Ever since my first summer job In Ramsgate teaching English as a foreign language, I\u2019ve always managed to include some element of training or teaching into my working life. From those early days of trying to explain the eccentricities of English grammar, I\u2019ve always enjoyed simplifying concepts and passing on tools and tips to help us do things better \u2013the joy of my class of German schoolchildren ordering their McDonalds with all the verbs in the right places.<\/p>\n
Occasionally you come across a model, a concept or a way of thinking that makes a real difference. Something that you share with people outside the training room, outside of work and start to use yourself in everyday life.<\/p>\n
This has been the case for me with \u2018Crucial Conversations\u2019 – a new offering from our Learning and Development team.
\nFrom the moment I was introduced to the content, I realised that this had great potential because the problem it aims to solve is oh-so-real. You\u2019re asked to think about conversations you\u2019ve had that haven\u2019t gone well, that have left you angry, frustrated or just plain fed-up and demotivated. There\u2019s certainly no shortage of real life examples to draw on.
\nThe resources we have to deliver the course are the best I have ever seen. Particularly useful is the library of videos where actors play out scenarios, so nobody else has to.<\/p>\n
What I particularly like about the content is that it gives you practical solutions that really do work. During the training, I share my own experience of being in a conversation that was going badly and quickly heading towards a familiar unpleasant ending. I decided to throw in something that I\u2019d learned from Crucial Conversations. And held my breath. I\u2019m not going to reveal here what I did – you\u2019ll have to come on the training to find that out – but I can say the conversation U-turned immediately and suddenly we were in dialogue not battle and heading for a much better outcome.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s the thing \u2013 the point of the course isn\u2019t about having better conversations \u2013 it\u2019s about getting better results from conversations. Organisations like ours are being held back by conversations that have poor outcomes.
\nI am very grateful for the opportunity to train this course and if I could go back in time to those schoolchildren I believe I would have served them better for later life by ditching some of the grammar sessions and throwing in a few tips from Crucial Conversations instead.<\/p>\n
If you are interested in the 2 day Crucial Conversations training, places can be booked via Staff Connect.<\/a><\/p>\n Current available dates are:<\/p>\n\n