Creative Positive Relationships

Course Overview

• Do you find certain types of people difficult to understand?
• Is conflict difficult for you to deal with?
• Do you want to be able to motivate people?
• Would you like to see how others may see you?
• Do you want trust and respect from your colleagues?
• Need to be able to influence people to do as you ask?

If the answer is "YES" - this is the course for you!

Mystified by how some people effortlessly know all the right people, are never stuck for what to say and understand how to get people on their side? We'll show you how they do it.

You'll use a cool tool called SDI (Strength Deployment Inventory) to understand what motivates people and how to use that to influence them; with the result that you become trusted and understood. You will also be shown how to appeal to different learning styles to get people to feel drawn to your message.

Audience

Those who need to create fast productive relationships in teams, where management of those people is not the main focus. For example IT support teams, facilities groups, project teams etc.

Skills Gained

How will my company benefit?

• Cohesive teams, who understand each other, work and perform at higher levels than those who are in conflict. In addition the amount of sickness from stress caused by conflict in the work environment will be reduced.
• Therefore companies gain time and increased productivity from having staff that understand each other and can work together without accidentally causing conflict or tension.

How will I benefit?

• You learn what motivates you enabling you to choose activities that will make you feel most satisfied.
• Also, you will be able to understand the motivations of people who currently frustrate you and see how you may be perceived by them. This helps enormously in creating harmony and avoiding causing conflict in all your relationships.

What will I gain?

• Assess your motivational standpoint (using SDI)
• Understand other people's motivations
• Realise how you may be seen by others with different motivations
• Learn the key ingredients of successful working relationships
• Understand how to sell your ideas to other people in their terms rather than your own
• Practice 'getting' other people's way of seeing things through learning styles
• Understanding of how two colleagues see you (by use of pre-course questionnaires sent to you in advance)
• Create of a personal action plan to enable you to put what you have learned into action when you get back
• What do I gain from the practical workshops?
• Assess your personal first impression
• Complete a self-assessment of your position on the SDI Triangle
• Understand how people in other areas of the SDI Triangle are motivated and what frustrates them
• Practice using influencing strategies to get your views understood
• Understand what conflict looks like / sounds like / feels like for others and how to pick up the signs
• Realise the best (and worst) strategies for dealing with different conflict styles and understand how your own style effects outcomes
• Gain feedback on your conflict style in a safe environment
• Practice selling your ideas for other people's reasons
• Frame your ideas in terms of other people's learning styles to appreciate what you need to do to improve their understanding of your ideas

Course Outline

Introduction & Welcome

• You will meet like-minded people and share your reasons for wanting to be on the course. You will write down the types of people you currently find it difficult to connect with or groups of people you would like to build stronger influence with.
• An experienced, friendly trainer will help you visualise where you want this course to take you.

Personal Identity

• We will look at Johari Windows to assess the types of behaviour you are aware of and those parts of your personal impression that may be blind spots. We will use interviews and meetings to share information with others. Work Association is covered to show the stages a relationship goes through and the importance of not falling into 'recruitment agent' mode where everyone is your best friend as soon as they are introduced!

Beliefs

• In this module we look at what you believe to be true about yourself (and for people generally). We discuss where these beliefs come from and whether they create Inner Friends or Inner Enemies. We discuss getting rid of irrational negative beliefs by rational argument about the usefulness or validity of the statements.
• You consider things you believe to be true about yourself, strengths you have that help you do your job and weaknesses that prevent you performing as well as you would like.

Behaviour

• We will use a tool called Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) to assess your motivational preferences and plot your position onto the SDI Triangle and discuss what it means for your perception of others and theirs of you (absolutely fascinating.) We then look at behaviour planning to start working out how people are likely to react to what we want to say and planning how to put it across in the best possible way.
• You fill in your own SDI form and plot your total on the SDI Triangle, you compare your position with that your peers chose for you.
• You will understand your strengths and how you might 'overdo' these strengths which may affect others adversely.

Conflict

• We look at what sends you and other people into conflict (both personality disputes and issue based disputes) and the various stages of conflict. You will plot your SDI Conflict Total on the SDI Triangle and discuss your conflict pattern with others who share similar patterns. This feedback will be used to share typical reactions as a group: how to recognise the signs, how to treat them and what to avoid - insightful information.
• We discuss collaborative ways to resolve conflict as well as Thomas Killman conflict outcomes.
• You plot your SDI Conflict Total on the Triangle and compare this with the feedback from your colleagues.

Relationships

• We look at modelling relationships and use transactional analysis as well as personal profiling to give you some insight into how you react to others (includes parent / adult / child ego states)
• You play with quizzes and games to understand what the various transactions are and what they sound like / feel like when you hear them. Also, it will allow you to see how conversations can be sidetracked from their original purpose and how to get them back on track again.

Understand Your Own Mindset

• Appreciating that we never have an open mind we need to create a new mindset when looking to influence others. You will look at 'Past/Present/Future' thinking, 'biased listening' and 'dualistic thinking' as a basis for discussion on building relationships with others to influence them.

Influencing

• Here you will learn about the four influencing styles and the difference between pull and push influencing. There will be a number of behaviours associated with each style and you will practice choosing when to use each style.
• You role play situations where you need to influence someone, taking care to plan the strategy first.

Power & Collaboration

• You will learn about the concept of power and the different levels of power that you can use, depending on the maturity of the person you are liaising with. We will discuss the importance of personal networks. We play a game to demonstrate how group consensus is reached and discuss impact.

Behaviour Planning

• The behaviour planning technique allows the delegates to take an objective approach to dealing with their stakeholders. It embraces the need to offer a positive first impression and covers the six following steps:
• 1) Gaining clarity about the rationale for the meeting
• 2) Understanding the situational objective
• 3) Identifying the expected behaviours from the stakeholder
• 4) Consideration of personal behaviours to be: a) Adopted; b) Avoided
• 5) Reviewing the plan
• 6) Preparing for the meeting

Analysing Transactions

• We have a number of different facets to our behaviour and personalities which can be described as 'Parent', 'Adult', and 'Child'. We constantly move between them. Delegates will be introduced to the behaviour patterns of each type, and will then explore the likely effects of each type of behaviour on our ability to interact with each other and with customers / suppliers.

Selling

• To maximise the impact of what you say and to get the maximum chance of it being acted upon / listened to, you must first decide what the key message is. This will be influenced by what you want the person to do as a result of your communication. The clearer you are about this mentally the more confident you will be in delivering your message. We will use the SPIN model to illustrate how structured questioning can provide a good base to conduct coaching sessions and when aiming to build confidence in your approach (both are times when you need to 'sell').
• You will see how to use the answers you get to tailor the message to the intended person's motivation and their wants. Do that and you 'sell them' your idea for their reasons - very powerful? You practice selling your ideas to various types of people.

Case Study

• We use a simulation game to practice all the influencing and relationship building skills you have learned so far, including building a relationship fast.

Action Plan

• This combines all the sections so far, as well as your top 3 tips from the course, into an action plan with dates for completion. You can then ask your manager or a colleague to help you stay on track.
• You devise your action plan to take away with you.