Learning Solutions


Communicating for Results

Learn and practice the skills to share your own perspective and listen to others in a way that builds understand and commitment. Acquire new tools that you can practice and use at home, at work and in your community. This course will offer demonstrations of the skills and opportunities for participants to practice each communication skill.

  • Explore foundational communication theory
  • Practice the skills which form the basis of effective, meaningful dialogue
  • Topics include:
    • Challenges to communication
    • Effective listening skills – understanding other perspectives
    • Effective speaking skills – assertively sharing your perspective
    • Providing constructive, motivating feedback
    • Assumptions – their toxic effect on communication and how to avoid the trap

Leading and Negotiating Through Conflict

Explore how to effectively address the challenges of conflict and create opportunities. Participants will learn through several methods – lecture, demonstrations, and interactive practice and participation in many exercises.

The topics include:

  • Positions, issues, and interests – the components of conflict and how to move from debating positions to discussing issues and interests;
  • Conflict styles – through the use of an assessment tool, participants will discover their predominant conflict style, the benefits and drawbacks to each style, and how to work with others who have the same and/or different conflict styles;
  • Perspective, cultural filters, family of origin, life experience - the important part all play in how we naturally deal with conflict;
  • Anger – the anger cycle, self management and preparation for having difficult conversations;
  • Negotiation preparation – in addition to emotional preparation, the importance of content preparation for a successful negotiation;
  • Problem solving process – a four-stage problem solving process that can provide a framework for negotiating

Collaborative Engagement

Use the communication and conflict management skills to collaboratively engage your employees or stakeholders and enjoy the benefits of supported, sustainable decisions and action plans. Learning will occur through presentations, group discussion and exploration of relevant case studies.

The topics include:

  • The benefits of engagement – consider how engaging affected employees and stakeholders on important organizational or community decisions is critical to reaching long lasting, accepted action plans
  • Approaches for engagement – explore a variety of processes which can be used to engage groups of people, their benefits and drawbacks, and the communication and conflict management skills which are most useful for dealing with large gatherings
  • Group dynamics – understand the varied roles that individuals may choose to assume in a group and how to effectively work with them when conflict occurs from disagreement through to outrage
  • Methods of resolution – options available to assist in dealing with issues or conflict.
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