Advanced
Communication Skills

“The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

Dorothy Nevill

We interact with others on daily basis and our communications can influence different aspects of our lives. Knowing how to communicate well can have a significant impact on an individual’s success and so it pays to constantly train on it and aim to improve your performance.

This course follows on from Communication Skills and aims to expand deeper into many sources of miscommunication. It provides several easy-to-use soft skills techniques that can be employed in establishing rapport with others, strengthening relationships and avoiding common conversational traps. In particular, the course covers areas such as probing and understanding other people’s perceptions, understanding intentions and their impact, taking responsibility and avoiding blame.

During this course delegates learn to manage their emotions better so that these emotions don’t leak or burst into conversations at the wrong moment. Techniques are provided to manage difficult conversations and to avoid getting trapped in a psychological game going back and forth on certain points rather than moving forward to focus on underlying issues or concerns.

All of the techniques explored in the courses are thought using several examples. Many example conversations of poor communication are provided and delegates are encouraged to analyse them. This is then followed by in-depth training on why and how these conversations fail and what can be done to avoid them. This is subsequently followed by improved examples so delegates can see exactly how to use the techniques and what to expect of them. Delegates then participate in several exercises to master these skills. Exercises are carefully designed to help the delegates memorise these techniques during the course and learn to apply them in real-time in realistic situations encountered in the real world.

In this highly practical course participants will learn:

Understanding Stories

• How do you perceive the world?
• How do you make stories to make sense of what goes around you?
• How these stories come to define your behaviours?
• How can you use story analysis to improve your communication with others?

Intention Analysis

• What are the two common mistakes made when considering intentions?
• How to avoid these mistakes
• What is the relationship between intentions and their impact and how should you respond to them?
• How should you handle intentions to get the best results?
• What is the best way to share your intentions with others?

Avoiding Blame

• What is the Cycle of Blame and Disengagement?
• What is bad about blaming others when things go wrong?
• What should you do instead when things go wrong?
• How to avoid blaming others

Feelings

• If you feel strongly about something, how should you express yourself?
• What happens if you don’t share your feelings with others?
• Should you bury your feelings and get rid of them as hard as you can? Should you vent them or should you deal with them?
• How can you use a simple formula in conversations to easily share your feelings with others?

Difficult Conversations

• What is the best way to express your dissatisfaction with someone?
• How to analyse implicit messages in what you say or is said to you
• What is the impact of these implicit messages on people and their long term relationship?
• How to take advantage of the 4-Steps Conversation Technique to significantly improve the quality of your conversations

Psychological Games

• Why people get stuck in circular arguments and feel they should not give in to others?
• How can you break this cycle and improve your communication skills?
• What is the “Drama Triangle” and how can it be used to improve your communication with others?

Audience: Anyone

Prerequisites: Communication Skills. This course can also be provided independently.

Course Duration: 1 Day

Course Level: Advanced

By the end of this course the delegates will be able to:

• Search to understand other people’s stories and learn to change your perspective based on their view to improve your conversation
• Prevent misunderstandings by clarifying intentions and avoid common mistakes that escalate the situation rather than resolve it
• Avoid blaming others and take responsibility for your own contribution to any situation
• Understand and manage your feelings so they don’t clutter your understanding or affect your conversations with others
• Handle difficult conversations by monitoring implicit messages and use techniques to gain rapport
• Avoid destructive psychological games in conversations and use techniques to shift the conversation away as quickly as possible

This course is designed to explore several important topics in conversational communication, in more depth. This course can be combined with the Communication Skills course to form a two-day course or you can use this course to extend any other related course to help participants improve their skills. For example, you can combine this course with courses such as Listening Skills, Difficult Conversations, Assertiveness Skills, Conflict Management or others.

The course relies heavily on examples for teaching so delegates can easily see the problem with some conversations and then learn to improve on them. In our experience, example-driven training is extremely powerful as not only it makes the content more memorable, but also reduces the dryness of certain topics which some delegates may find too overwhelming. This approach will help you as a trainer to deliver a better and more engaging course and helps to maximise skill transfer.