One of the most crucial skills for direct service providers and field staff is the ability to productively communicate with clients, especially when the client is not using effective interpersonal communication skills themselves. This can happen when a client has gone into “threat mode” and becomes upset, frustrated, or angry about an issue or situation. This emotional escalation can often be magnified by the lack of resources or unmet needs clients might be facing in their daily lives. Mastering key communication tools and techniques will help direct service staff better serve their clients and empower them to appropriately deal with challenging situations.
Dialogue Skills for Difficult Conversations
Effective workplace communication often takes skill, intention, and hard work. Although it can sometimes feel easier to avoid having difficult conversations or to just ignore our colleagues when there is something bothering us, the long-term impacts on our health and well-being as well as on the relationship and team dynamics, can be great. It takes organizational intentionality to ensure communication practices that foster direct, honest communication. This training will explore the differences between debate and dialogue in workplace conversations and provide an approach to having difficult conversations that focuses on learning and transformation.
Strengths Development Training
What do you believe is more powerful in ensuring your success: fixing your weaknesses or further developing your strengths? According to years of research by the Gallup Organization, the source of our greatness lies not in focusing our energy on remediating weaknesses but rather in identifying and building on our natural talents. Adding skills and knowledge to natural talents produces strengths and consistent, near perfect performance. This training will introduce you to the strengths-based philosophy and research as well as provide the opportunity to interpret the results of your StrengthsFinder* assessment, set up specific goals and action items, and explore how to better utilize strengths at work, including within your team.
*Prior to this workshop, participants must purchase StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath and have completed the online assessment.
Facilitation Skills for Effective Meeting Management
Everyone loves a great meeting, right? What single most important factor ensures organizational meetings are effective, productive, and engaging? Good facilitation. Skilled meeting facilitation creates the framework and provides the processes that ensure group success. When meetings are facilitated well, participant input is drawn out and processed in a way that moves the discussion forward. Participants are given equal opportunity to contribute and communication is open and effective. By thoughtfully designing the meeting as well as managing the way the group works together, a facilitator helps the group accomplish their meeting purpose. Facilitation and meeting management skills are not just for facilitators, however. Even in meetings where there is no formal facilitator, participants can forward the work by engaging as “facilitative” group members. This training will teach the basic tenets of skillful facilitation and meeting management strategies.
Managing Change and Transition
Change is constant; in fact it is the only thing we can really count on. It can be uncomfortable and stressful and it often feels like things get worse before they get better. Change is also filled with tremendous opportunity. In learning to deal with organizational change, it can be helpful to take time to explore our own feelings about change and understand the difference between change and transition. Additionally, there are stages we go through in dealing with change and by learning what those stages are we can better determine what we need to move forward. Managing change effectively means learning how to focus on what we can control and letting go of what we can’t. This training will explore these subjects and introduce the skill of resiliency.