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Articles
Conflict & Difficult People (Client Version)
"Yes, but not today" is how people usually feel about this issue. Not surprisingly we all feel that we need to prepare to handle conflict or people who we find difficult. This document has a mixture of theory and practical exercises designed to help delegates constructively engage with conflict rather than avoid it.
Culture Change and Open Systems
"Culture change" has become the popular jargon for organisations looking to make a major shift in the way they operate. The way an organisation communicates within itself is the key indicator of its "culture". If there is open, honest and direct communication then the "culture" will always be changing. This has to be a fluid process that takes into account changes in people's status and needs, the company's growth and the current economic climate.
Death by Meeting
For many people in larger organisations meetings can take up a significant portion of the working week. If meetings are badly run or poorly scheduled they can overrun, overlap, get curtailed, get cancelled and destroy your best-laid time-management plans at a stroke. Well-run meetings are a joy to partake in. They have clear agendas, are kept to time and chaired with discipline and fairness. Indeed, if you are running the meeting you have the authority and opportunity to shape the meeting well.
Facilitation
Good facilitators see and hear not only the obvious, but are tuned in to what else might be going on that isn¹t quite so apparent. They are skilled in interpreting the difficulties, resolving conflict, cutting through time wasting and diversionary tactics and, most importantly, enabling people to reach agreements and develop new practises that will work.
Influencing to Get Your Own Way
That’s a pretty arrogant thing to want isn’t it?
The reality is, we all want to get our own way. We have what we think are really good ideas, or have projects that we believe need to get done, or methods we know are workable. The job we then may have is to convince others and get them on board.
Managing Change in Others
For anyone involved in change this article outlines the facts about change. It sets out why many of us are resistant to it and some approaches that can make it easier for people to accept.
Managing Pressure Effectively
The one and only truism about stress, is that it's different for everyone: what causes one person to feel pressured won't be true for someone else. In other words, one person's stress is another's excitement. This article looks at how to identify and manage those things that you find particularly stressful.
Negotiation Skills
'Heads I win, tails you lose.' That's the way to handle negotiations, isn't it? Well, no. Good negotiation isn't about winning and it isn't about someone else losing. Good negotiations are about both sides leaving feeling they got what they wanted, or at least better off than when they went in. This article is an introduction to developing a personal approach to negotiating.
Powerpoint Survival Guide
This article looks at how to be the master of the technology rather than servant to it. Learning just one or two of the things described here will set you on a path to using PowerPoint creatively rather than logically.
Project Buster
Project Buster is a powerful process that is used by many of our clients to cut through the difficulties and frustrations associated with complex projects.
The Art of Saying No
This document outlines a practical approach to saying no. Without actually using the word you can develop the ability to resist or sidestep being manoeuvred into doing something you really don't want to do.
