The idea

Communication is a natural competence. A competence that is also natural inscribed in every business process, be it a sale, a project or your career path. You communicate when you converse, and when you don’t. You communicate when you respond to an email after a week and when you don’t allow your interlocutor to finish a sentence. Our approach to communication encompasses many levels. It includes the context of speaking and listening, communication style, individual barriers to communication, and the style of establishing and maintaining contacts. Knowing what your own communication style is, and its strengths and limitations, allows you to consciously use your own communication skills in business.

• How do you communicate?
• How does the way you speak affect your career and business relationships?
• What can you do to communicate effectively, to be better understood and reach your goals?
• What should you do when communicating with your interlocutor is difficult?

You should ask yourself these questions if you want to communicate better. Your style of conveying information and conversing with people, and your habits, affect how others perceive you.  During the workshop, we put a lot of emphasis on barriers to communication. You identify your own barriers and learn how to overcome them. Working on barriers can also help you recognise those of your interlocutor. Awareness of obstacles to communication allows you to effectively carry on a conversation with mutual respect.

During the workshop:

• You will expand our knowledge about various “channels” of communication
• You will learn simple, useful rules for effective listening and speaking
• You will get to know the power and importance of questions
• You will identify your own barrier to communication
• You will learn ways to deal with them
• You will have the opportunity to take part in practical exercise that help you consolidate and maintain the knowledge and competences you have acquired

The idea

When imagining conflict, we usually think of: raised voices, quarrels, confrontation and strong emotions. In fact, though, conflict and how it is expressed is much more complex than this. The ‘temperature’ of a conflict may be very high, yet there are also conflicts in which no emotion is visible. “Hot” or “cold” conflicts, open or ‘smouldering’ conflicts – these are some of the faces of the conflict situations in which we may find ourselves. Each requires of you a different way of being and other forms of communication.

Communication is a sphere in which information flows and is exchanged between the sides involved in a conflict. How they communicate and remain in contact with each other is of key importance to how the conflict runs and is resolved. The workshop teaches you how the rules of communication function in conflicts. That knowledge provides a basis for you to define your own, effective way of communicating in conflict situations.

Every conflict you take part in affects your behaviours, emotions and way of thinking.

• How can you manage your own emotions?
• How can you argue effectively?
• How can you deal with the other party’s emotions?
• What content should you communicate, and what is not worth communicating?
• In a conflict, how can you avoid destroying the existing relationship?

In the workshop, we help you find your own answers to these questions. You define those skills that serve to resolve conflicts constructively, and those that stand in the way of a resolution. Your way of ‘being’ in a conflict affects how it proceeds. The workshop is designed such that you can practically hone your skills and make use of them in resolving conflicts.

During the workshop:

• you will expand your knowledge about the effect of communication on how conflicts proceed
• you will learn rules of communication that apply in various types of conflict
• you will learn how to recognise signals indicating that a conflict is escalating
• you will expand your knowledge about open and concealed communication
• you will learn how communication paves the way to a resolution
• you will learn how you can use conflict to make constructive changes

The idea

The communication style and strategy within a company is an important tool that helps win over customers and achieve the company’s goals. Communication is a basic source of information exchange. While it sounds like a truism, few people actually ask themselves:

• What is the process through which important information is exchanged in my team?
• What are the rules for conveying information between departments?
• How does communication between departments affects the performance of agreements?
• How does communication within the company affect customer satisfaction?

Studies reveal wide variations in the rules of communication operating in companies. They also provide information on barriers to the flow of communication. Barriers that are significant enough to:

• be a source of delays in the performance of agreements
• prevent the performance of agreements
• cause customers to cease cooperation
• have a detrimental impact on the company’s image

For these reasons, we treat communication management as an important competence for team leaders, departments heads, heads of companies and project leaders. The relationship between how communication is managed in the company (team) and the company’s financial situation and profits is not immediately evident. Yet effective communication management translates into increased employee engagement in carrying out their duties, increased work satisfaction, and thereby a feeling of belonging to the company and loyalty towards it. These effects do show up in financial results and employment parameters such as lower employee turnover rates.

Benefits of the workshop for the company (team):

• a smoothly functioning team that becomes a driving force for the whole organisation
• improved communication between teams, thereby increasing cohesion within the company as

The idea

When we think of negotiations, we often see them as a struggle between two sides, where each is asking themselves:  who’s going to win, us or them? Tension, stress, emotions – we’d often prefer to avoid these. What can you do to prevent negotiations from turning into a battlefield? When negotiations become a pitched battle, in fact nobody wins.

We approach negotiations as a process over which each side has enormous influence, regardless of how strong or weak they may feel during that process. Above all, we perceive negotiations as the people involved in the matter – their needs, expectations, attitudes and emotions. The subject of the negotiations i only a circumstance that caused these particular people to sit down together. How do they approach each other? Will they be able to reach an understanding?

In the workshop we show that, when each side understands the interests of the other side, instead of fighting you can enter into a dialogue and cooperate. We start from the assumption that your ‘adversary’, like you, would like to emerge from the negotiations satisfied with how the meeting went, how they behaved, and what they decided. Negotiations are the beginning of a shared journey. How they are conducted has a vital effect on your further cooperation.

We prepare the workshop on the real needs of your company – before it begins, we get to know your industry, and the organisational culture and values of your business. The practical part of the workshop is based on real examples from your company.

During the workshop, you will:

• learn rules of negotiations under which the parties remain free in their decisions, giving both themselves and the other side free choice
• learn how to gradually recognise and define both sides’ opportunities and limitations.
• learn how the parties can identify and draw on information on the actuall existing circumstances
• learn what planning and managing negotiations involves
• identify the various stages of negotiations and the rules governing each
• expand your knowledge about the impact of emotions on negotiations and how to manage them
• learn how to cope with difficult behaviours and difficult negotiators.

The idea

Communication and negotiations are inseparably connected. Negotiations are usually associated with: setting conditions, setting limits, crossing swords verbally, being “hard” or giving in. In the workshop we show that, in negotiations, communication begins well before people arrive at the negotiating table. We start from the assumption that the character of communciation determines how the negotiations run. Of course, you have no direct influence on how your adversary communicates. But knowing how to communicate effectively will impact the atmosphere of the negotiations, and the result.

Communication in negotiations is an exchange of information. Every piece of information is important. Have you asked yourself:

• What does it mean when a set meeting time is changed (by you or the other party)?
• What does it say when someone other than the agreed person turns up for a meeting?
• When should you raise financial questions?
• What is a customer actually negotiating when they say financial matters are secondary?
• Where is it better to hold a meeting: at your place, the customer’s, or perhaps in a neutral space?
• Who really influences where a meeting will be held?
• What information should you convey now, and what information later?

These are just some of the question you will have to ask during real negotiations.

In our approach, we start from the assumption that both sides need each other, and the key to the art of negotiating is mutual understanding and looking for shared interests. In the workshop you will learn what the whole process of communcation in negotiations consists of, and how you can manage it to negotiate an agreement based on the real needs and opportunities of both parties.

Negotiations where important interests of the parties are at stake often trigger powerful emotions. As a negotiator, you must have experienced:  uneasiness, fear, a feeling of being threatened, anger, uncertainty. It’s the same with the other party. Communicating emotions constitutes important information about yourself and your adversary.  The signals you send will affect how the negotiations proceed.  In the workshop, you will learn how you can transform emotions into constructive signals, and how to deal with difficult emotions radiating from the other side.

During the workshop, you will:

• expand your knowledge about the whole process of communication in negotiations (levels, stages, open and concealed communication)
• learn communication strategies that favour constructive agreement, and those that stand in the way of this (what to communicate, how, to whom, at what stage)
• learn how to converse with a “difficult” opponent: you will define who for you are “difficult” interlocutors and work out strategies for communicating with them
• define your communication style in negotiations – your strengths and weaknesses
• expand your knowledge on how to prevent non-constructive conflicts in negotiations and how to communicate when these arise