Managing Stakeholders and Difficult Conversations with the Law of Connection 2-Day Interactive Workshop

Managing Stakeholders and Difficult Conversations with the Law of Connection 2-Day Interactive Workshop

Overview

Stakeholders have applying pressure on your team the whole day. Your team dreads going into the next challenging conversation again – anxiety and stress is clearly written on their faces.

You know exactly how they feel – why can’t the stakeholders see that you’re just trying to serve their interests and be fair to everyone involved?

No matter how skilled and knowledgeable your team is, your stakeholders will become aggrieved, disgruntled and even aggressive if your team does not possess the skills to manage them and difficult conversations effectively.

The truth is, when difficult stakeholders encounter a problem and are forced to seek help, they anticipate speaking to an enemy instead of someone who can ease their concerns and solve their problems comprehensively. The situation is exacerbated when our team members feel anxious, stressed and foresee a difficult conversation as well.

But what if our team members were confident, warm and empathetic? What if they carefully listened to stakeholders without jumping to conclusions and fitting their story into their own narrative? What if they understood stakeholder frustrations and were trained to establish trust, and encourage stakeholders to give sincere and helpful cooperation?

In a difficult conversation with stakeholders, many things can go wrong. Emotions may interfere, the parties may be unwilling to cooperate, and if these situations aren’t handled properly, threats and intimidation tactics will surface. It is therefore vital for your team to be equipped with the skills and knowledge to deal with a wide variety of challenging situations.

In this regard, Teacher Kean teaches your team to harness the powerful Law of Connection, shares crucial rapport building and communication skills from his experience as a UK Barrister, as well as his years of relationship management experience from the investment banking industry, in this engaging programme to immediately help your team to establish rapport, actively listen to stakeholders, and to manage difficult conversations professionally and productively.

Learning Objectives

This programme seeks to inculcate into each participant stakeholder management skills so they can communicate with stakeholders, delivering an excellent experience in difficult conversations.

At the end of the workshop, participants shall hold in their hands' specific skills, knowledge and behaviours that can propel themselves and the organization toward greater results.

Methodology

Think differently to alter direction.

The experience of learning to read and write for the first time is likely to remain vivid in your memory. The skill is ingrained and it stays. The primary objective of our training and workshop is to make your new knowledge and abilities as durable as the ones you've already accumulated. They foster fresh ideas. They enable great feats. Individual behaviour and attitude contribute to your organization's success is what we prioritise.

Combining experiential, instructional, and discovery learning with current coaching technology promotes profound transformations in attitudes and behaviour that enable sustainable change in your business. These adjustments improve results.

Our programmes involve with 12 unique learning methodology as below:

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the workshop, participants should be able to:

Lead stakeholders to engage in more productive and cooperative conversations using the Law of Connection

Shift to a Service Mindset - go into every stakeholder interaction full of confidence, energy, good will and the enthusiasm to serve fairly and equitably

Effectively communicate with different types of stakeholders (SCMP, DiSC) and learn how to negotiate or resolve conflict with different types of stakeholders

Encourage stakeholders to give sincere and helpful cooperation with the power of positive reinforcement and allowing them to progressively contribute to the problem-solving process

How to break the ice and establish trust quickly, through the power of sincere and honest appreciation, remembering names and non-verbal communication skills (body language)

Obtain Buy-in and Cooperation - Emphasize the “Whys” from the onset of the conversation. Eliminate unnecessary apologies which often backfire and put the stakeholder in a defensive or unreceptive mood

The Art of Asking the Correct Questions - Structure questions effectively and form follow-up questions so stakeholders are discouraged to give dismissive or irrelevant answers, or to avoid giving meaningful responses

Manage stress, co-regulate their emotions and lead the stakeholder to do the same

Kill their internal dialogue so they do not project their own assumptions onto the stakeholder or to push the stakeholder to fit into their own narrative

Participants will practice the optimal ways to deal with a wide range of challenging situations, including stakeholders who are: defensive and aggressive, throw tantrums, become abusive, are dominant or offensive, refuse to cooperate and give information, intimidate and threaten (including threats to record the conversation and posting it on social media), fraudulent or deceptive, insist on speaking to someone with higher authority, beat around the bush and give irrelevant or long-winded answers, give irrelevant answers such as “I don’t know” or “I can’t remember” and who pull rank on the participant (bullying the participant)

The Art of Giving Bad News - Deliver bad news in the most professional and empathetic way

Practice the skills learnt in realistic role-playing scenarios, and document the actionable takeaways in Standard Operating Procedures

Learning Outline

MODULE 1: Understanding Stakeholders on a Deeper Level with The Law of Connection

An introduction to the Law of Connection: that we must have the ability to understand our stakeholders’ needs and perspectives, and that our interactions would be much more productive if we were genuinely interested to discover their point of view

Establish the core values for your organization’s stakeholder management service standards (helpfulness, professionalism, broad-mindedness, conflict resolution)

Customised Interactive Activities for your organization - Participants will participate in activities to master and utilize the techniques learnt, in a step-by-step and systematic approach

MODULE 2: Deeper and More Effective Communication with Stakeholders

Our stakeholders can come in all shapes and sizes, from the approachable to the downright nasty. We conduct a deeper dive on different personality profiles (SCMP, DiSC), and how different people prefer to receive communication differently (including how to negotiate and resolve conflict with them)

A Shift to a Service Mindset - How to go into every stakeholder interaction full of confidence, energy, good will and the enthusiasm to serve fairly and equitably

Allow our stakeholders to progressively contribute more to the problem-solving process, and in the process give us truthful, full and complete accounts, instead of dominating the discussion with one-way communication or interrogation

Customised Role-Playing Exercises for your organization - Participants will practice the skills learnt, especially in terms of communicating with different stakeholders, and injecting energy and goodwill into their interactions

MODULE 3: Building Rapport with Stakeholders Effortlessly

How to break the ice and establish trust quickly, through the power of sincere and honest appreciation, remembering names and non-verbal communication skills (body language)

Obtain buy-in and cooperation - Emphasize the “Whys” from the onset of the conversation. All around the world, and especially in Asian culture, we try to get the buy in of our stakeholders by apologizing unnecessarily – in truth, these unnecessary apologies greatly hurt our chances of building rapport and serving our stakeholders properly

A deeper dive into understanding non-verbal communication skills (applicable for face to face, virtually or over the phone), and why it is more important to observe and maintain our own body language and non-verbal communication instead of reading others

The role of language in establishing connections with others – how Positive Reinforcement is absolutely vital in encouraging stakeholders to be truthful and to give full and complete accounts

Customised Role-Playing Exercises for your organization- Participants will practice the skills learnt, especially in terms of non-verbal communication skills, body language, positive reinforcement and remembering names

MODULE 6: The Art of Giving Bad News and Relationship Management

We may think that bad news is inevitable, and in many cases that is true. Participants will learn how to deliver bad news in the most professional and empathetic way, so the stakeholder has closure

Preparation is vital before we deliver bad news to stakeholders, but over-preparation often leads to binary assumptions and one-sided communication with stakeholders. Participants will be trained to remain flexible when delivering bad news

Maintaining a strong and trusted stakeholder relationship regardless of the outcome of the discussion

Customised Role-Playing Exercises for your organization - Participants will practice in realistic training scenarios to master and utilize the techniques learnt, in a step-by-step and systematic approach

MODULE 4: Using Active Listening to Get to the Root of Stakeholder Concerns

In difficult and emotionally charged conversations, how to seek out, and listen actively to the stakeholders’ statements and concerns through effective, elegant and diplomatic fact-finding

The Art of Asking the Correct Questions - Structure questions effectively and form follow-up questions so stakeholders are discouraged to give dismissive or irrelevant answers, or to avoid giving meaningful responses

When the conversation takes a nasty turn, how to manage stress or anxiety, co-regulate our emotions and to lead the stakeholder to do the same

How to kill our internal dialogue so we are fully immersed when the stakeholder is speaking to us. Participants will be trained how not to project their own assumptions onto the stakeholder or to push the stakeholder to fit into their own narrative

Put ourselves, honestly and sincerely, in the stakeholder’s shoes. Empathize and echo the stakeholder’s needs, concerns and desires without necessarily siding or agreeing with them

Customised Role-Playing Exercises for your organization- Participants will practice in realistic training scenarios to master and utilize the techniques learnt, in a step-by-step and systematic approach

MODULE 5: Managing Difficult Conversations and Challenging Stakeholders

Participants will learn how to defuse interfering emotions (whether it is the stakeholder’s or their own interfering emotions) and to get the conversation back on track

Participants will practice the optimal ways to deal with a wide range of challenging situations, including:

Stakeholders who become defensive and aggressive

Stakeholders who throw tantrums, become abusive, are dominant or offensive

Stakeholders who refuse to cooperate and give information

Stakeholders who intimidate and threaten (including threats to record the conversation and posting it on social media)

How to deal with stakeholders who may be fraudulent or deceptive

Stakeholders who insist on speaking to someone with higher authority

Stakeholders who beat around the bush and give irrelevant or long-winded answers

How to encourage stakeholders to give more meaningful answers beyond “I don’t know” or “I can’t remember”

Stakeholders who pull rank on the participant (bullying the participant)