Organisational Change
Better Conversations: Why They Matter And How To Have Them
Culture is discovered in conversation, innovation is sparked or throttled and collaboration results from conversation. Yet all too often the most difficult conversations are avoided, and what should be said goes unsaid. Better conversations are therefore a worthy, performance-improving goal.
This practical workshop will enable participants to:
- Understand the importance, nature and structure of effective conversations.
- Through self-assessment, gain insight into their conversational style and preferences, learn how these create challenges for work relationships and explore and practise tactics for improving conversations.
- Consider defensiveness, motivation, and honesty in conversations, understand their importance and impact on increasing or decreasing trust.
- What leadership capabilities do we need to improve our capacity to anticipate the future and act on it?
- Structure conversations better to align the goals of those with differing motives.
- Practice applying the principles to challenging conversations.
This two-day workshop, led by Wanda Wallace in a collaborative environment of fellow professionals, provides an opportunity for constructive self-assessment to change behaviours to improve effectiveness.
Who is it For?
Senior professionals whose work relies on influencing and collaborating with others, and who would like to become more sophisticated at building trust and improving performance through high-quality conversations.
Speakers
Dr. Wanda Wallace
Managing Partner Leadership Forum, Inc.
Dr. Wanda Wallace, Managing Partner of Leadership Forum, helps leaders and teams improve the quality of their conversations in every aspect of organisational life from team debate to inclusivity, career goals, feedback cultures and strategic insight. Better conversations result in better relationships which lead to better performance.
Wanda speaks, coaches, conducts seminars and works with top teams in global corporations around the world.She is passionate about helping leaders recognise the choices they have, see the consequences, take control of their careers and build more inclusive teams.
With her latest book, she draws on her experience watching men and women transition to more senior roles where the team knows more than the leader. This can be a trap for expert executors transitioning to roles with a greater span of responsibility. You Can’t Know It All:Leading in an Age of Deep Expertiseexplains what to do when it’s time to step outside of your comfort zone.
Dr. Wallace has forged close relationships with a number of blue-chip clients across many industries such as those in health care (AbbVie, GlaxoSmithKline, LifeScienceDynamics, Medtronic, Merck), insurance (Allianz Group, MetLife, Prudential, BCBSNC), manufacturing (Siemens, Ford Motor Company, amsOsram, Navistar, Kennametal, UPM, Ledvance), financial services (AllianceBernstein, American Express, Blackrock, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan
Chase, Morgan Stanley, UBS, HSBC), accounting (Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers), legal (Herbert Smith Freehills, Linklaters, Norton Rose, Dentons), hospitality (Four Seasons), telecommunications (Ericsson, British Telecom, Vodafone) and oil and gas (British Petroleum). She has also worked with start-ups.
As a consultant and educator who is equally at ease in the distinct worlds of business and research, she is an integrator of ideas, putting the best of what she sees to practical application. She also is the author of Reaching the Top, Factors that Impact the Careers and Retention of Senior Women Leaders along two reports co-authored with Corporate Research Forum entitled Diversity and Business Performance (2011) and Developing and Broadening Specialists (2012). In addition, she hosts a weekly podcast entitled ‘Out of the Comfort Zone’. She describes her podcast as her learning lab where she explores new ideas in collaboration with leading thinkers and integrates those ideas into her practice.
Dr. Wallace received her Ph.D. from the Psychology Department at Duke University with special emphasis on cognitive and thought processes. Prior to founding Leadership Forum, she was an associate professor in Marketing and then Associate Dean of Executive Education at The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and Executive Vice President at Duke Corporate
