Difficult Conversations

1-Day Course on Handling Challenging Conversations and Learning to Deal with Emotional Interactions

Course Notes	Slides	Workbook

Training Course Description

“A good listener tries to understand what the other person is saying. In the end he may disagree sharply, but because he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with.”

Kenneth A. Wells

Sometimes we find ourselves in an unpleasant conversation. Most people have a strong urge to avoid such conversations. Some adopt a “silent treatment” as a way to avoid the issues. Others avoid the person altogether so they never end up in such situation.

The problem however is not always other people or the nature of the conversation, but the way we handle it. Knowing how to handle difficult conversations such as providing feedback when somebody had done something wrong, delivering bad news and apologising is critical in maintaining and strengthening our relationships with others whether at work or in our personal life.

Equally, sometimes we go through an interaction that leaves us angry or upset. Sometimes we react based on our emotions which can have drastic consequences. We need to find out what makes us feel in a certain way and if this feeling is justified. Next, we need to take steps to correct our feelings in order to adjust our behaviour. There are several techniques that can be used to achieve this which is presented in this course.

A critical point about using techniques to improve a conversation is to be able to execute them flawlessly even in an emotional state. This means that the techniques must be fully memorised as you would not have time to think logically to work out the steps. This course contains several exercises for each of these techniques designed explicitly to maximise learning and memorisation of these methods. Delegates should be able to start using these techniques straight after the course and with more practice it would eventually become a habit.

The course contains all the necessary exercises and instructions as well as workbook, handouts and course guidelines to run the course as smoothly as possible.

In this highly practical course participants will learn:

Handling Conversations

• What strategy to use in managing difficult conversations?
• What are the critical body language signals and gestures to be aware of in a conversation?
• What is the significance of making a conversation safe and how to achieve it?
• How to gain respect and show it?

Path to Actions

• How to control your actions by adjusting the way you think about the world?
• In a potentially difficult conversation, what should you focus on the most?
• What is usually the root cause of your strong negative feelings about a particular interaction?
• What are tentative remarks and how to use them in a conversation?

Self-Serving Stories

• What are self-serving stories and what is their role in a conversation?
• What is the influence of self-talk on your interactions?
• How many types of self-serving stories exist and how should you handle each type?
• How do we justify our actions using self-serving stories and how can we take advantage of this to our benefit?

Empathic Conversations

• Why do you need to empathise with others?
• What is empathy?
• How to show empathy and mean it?
• What are the 4 empathy techniques and how can you use them?

Delivering Bad News

• How to handle a conversation when you know the other person may become very emotional as a result of what you say?
• How to prepare to deliver potentially bad news?
• How should you start when you want to talk about bad news?
• How to use the 7-Step technique to deliver bad news?
• What kinds of reactions can you expect to receive when delivering bad news?
• How to handle people’s reactions to what you say when they become highly emotional or upset?

How to Apologise

• How can apologising significantly strengthen your relationship?
• What happens when we don’t apologise?
• How to use a 6-step technique to apologise in a way that shows you mean it?

Audience: Anyone

Prerequisites: None

Course Duration: 1 Day

Course Level: Beginners & Intermediate

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An ideal extension to this course is to combine it with Handling Difficult People in a two days course. This allows you to cover related content and helps delegates to understand the overall topic better.

This course is about conversation that people find difficult and wish to avoid. As a result the course is designed from the outset to be interesting and engaging. The techniques are presented in a simple yet effective form to make them easy to practice and remember. The subject is potentially complex, though the course aims to present this in a way that doesn’t feel complex or unachievable.

Ideally we want the delegates to leave the course feeling more confident about their conversation and interactions in the future. The boost in self-confidence, coupled with the knowledge of effective and simple-to-execute technique can prepare them to quickly form new habits. The course relies strongly on our tried and tested method of training; Try, Practice, Demonstrate. The modular course can be easily mixed with other sessions from other courses so you can fine tune the course for your specific clients.

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Here is an example of a conversation presented in the course along with techniques that can be used to improve the interaction.

The following conversation takes place between Andrew and Kelly. They are both managers and work in the same company. In this conversation, Andrew appears aggressive towards Kelly and she constantly reacts to his remarks. Andrew should use tentative remarks to express his concern so Kelly can listen to his real concern. This would then allow them to work together on the issue. Andrew’s mistakes are highlighted in bold in this conversation.

Andrew:	“Look Kelly, everybody knows [Generalisation] that this project is supposed to be finished by the end of March. The only reason we are not going to meet the deadline is because of your slow team. [Toxic Word]”
Kelly:	“Well, first of all my team is not slow. They have a much better record than other teams around here. Besides, the reason we cannot make the deadline is because we didn’t have the resources…”
Andrew:	“Somehow I knew you were going to say that. I am not quite sure if this is true [Undermining yourself], but I heard that the management gave you three extra people to work on this part of the project.”
Kelly:	“That’s not true. I needed specific technical experts and we rotated the team members for this.”
Andrew:	“The fact is that you think you can get anyone you want here for this little part of a big project and expect everyone to remain quiet [Mixing story with facts].”
Kelly:	“I cannot believe this! I feel that I am being marginalised here.”
Andrew:	“It is absolutely clear [Extreme language] that the reason your team is failing is because they are not managed well…”

This conversation did not go smoothly and is progressively getting out of control. Andrew can use tentative remarks to smooth out the conversation. To use tentative remarks, use the following guidelines to improve your conversations:

Technique	Bad Example	Replace With
Stick to Facts	Your story as facts….	“As I understand…” “There have been some developments which I believe you might not be aware of…” “In my opinion…”
Don’t Generalise	“Everyone thinks that this client is a major pain.”	“My team had problems with this client in both projects we did for them.”
Don’t Undermine Yourself	“What I am telling you is a rumour…” “I am not quite sure if this is true, but…” “Call me crazy but…” “This is probably not true, but I like you to correct me if I am wrong…”	“I have heard from two people that…” “Here is an idea…” “Can you tell me more about…”
Don’t Be Extreme	“It is absolutely clear that…”	“Some people in the team believe that…”
Don’t Mix Story With Facts	“The fact is… [followed by story]” “The fact is that she thinks she is in charge of everyone”	“Form what you say, my understanding is…”