The Art of Honest Conversations with Pro-Development

25 January 2023

 

We were lucky enough to experience a day of training around ‘Honest Conversations’ from the amazing Joanne from Pro-Development Ltd an organisation dedicated to bringing out the best in you, your staff and your business.

The day started with pastries, coffee and tables full of goodies such as sweets, highlighters and workbooks with inspiring quotes, mine for example “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands in times of challenge”.. we knew it was going to be a good day.

 What is an honest conversation?

An honest conversation is a conversation in which you are often having to be vulnerable and brave, share your feelings, opinions or views on something that may be difficult or challenging to express or receive. Its often a conversation where you are unsure how the other person will react and therefore its important that its done in the correct way to make sure you are honouring yourself and handling it in a way you feel proud of. You can never control the other persons reaction or behaviour, but you can control the environment and energy and most importantly your own behaviour.

How does this relate to Better Connect?

At Better Connect we manage programmes. This requires us to sometimes have honest conversations with partners, stakeholders and funders to ensure the best outcome for all involved. Our values at Better Connect and the amount we care about the work we do mean that we want to hold these conversations properly and maintain the most positive relationships with everyone that we work with.

We also encourage honest conversations within the staff team. We want to create a culture where staff can express how they feel in a safe and open way.

So what did we learn?

The session was super interactive and fun, making sure that we engaged with each other, worked as a team and practised having honest conversations in a safe environment!

We were asked to think about what are the positives and negatives around having honest conversations, the do’s and donts and the key skills you need.

We practised our communication skills with an activity using Lego. Different staff members were in different roles with only one person allowed to see the structure that was being built. We had to work as a team and think about how we send a message, how much to say, how it is interpreted and then how that translates to the receiver. Our second attempt was pretty good..

Key takeaways for when you are having ‘Honest Conversations’

• The four steps…
• • step 1: challenge your assumptions
  • step 2: prepare yourself
  • step 3: prepare the feedback
  • step 4: hold the conversation
  • Use DESC to help you prepare for conversations
    • Describe
    • Express
    • Specific
    • Consequences
• Catch and feedback on the positive, it will soon become a habit
• What we say isn’t always what people hear
• Respond don’t react
• Listen with the same passion with which you want to be heard

A huge thank you to Joanne from Pro-Development for an awesome day. We love coming together, working as a team and developing skills on how to be the best at what we do and ultimately develop as people too!