Can We Talk? How to Bring Up Touchy Topics without Triggering Defensiveness

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This activity has been approved for 1.5 HR (General) recertification credit hours toward aPHR, PHR, PHRca, SPHR, GPHR, PHRi and SPHRi recertification through HR Certification Institute (HRCI). Please make note of the activity ID number on your recertification application form. For more information about certification or recertification, please visit the HR Certification Institute website at www.hrci.org." ...more

Having "crucial conversations" about difficult issues is one of the most challenging-and avoided-aspects of work life.

Think about the many situations in your career where you avoided having a potentially difficult conversation because you didn’t believe it would go well. Think about the emotional toll that followed because the issue wasn’t resolved and tension remained between you and the other person.

Whether it’s deciding about bringing up an issue with one’s supervisor about ways they’re supervising that aren’t helpful, or whether to give someone who tends to get defensive constructive feedback, or considering the potential ramifications of voicing one’s frustrations with another department, we all know what it’s like to avoid having important conversations because of our discomfort and our belief that we’ll simply make things worse.

By increasing our skill at facilitating constructive conversations, we increase our confidence that these challenging conversations will go well, and are therefore more willing to have them, rather than avoid them.

The chances that an emotionally loaded conversation will go well is directly related to, first, how we prepare for the conversation, and second, the words we choose to open the conversation.

Get these wrong and we will likely trigger the defensiveness and combativeness we feared.

Get these right, and we are likely to elicit open-mindedness and receptivity in the other person.

This program is about how to do latter.

Why you should Attend:
This program will help you develop a “virtuous cycle” that increases your ability to facilitate constructive conversations.

More specifically, because you will learn practical skills and guiding principles for bringing up difficult issues in an effective way, you will have more confidence in your ability to have such conversations.

Because you have greater confidence, you will be more likely to have them, rather than avoid them.

Because you’re more likely to have these conversations and have new skills, you have the chance to practice these skills and refine them, which increases your competence.

This increased competence further increases your confidence, you will be less likely to avoid difficult issues, allowing the problem to grow and experiencing the emotional toll of the unresolved problem.

Instead, you are willing and able to have these conversations, talk about what needs to be talked about, resolve it, and move on.

Areas Covered in the Session:

• How to shift out of a hurt, angry, or fearful emotional and mental state, so you can enter important, challenging conversations in a productive state, which profoundly influences how well the conversation will go
• How to use the Declaration/Invitation format to initiate a conversation in a way that fosters an open-minded, non-defensive response
• What words and approaches to avoid, so you don’t automatically trigger defensiveness and combativeness
• Phrases you can “copy and paste” that foster Psychological Safety-i.e. the felt sense that you are someone they can be unguarded and candid with

• Leaders
• Managers
• Team Leaders
• Department Heads
• Supervisors and anyone in Leadership Role
• Project Managers
• Small Business Owners