Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Active Listening: Building Relationships

Understand others, resolve conflict, and promote collaborative problem solving by improving your communication skills through active listening.

You will learn to:

• Identify ways to become a better listener and encourage conversation
• Use body language to reflect a positive listening attitude
• Understand the difference between sympathy and empathy, and when each is appropriate
• Create a listening mindset using framing, positive intent and focus
• Be genuine in your communications and build authentic relationships
• Ask questions, probe for information, and use paraphrasing techniques
• Overcome common listening problems

Communication Skills for the Workplace

Learn communication skills to improve workplace interactions, build relationships, and get things done.

By understanding the way you communicate with others, you can explore how others perceive you and how better communication can make it easier for you to get along in the workplace.

You will learn to:

• Overcome common communication barriers that may be holding you back
• Create positive relationships by listening actively and empathetically to others
• Develop skills to ask questions, assert yourself, and get information you need
• Learn about body language and identify non-verbal messages you are sending
• Enhance your ability to handle difficult situations
• Be more self-aware and create a positive self-image

Communication Styles

Learn a variety of communication styles to improve clear and effective messaging to coworkers and/or employees.

The content of the workshop will enable the manager to communicate messages clearly and to counsel, motivate, direct, and work with different behavioral styles.

You will learn to:

• Lead with humility, Respect every individual, Create constancy of purpose
• Identify your style and explore the priorities that drive you during your workday
• Discover the similarities and differences among the DiSC styles
• Discover your reactions to different DiSC styles
• Identify what works for you and what challenges you when working with each style
• Recognize others DiSC styles based on their behavioral cues

Conflict Resolution: Dealing With Difficult People

Dealing with a difficult work relationship? Learn how to turn a frustrating situation into a win/win scenario, with skills and techniques that allow you to understand and cope with different personalities you’ll encounter.

Challenge your understanding of “difficult” people to improve work relationships and overcome frustration.

You will learn how to:

• Assess a situation from multiple angles
• Apply centering techniques to maintain self-control
• Use language that allows everyone to retain their dignity and feel they’ve been heard
• Respond in ways that quell difficult behavior and avoid escalating negative encounters
• Develop coping strategies for dealing with difficult coworkers

Conflict Resolution: Getting Along in the Workplace

Use conflict resolution strategies to work through problems and successfully produce a win-win outcome.

Conflict does not have to be a negative experience. In fact, it plays a vital and necessary part in our personal growth and development. Understand how to work through conflict with your team in a way that avoids hurt feelings and improves employee performance.

You will learn:

• • Types of conflict, stages of conflict, and how conflict escalates
  • When to use each of the 5 most common conflict resolution styles
  • When and how a leader should intervene to help others
  • Effective intervention strategies
  • How spontaneous action can cause regrets, while reflective action can help you find solutions
  • How communicating by paraphrasing, asking questions, using body language, and listening actively can aid conflict resolution
  • Techniques to increase positive information flow, verbally and non-verbally
  • To use the Johari window to better understand your relationships
  • Ways to use conflicts as an opportunity to enhance productivity and performance

Emotional Intelligence: How It Impacts You and Others

Develop your Emotional Intelligence (EQ) for deeper personal connections and greater professional success.

When you look at truly extraordinary individuals, you will see that they inspire and make a difference by connecting with people at a personal and emotional level. What differentiated them was not their IQ, but their EQ.

IQ may get you in the door, but it is your EQ, your ability to connect with people and manage the emotions of yourself and others, that is the larger factor in your long-term success.

You will learn to:

• • Understand, use and appreciate the role of emotional intelligence in the workplace
  • Validate and sympathize with others’ emotions to manage interactions more effectively
  • Recognize the link between emotional well-being and physical health
  • Use optimism to your advantage
  • Set your personal vision with a vision statement
  • Apply the emotional intelligence blueprint to have more positive, fulfilling workplace interactions

Goal Setting

Participants will be led through thinking, planning and taking action on things they really want. Learn how to motivate yourself or others in reaching both short-term and long-term goals.

You will learn to:

• • Identify what’s important to you in your life
  • Use goal setting activities and appropriate language to articulate what you want in your life
  • Explain what your dreams and goals are for both the short and long term
  • Use motivating techniques to help you reach your goals
  • Understand how to deal with setbacks

Interpersonal Skills

Develop an effective interpersonal style when interacting with coworkers and/or employees. Learn a variety of techniques to improve communication and listening in groups or with individuals.

Understand how to adapt to varying work styles, goal setting strategies and creating and maintaining positive working relationships.

You will learn to:

• • Become an active listener and be receptive to others’ opinions
  • Negotiate effectively and bring out the best in others
  • Recognize that others’ practices and beliefs are different from your own
  • Understand your own strengths and weaknesses, increase your patience with change, and learn to de-stress
  • Gain respect and a more peaceful workplace