confused.

Benefits for your Company

Companies frequently need to deliver messages that will not be taken well by all parts of the organisation. Those managers and leaders that can communicate these messages in a sensitive, audience centric way will create calm and understanding. Those who so not, can create confusion and even dissent.

Also managers and leaders need to be able to give their people feedback and performance management in a way that inspires ownership and proactive resolution, otherwise staff become disengaged, or worse, do not realise there is a problem.

Staff who can assert their opinions are a valuable asset to a business. In contrast those who cause bad feelings by creating a stressful atmosphere or cause individual stress and disharmony from backing away from confrontations create extra work and time spent on resolving issues for the managers and staff around them.

Benefits for You

You learn what motivates you enabling you to choose activities that will make you feel most satisfied.

You learn and practice how to stay in control of a situation whilst keeping the communication open and friendly. This will save you time and energy (by reducing stressful situations) and gain you the respect of your colleagues. In addition you will build the self belief to motivate yourself without needing to seek approval from others.

Publicly scheduled dates, locations, and prices

Outline Course Contents

Introduction & Welcome

You will meet like-minded people and share your reasons for wanting to be on the course. An experienced, friendly trainer will help you visualise where you want this course to take you.

Personal Identity

We will look at Johari Windows to assess the types of behaviour you are aware of and those parts of your personal impression that may be blind spots.

Confidence & Assertiveness

During this section we define confidence, assertive, aggressive, passive and passive-aggressive and how each style is perceived and recognised by others and the effect this has on how they treat you. We look at the 6 levels of assertion and the importance of starting off low.

Beliefs

In this module we look at what you believe to be true about yourself (and for people generally). We discuss where these beliefs come from and whether they create Inner Friends or Inner Enemies. We discuss getting rid of irrational negative beliefs by rational argument about the usefulness or validity of the statements.

You consider things you believe to be true about yourself, strengths you have that help you do your job and weaknesses that prevent you performing as well as you would like.

Giving Feedback

Practical discussion on the benefits of, and barriers to, giving good feedback. Explore how to overcome the barriers. Identify the key skills required to feedback to others and discuss the concept of the Bank of Goodwill. Practice turning bad feedback into constructive feedback (whether it be praise or criticism.)

Behaviour

We will use a tool called Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) to assess your motivational preferences and plot your position onto the SDI Triangle and discuss what it means for your perception of others and theirs of you (absolutely fascinating.) We then look at behaviour planning to start working out how people are likely to react to what we want to say and planning how to put it across in the best possible way.

You fill in your own SDI form and plot your total on the SDI Triangle, you compare your position with that your peers chose for you. You will use the Behaviour Planning Casebook to practice behaviour planning.

Conflict

We look at what sends you and other people into conflict (both personality disputes and issue based disputes) and the various stages of conflict. You will plot your SDI Conflict Total on the SDI Triangle and discuss your conflict pattern with others who share similar patterns. This feedback will be used to share typical reactions as a group: how to recognise the signs, how to treat them and what to avoid - insightful information.

You plot your SDI Conflict Total on the Triangle and compare this with the feedback from your colleagues.

Deliver Your Message

You discuss the 3 Golden Rules of communication and the use of structured thinking techniques to create a compelling message that is properly grounded in the reality of the person you are communicating with. You practice using the 3 Golden Rules for various pieces of communication.

Pulling it All Together

You start from scratch with your difficult situation and devise strategies for dealing with this back at work. Colleagues from the class will help you and vice versa to test these strategies for effectiveness.

Action Plan

You take your plan from the last section along with your top 3 tips to help you stay calm and in control of the difficult situations you face.