A solution based on proven techniques
99.4% of school principals would recommend this course to other school leaders.
Reducing conflict-related stress: The urgent need for principals
The 2011-2019 Principal Health and Wellbeing Report recommended the need for practitioner learning support in effective conflict resolution to reduce stress.
This course addresses the well-recognised occurrence of difficulties that school leaders face through often having to discuss sensitive, difficult subjects. Significant levels of stress for school leaders can be reduced when those conversations are handled with the skills taught in this professional development course
Video Transcript
Hi,
I’m Michael Hawton from Parentshop.
I’m sure you already know that the boss of any school has to manage difficult problems every day – not the least of which are those situations involving emotions as you’re talking with parents, staff and students. The chance of conflict is exacerbated by people’s wide-ranging backgrounds, by their expectations and sometimes even people’s sense of entitlement.
When I heard that the 2014 Principal Health & Wellbeing Survey found that principals are having a higher than average incidence of bullying, threats and violence in their jobs – compounded by the emotional investment by parents – I knew that I could help. In my own work in the Family Court, I came across lots of people who were upset with the court, with their partner, or at times – even with myself.
I’d like to show you some of the things that I learnt. In Tough Conversations™, I hope to be able to teach you how to quickly assess what is happening in high-stakes conversations, and then to make on-the-spot decisions that lead to better outcomes. I will show you how to maintain your personal power, so you don’t over react or prematurely finish a conversation if you don’t need to.
I’ll demonstrate ways in which conversations can end-up going wrong – and how you can anticipate and manage likely issues or objections. Plus, given most people have some capacity to pull themselves together, I will also show you can help that person ‘get a grip’ and then steer the conversation towards a pre-planned and positive outcome.
Tough Conversations™ is a method-based training course that will give you a kit-bag of ideas to implement back at work. The process I will teach you can be applied to many types of problems you face with adults, or even a child who is het up.
Join me at upcoming courses near you where I’ll help you with some tried and proven skills that will help you be more equipped to manage Tough Conversations™ – and that will reduce the daily stress you might come across in your workplace.
I look forward to seeing you at the next course.
All the best,
Michael Hawton
Courses available via webinar and face to face all around Australia.
We can train your team in-house.
Parentshop offers convenient, flexible and highly cost-effective in-house training. Equip your whole school with a unified approach to managing anxiety and building resilience. Contact service@parentshop.com.au or call +61 2 66808910.
Lesson Framework
- Why people overreact.
- Self-control factors in adults and young people.
- How ‘frustration tolerance’ develops in people.
- What to tolerate: how to sort what you let go and what needs your attention.
- What people will do if you challenge them.
- A step-by-step process to address a problem.
- How to tame tigers: effectively dealing with offensive behaviour.
- A video demonstration of the concepts applied to a tough conversation between a parent and a principal.
Please note that this is not a train-the-trainer course and it is not designed for the subsequent on-training of other workers back at your workplace.
What’s included
- Training in how to conduct difficult conversations using a script to achieve accountability.
- A training manual containing course notes.
- A certificate of completion.
- Lunch and refreshments.
- A terrific opportunity to spend time with other leadership teams.
Expected learning outcomes
- Improved knowledge of how to negotiate a solution to a problem using a scripted mediation process.
- Better understanding of how to be less affected by someone becoming frustrated and how to manage their emotional distress.
- Strategies to progress the conversation toward a pre-planned outcome.
- Practical demonstrations of principals and school leaders managing difficult parent and staff behaviour, including what to do and say to achieve better outcomes.
- Readings and literature for follow-up research.
