Goal Setting, Communication and Conflict Training Course - 1 Day

You need to get the best from others, but to do that, you must first get the best from yourself. Therefore, this course is predominantly a personal development training.

Goal setting is important because the first step to achieving a goal is to set it.

Your organisation exists to achieve goals. The organisational goals are long range and broad, and these are divided into subset-goals, which are shorter range and more specific.

It is important to know how to set specific goals and how to communicate them to everyone who needs to know.

We make the distinction between a wish and a goal. We are interested in goals, not wishes.

Anyone can wish for anything.
But goal setting is a more rigorous process.

We will ask you to make clear the distinction between wishes and goals.

In a general way, we can all share the same goal: That is, “To add value to others”. Your organisation succeeds when it “adds value to the marketplace”, to its customers, shareholders, employees and community. If it fails to add value, it fails.

In a similar way, each one of us has to “add value” to other people, to our friends colleagues, customers and family. We will discuss: What happens if you don’t add value to others? What happens if you detract value from others?

The major model of the first session is the goal setting formula itself.

Our model is an advanced version of the standard, five-part model called SMART. (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timebound.)

We believe this old model to be insufficient because, ironically it is not specific enough. It is too abstract.

We will give you the fully updated and improved version called 8 Part SMART which has the advantage of being more practicable and more easily turned into a series of 8 questions which you will learn and use every day.

The 8-part SMART model can be used in multiple ways:

To help you set your own goals; to help you set and agree goals for other people... and many other uses. We will examine how versatile and useful this model is.

Now you have goals, you must communicate them with absolute clarity. It is important to be able to express yourself in ways that make your meaning clearly understood. Many people have trouble expressing their exact meaning; they are often unclear, vague and unconvincing.

We will show you terrific ways to make your exact meaning crystal clear.

When you finish this session, you will know how to make people understand exactly what you mean.

Once you understand how to make yourself clear, you can use the same principles to extract the other persons exact meaning.

We want you to make a distinction between two types of language: Affirmative and Negative.

Affirmative tells people what IS.
Negative tells people what IS NOT.

It is not enough to tell people what you are NOT going to do, and why.
We need to tell people what we are going to do and how.

We will practice turning negated statements into affirmative statements.

Not only is there negative language, you also have to deal with negative people.

We will discuss how you can use your new communication skills to transform a negative personality type, (the cynic) into a positive personality type (A critical thinker).

When you learn this technique, you will be pleased you came on the course.

The final point of the morning is a fascinating discussion about the power of suggestion. Everyone is influenced by suggestion. For instance, if several people say to BOB, “Bob, you don’t look very well today”, poor Bob will begin to feel sick. We are influenced by advertisers, media, politicians and friends. These suggestions are usually subliminal, and we are not aware of them.

But from now on, you will learn to make conscious use of the power of positive suggestion by ensuring that you use words in ways that deliver ONLY the messages you intend.

Conflict management is important because conflict is inevitable. Why? Because not everyone shares the same standards of behaviour.

It is important to manage conflicts well, because a badly managed conflict can quickly degenerate into a major row, and relationships can be smashed beyond repair. If you manage conflicts well, then the issue is quickly resolved, and we can get back to normal service.

This afternoon you will learn how to handle conflicts properly.

In essence there are four ways to handle conflict but only one of them works. The way that works is “By reason”. We need a “Rational approach to conflict management”. The three ways that don’t work, are:

1. Get angry and aggressive.
2. Get upset and tearful.
3. Evade conflict and run away.

These don’t work and never will. We need to know what it means to say, a “Rational approach to conflict management”.

A rational approach to conflict is one based upon a logical evaluation of all the available facts, a mutual commitment to finding a negotiated answer, and the proper professional use of language. The rest of the afternoon we get into the details.

We discuss how important it is to NOT trash the other persons self-image, (character, identity, ego). If you attack the persons character, you will trigger a negative emotional response in the mind of the listener. We will show you how to distinguish “character assassination statements” from “behavioural statements”. We ask you to NEVER use character assassination statements.

We go into the details of language. You will learn to distinguish between two types of language, objective and subjective.

We will suggest that during conflict you should NOT use subjective language. You should restrict yourself to OBJECTIVE language only. We will show you all the details and you will soon become expert at “describing events in objective terms”.

When you ask why people do things some people will give reasons, others will offer only excuses.

We will distinguish between what constitutes a reason, and what constitutes an excuse. This is a vital distinction because you give concessions only to those who give reasons.

What would happen if you gave concessions to excuse givers?

It is not enough to use the right words; you must also use the right body language. Body language means, how you use your face, eyes, posture, arm and hand gestures. We will show you what to do and what you must NEVER do.

How you sound is as important as what you say.
Your voice tones make a huge difference to the final outcome. We will discuss volume, pace, pitch and intensity.

Your goal is to be assertive but never aggressive or passive. We will talk about each type and learn its exact identity.

You will have the OPTION to practice your new skills with one of the five role-play scenarios. You do NOT have to do a role play. But please prepare your scripts, as if you were facing a real-life situation. Then you can either join in or learn by watching others. It’s up to you.

As we come to the end of the day, we note that every communication should finish on a positive. People remember the last thing they heard, (the recency effect) so it is important to ensure that the last thing they hear from you, as they leave, is positive.

Whenever a person does something good, or even stops doing something bad, you should immediately appreciate that fact. Not because you are happy with them but because it is good tactics to do so.

The lack of appreciation is NOT nothing, it is a negative.

Appreciation, praise and thanks are all examples of social motivators. We will learn about the social motivators and how you might use them to encourage people to give you their best performance.