Learning how to manage difficult conversations in business settings constructively with open dialogue when emotions run high can be challenging and uncomfortable for many people; as a result, these important conversations are often mishandled or avoided altogether, which benefits no one. The Courageous Conversations™ workshop focuses on building the skills necessary for engaging in difficult conversations with others while maintaining the integrity of the relationship and achieving win-win outcomes for everyone.
About Courageous Conversations™ For Leaders And Individuals
Leaders and individual contributors alike undoubtedly find themselves in situations where they need the ability to be candid and carry out constructive conversations with others. These situations generally involve people with differing goals, perspectives, and interests and occur in all kinds of work relationships. Developing the ability to effectively communicate in these challenging situations leads to greater satisfaction in relationships, team culture, performance, and results. The Courageous Conversations™ workshop helps participants learn the skills they need to communicate with candor, particularly when engaging in difficult conversations about issues like the following:
- When ideas are met with continuous resistance.
- When there is a lack of follow-through on commitments.
- When uncomfortable situations aren’t being addressed.
- When problems remain unresolved.
By learning to actively bring issues to the surface and testing the thinking and logic inherent in differing points of view, participants can tackle problems and discuss issues that may otherwise go unaddressed and unresolved. The Courageous Conversations™ workshop is a rigorous, skill-based approach to developing interpersonal-communication competencies. The concepts and difficult conversations exercises presented are based on a tested methodology and are backed by ongoing research.
Objectives and Outcomes
Participants develop and learn how to apply a number of critical competencies during the Courageous Conversations™ training workshop that are practical and immediately applicable on the job:
- Identify interpersonal situations that they find problematic and recognize why their best efforts to deal with these situations are often ineffective.
- Establish conditions that will enable people to act with high levels of candor, respect, and responsibility when they encounter difficult, complex issues.
- Be direct but not overbearing.
- Minimize destructive placement of blame when dealing with tough problems and issues, and keep people focused on the relevant issues.
- Develop precise questions to conduct a skillful conversation.
- Engage in robust conversations with people in higher positions of authority so that critical, bottom-up communication remains open and productive.
Our Approach
The course design is built on fundamental adult-learning principles and rigorous social science research covering a 40 year span: Participants not only learn the concepts, skills, and tools for engaging in difficult conversations, they also get extensive practice applying the methods to their own most-pressing organizational problems. Our book, Candor: How to Have Courageous Conversations When It Really Matters, provides the foundation for the program. The workshop also gives participants opportunities to explore, diagnose, and develop solutions to the issues and dilemmas they bring to the learning experience. Using this approach, the course becomes more than just an academic program—it becomes a learning laboratory where skills are developed and real-life issues are addressed.
by 40 Years of Research
Leadership & Development Partner
Customer Satisfaction
to your Organization’s Needs
Delivery Options
In order to meet the specific needs of each client we partner with and make the most of the learning and development investment, CMOE offers programs in the following formats and lengths:
Instructor-led training (delivered onsite by a CMOE subject matter expert/facilitator)
Digital learning program (self-paced or live)
Blended and layered solution (combining instructor-led training and digital learning)
Train the trainer services (certifying internal trainers in CMOE’s world-class programs)
Curriculum integration (deliver the topic in conjunction with another topic or event or build it into a development curriculum)
4-16 hours (8 hours preferred) for instructor-led variable for digital learning
Contact a CMOE Client Services Specialist to discuss a targeted solution that is right for your organization.
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