Coaching in Dialogue Skills

For many executives, managers and professionals it’s people-related issues that are hardest to work with. We help you engage with others through exploratory conversation, dialogue, to be able to open-up awkward issues, talk about what matters, and find needed commonalities to move forward – while keeping everyone feeling safe and valued.

Explore & Clarify a Different Perspective

As an experienced executive, manager or professional, chances are you’re strong on the more technical aspects of your role. You can deliver what’s required and sort through routine problems. Possibly, though, the challenges you find most difficult are the people and change-related ones, where the issues are less clear cut, there are differing – perhaps conflicting – perspectives, and progress is hard to achieve.

Many coaches will be eager to help you in such situations. What makes our approach usefully different is that we help you learn to apply a simple yet powerful approach to exploratory conversation, dialogue, enabling you to ‘get underneath’ the issues, explore and clarify different perspectives, and – as far as possible – build shared understandings to advance desired outcomes.

The approach we use is the OBREAU conversation model, as described on this site, a highly practical structure and set of practices that you can use to work through and make headway with potentially just about any interpersonal or group challenge, including those outside work.

Coaching in Dialogue Skills - Course

THE PROCESS

Ordinarily, we have a series of one-hour web-conferencing sessions at an agreed interval, e.g. weekly, two-weekly, or monthly. In the sessions, we:

  • Focus on one or more current, live challenges that matter to you

  • Work to ground the challenge in data, evidence, by identifying relevant observations, data points – as distinct from interpretations you might lean towards

  • Consider the possible perspectives of other stakeholders, presuming that their views make sense, seem reasonable to them

  • Explore what matters to you, including what might be hard to say

  • Identify and clarify actions you can potentially take to enable progress

At the end of each session, we identify one or more actions for you to try out, and your experience with undertaking these actions becomes the starting point for our next meeting.

You can expect to achieve greater clarity on at least one issue in a single session. Ordinarily, a set of at least three sessions is recommended, to help you build skills and confidence in applying the process yourself. We review at the end and consider whether additional sessions or other supports might be helpful.

PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS

As well as learning a set of concrete skills you can apply with challenges now and potentially in future, you will also stand to gain in your personal effectiveness; in particular, being able to recognise and question your assumptions and respond in more emotionally intelligent – grounded, less reactive – ways.

Find Out More

To find out more, why not get in touch and arrange a 30-minute chat with Don Dunoon.  This is free and entirely without obligation. Let’s talk!