Course description

Building productive relationships with partners and establishing yourself as a trusted advisor throughout the process is critical to effective business relationship management. This interactive workshop will focus on critical communication skills starting by first understanding your personal communication preferences and then focusing on how you can adapt to meet the needs of your diverse partners. Focusing on skills such as emotional intelligence, listening, framing and reframing, storytelling, and influencing strategies and techniques will allow you to leave the workshop with enhanced capability in delivering greater value to your partners and organizations. This highly interactive workshop will have you up on your feet and moving around. You will have ample opportunity to apply concepts to your current work examples throughout the workshop.

Who should attend

This course is targeted toward business relationship managers and those who perform business relationship management tasks.

What you will achieve

• Develop greater influence within organizations and the business partner community even when authority is not granted.
• Build stronger relationships with business partners and other key stakeholders.
• Articulate business value in context.
• Develop more productive working relationships and better manage conflict with difficult business partners and stakeholders.
• Promote increased accountability and ownership and accelerate the realization of business value through improved communication practice.

What you will learn

• Learn the principles of emotional intelligence and how our words, tone of voice, and body language affect others.
• Use positive reframes to achieve consensus and promote greater accountability with business partners.
• Utilize storytelling and other techniques to deliver compelling messages and expand your sphere of influence.
• Use questions and practices to leverage communications to accelerate commitment to change initiatives.
• Explore how confidence and approachability can be balanced into a highly productive, assertive personal style to maximize value in relationships.

Course Outline

Crucial Conversations

• See Past the “Fool’s Choice” to Dialog
• Create a Free Flow of Shared Meaning
• Be Direct While Still Being Respectful
• Brainstorming Tools to Create Shared Meaning
• Start from the Heart

Influential Communication (Energizing Accountability)

• Develop Greater Accountability with Partners for Decision Making
• Framing and Reframing — Using Positive Reframes
• Emotional Intelligence
• Influential Language
• Using Stories to Deliver Compelling Messages
• Three Positive Change Questions (Goals? What Works? What Else?)
  • Stay Focused on Business Partner Goals
  • Build Momentum Toward Decisions and Rapport at the Same Time
  • Gain Insight into Business Partner Values
  • Build Confidence in All Parties
• Decide as a Group (with Multi-Voting) What the Best Tips for Success Are
• Feedforward
  • Positive Tips About What Others Can Do to Help Move the Process Forward
  • Ways of Asking for Input to Get to the Best Solution Quickly and Effectively

Presence

• Balancing Confidence with Approachability
• Priming Oneself to Be Highly Approachable
  • Developing an Authentic Win-Win Attitude
  • Active Listening
  • Bio-Feedback Tools for Increasing One’s Confidence
  • Gaining Skill in Using Calm, Confident Focus to Manage Stressful Situations