Effective communication skills

The core learning objectives of the workshop include:

  1. Developing emotional intelligence. Using a personality type tool, participants will be able to develop their understanding of their own natural style of communicating and relating to others. With this awareness, participants will be better able to identify:
    • the skills they need to develop, and
    • when and with whom they need to flex their style.
  2. Developing interpersonal awareness. By working with a model of influence, participants will develop their understanding, and through practice, their skills of communication. It is possible to look at all contexts of communication used the organisation i.e. face to face communication, phone and written communication.The key skills which the workshop will focus on developing are therefore:
    • Self awareness – understanding my own, preferred style of communication and the impact it has on others
    • Interpersonal awareness – understanding that others may think, communicate and relate in different ways to me, which requires me to be able to flex my style and adapt to different behaviours
    • Empathic listening and questioning skills (coaching skills) – in order to fully understand, acknowledge and work with the opinions, views and requests of others
    • Influencing skills – the ability to bring about change in others or to a given situation by the effectively and appropriately using different influencing behaviours. For example the ability to persuade, to be assertive, to listen and question, or to inspire others
    • Managing conflict – understanding how I and others react, and developing the ability to manage myself and others in conflict situations

    As with all my designs, this one also places an emphasis on learning by doing to ensure that participants:

    • reflect on and understand the impact of their preferred style of communicating and relating to others,
    • receive feedback on their own style in order to understand which behaviours help them, and it which situations and with which ‘types’ of people they may consider using a different type of behaviour,
    • have the opportunity to experiment with new behaviours in a supportive environment,
    • to receive specific feedback as they practice new behaviours