Did you ever have to deal with someone who:
Treats you unfairly?
Doesn’t care how you think or feel?
Makes you really upset?
If so – it’s likely that you are having a difficult conversation! These are situations where you are probably angry, find it hard to talk about, or sidestep the issues that are bothering you. They are difficult because we fear the implications, so we react without considering their potential consequences or simply avoid them.
The Making Difficult Conversations Easier workshop, part of our Bridge to Employment program, offers insights and practice that enable participants to solve problems before they escalate. Developed and delivered for Her 2nd Chance by board member and organizational psychologist Joel Moses, Ph.D., it provides a safe place to practice learning alternative ways of dealing with these issues.
The workshop consists of eight topics covered in four sessions spaced a week apart. These include issues such as clarifying misunderstandings, handling disappointments, dealing with a difficult person, and responding to unfair treatment or favoritism.
Alternative approaches to managing potentially volatile situations are provided by using principles that enhance self-esteem, maintain open communications, and solve the presenting problem.
Participants are offered “learning points” that guide discussions on how to respond to these often highly charged emotional situations. First, they rehearse the behaviors in the workshop itself, then practice the new behaviors with each other in the intervening week between sessions.
Workshops conducted over the last three years have provided exceptionally encouraging results. Participants indicate that they are more comfortable, confident, and effective in handling these types of situations and, as importantly, report that these discussions are far less stressful.
Difficult conversations are made easier as our women learn new skills to cope with these problematic situations both in and out of the workplace – doing so because they have expanded their ability to deal with conflict in less confrontational and more productive ways.
As one participant summed up her reactions to the workshop, “Difficult conversations are not so difficult anymore!”