What will I learn on this course?
Overall summary
You'll learn a simple and easy to remember (though not necessarily easy to apply) set of crucial communication skills enabling you to treat others with respect and understanding while speaking up for yourself with firmness, clarity and integrity. You'll learn how use these skills in your most challenging relationships, conversations and meetings, and even with people you find difficult. As you practise these skills your respect and understanding for others will grow, as will theirs for you.
Two crucial skills
Treating others with respect and understanding calls for empathy. Speaking up for yourself with firmness, clarity and integrity calls for assertiveness. These two skills, blended together, will enable you to create a robust but harmonious atmosphere of courtesy, mutual respect, trust and understanding. Such an atmosphere is not only very good for business, it works wonders in other walks of life, too. On the Skills with People course we'll help you master these two crucial skills and blend them together when you need them most:-
- Assertiveness - getting others to recognise and acknowledge your concerns. It's a speaking skill. It's hard to get others to take you seriously without this. more...
- Empathy - recognising, acknowledging and trying to understand other people's concerns. It's a listening skill. It's hard to gain their trust and make them receptive to your influence without this. more...
Your choice of applications of the two crucial skills
You'll be helped to apply the two crucial skills to many of your most challenging situations, as listed below. You can pick the most relevant items on the list, and you'll be able to practise them as much as you like in safety and with expert coaching:-
- gain people's co-operation and win their confidence when they are resisting or objecting,
- calm people down when they are aggressive or complaining,
- persuade, sell or negotiate strongly but in a win-win atmosphere without becoming entrenched in fruitless argument or appearing arrogant,
- resolve conflict and disagreement in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding,
- confront difficult issues without being aggressive or over-familiar,
- stand up for what I think or want without getting a reputation for being arrogant or difficult,
- disagree without getting into conflict,
- say "no" without causing resentment,
- be firm but fair –"tough on the issue but soft on the person",
- give really bad news without appearing arrogant or heartless,
- give genuine praise without being over-familiar or making people feel patronised,
- criticise without making people feel attacked,
- receive criticism without appearing defensive or arrogant,
- appraise, counsel, coach or mentor helpfully,
- handle resistance and negativity in a meeting with confidence and grace,