Crucial conversations in the workplace

Partnering with Hearing Australia to deliver effective workshops

Hearing Australia were looking for workshops designed to their equip leaders with the skill, tools and strategies to have effective crucial conversations with their staff.

Many organisations’ leaders are appointed to positions due to their technical skill, work ethic and passion. However, once we place these people in these positions, employers often fail to provide them with some of the key skills of leadership, including providing effective feedback to their people.

Hearing Australia was prioritising continuous improvement in  communication between leaders and their people. That’s where we stepped in to deliver training on ‘Crucial Conversations’ in the workplace.

The Client

Hearing Australia is the nation’s largest provider of government-funded hearing services for children, young adults under 26, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, pensioners and veterans.

With over 600 locations across Australia, they provide world-leading hearing solutions, easily accessible to all, with the mission of making a difference to individuals’ lives and the lives of their families.

The Challenge

Prior to Hearing Australia contacting us, they were developing an Emerging Leaders Program across their locations to support the leaders at these sites to improve their leadership capabilities and team performance.

Lack of communication, or poor communication of a leadership team can negatively affect the workplace. Effective communication is an important skill for leaders to ensure high productivity; quality; and team morale.

Hearing Australia needed a workshop for their Leaders at their sites across Australia on how to effectively communicate and have the skills to confidently hold ‘Crucial Conversations’ with their team.

The Prep

After the initial conversation with Hearing Australia, we began working closely with key stakeholders to understand their business and the strategic outcomes they were trying to achieve. We also got to understand and appreciate the day-to-day challenges faced by their leaders.

It was important to take the time to develop realistic case studies and scenarios that we could use as role plays during the workshops.

These case studies and scenarios greatly assist participants in understanding the strategies and tools provided and improving their confidence in delivering ‘Crucial Conversations’.

Delivery of the crucial conversations workshops

After working in collaboration with Hearing Australia and understanding the unique requirements of their Leaders we developed our ‘Crucial Conversations’ workshop.

We were able to deliver the workshops across Australia, some virtually, with most of the workshops being face to face.

The workshops covered the following areas:

• Identifying how crucial conversations range from providing positive feedback, coaching and mentoring conversations to more difficult and challenging performance discussions.
• Understanding the challenges of crucial conversations for leaders and team members.
• Dealing with the emotional responses of staff when delivering feedback.
• The importance of preparation and planning.
• Using such tools as
• The Empathy Tool
• The Iceberg Model
• Intent vs Outcome
• The Achieve Model
• The FEB Model – for providing positive feedback.
• The 4 I’s – having effective performance discussions.
• Case studies and role plays.

The result

The Hearing Australia team were incredibly happy with the workshops and the improved confidence and skills of the Leaders and Managers resulting from attending them.

Each participant of the workshop was able to take the training on board, improve their communication and ability to provide feedback, and excel as a leader.

A member of their team said, “The facilitator was amazing and demonstrated the importance of planning and dealing with facts and specifics when having difficult conversations.”