The programme’s core principles:
- It’s more productive to concentrate on our own actions and reactions than focussing on trying to change others.
- Good communication is basically about substituting our common avoiding and over-reacting tendencies with more balanced and considered behaviours.
- Improving problematic communication is difficult stuff so we need workable yet easy-to-master strategies that under pressure can navigate us through the most challenging of situations.
- Being able to talk better to people is so essential to our working lives that we all should be making constant improvements in the way we interact with others.
The programme’s skill clusters focus on:
- Understanding and reacting more constructively to peoples’ differing styles and perceptions.
- Better handling of situations such as those involving strong emotions, distrust and resistance.
- Learning ten strategic things about the power of words and ten ways of how to ask questions in difficult conversations.
- Conveying those tough yet honest messages and surviving to tell the tale.
- Mastering the skills necessary for working with those everyday crucial situations such as negotiating under pressure, the foibles of modern technology, ingrained habits and over-reactions.
- Coping with deteriorating discussions such as conversations turning ugly, irrationality, threats, and big personalities.