Assertive Conversation Skills Course: Practice Workshop

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This assertive conversation skills course will empower you with the tools and techniques required to ensure that you are able to be conversationally assertive and retain respect. This assertive conversation skills course is designed for those who struggle to be assertive and get angry and make aggressive comments or go silent and withdraw. This assertive conversation skills course will assist anyone who finds it challenging to handle misunderstandings, criticisms, disagreements and conflict in a calm and professional manner. The course will teach you how to say ‘no’ without feeling guilty, how to have the ‘difficult’ conversations, set boundaries, discuss unacceptable behaviours and deal with them in the moment.

This assertive conversation skills course will be presented in a practical and experiential day which will allow you to work on your assertive language, your emotions, your mind and your physiology. This assertive conversation skills course is delivered in a manner which will allow you to discover what works for you, and demonstrates, coaches and guides with ideas, techniques and possibilities how to handle specific challenging situations.

Outcomes

Upon completion of this practical assertive conversation skills course participants should be able to:

1. More confidently, calmly and conversationally handle your previously challenging situations.
2. Identify and match other people’s mode of behaviour to enable more effective communication.
3. Adopt the most appropriate mode of behaviour for a given situation.
4. Have a greater choice of techniques and tools to handle in the moment challenges.
5. Create more collaboration with others.
6. Negotiate mutually beneficial outcomes.

Content

This assertive conversation skills course covers the following topics:

• Frame the day, introductions and outcomes.
• Identify your specific challenging situations.
• Identify who you find ‘difficult’.
• A day of demonstration, skills practice, coaching and feedback.

Some of the tools and techniques you will practice in this assertive conversation skills course which apply to ‘real life’ situations include:

• Behavioural/communication styles using Yvonne’s LAFFe to Success model.
• Build rapport and engage.
• Mirror and Match.
• Perceptual positions.
• ‘I’ statements.
• How to stay calm and feel safe.
• Respond rather than react.
• Active empathic listening.
• Know what to do in the moment.
• Create more options.
• Collaborate for agreed best mutual outcomes.
• Ethically influence.
• Negotiate win/win/win.

The tools and techniques presented in this assertive conversation skills course will help you to deal constructively with disagreement, conflict and others' different points of view in the workplace while allowing you to become more influential and persuasive conversationally.

Intended Audience

This assertive conversation skills course is perfect for past participants of Getting What You Want Course: Assertive Communication Skills and Assertive Communication Skills Course: Advanced, but also anybody who wants to develop their assertiveness in the workplace – whatever their level of skills.

Because we work on participants specific challenges and ‘real life’ situations via demonstration and skills practice, it will be different every time. Participants will find their own level to experience the learning. Added value will come from the nuances and distinctions that will happen in the moment for the more skilled.

Delivery Style

This practical assertive conversation skills course is delivered as an interactive and experiential workshop. Demonstration, skills practice, coaching, feedback and other activities embed the learning. The uniqueness of this course is that it is focused on the participants challenges and how to conversationally address them. What to say and how to say it, and ‘it depends’ on the situation, history, experience, culture, Participants will explore many conversational assertive alternatives for each situation.

Recommended Reading

The following reading is recommended but not essential:

• LAFFe to Success: A Practical Guide to getting Along with Others: Plus the A – Z of LAFFe Behaviour.