Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High

Whenever you're not getting the results you're looking for, it's likely that a crucial conversation is keeping you stuck.

After more than thirty years of research in two dozen industries involving more than 25,000 individuals, VitalSmarts has observed leaders struggle with poor performance, stalled change initiatives, low productivity, strained relationships, and general lack of results. VitalSmarts' observations confirm that leaders who avoid talking honestly with the right people about the right issues can expert poor results.

On the other hand, top-rated leaders routinely employ skills that turn diverse thought into synergy and synergy into results by mastering Crucial Conversations. In short, when the stakes are high, opinions differ, and emotions run strong, the best individuals, teams, and organizations:

Have the skills to step up to controversial and heated issues
Professionally discuss issues in a way that makes it safe for everyone to speak
Create an environment where people share their best ideas, make wise decisions, and then act on those decisions with conviction

Based on the New York Times bestselling book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, this captivating topic guides audiences through the steps to mastering crucial conversations and harnessing the power of turning every employee interaction into an experience that achieves synergy, alignment, and agreement.

Audience participants will walk away from this speech with a new set of high-leverage tools to effectively achieve breakthrough results. Armed with the new skill set to make the most of every interaction, participants will create more positive results, personally, professionally, and throughout their entire organization.

Participants experience significant improvement and real results in areas such as:

Productivity — At Sprint, applied Crucial Conversations skills resulted in a 93 percent improvement in productivity.
Quality — After a Crucial Conversations intervention, quality, time, and cost metrics improved 10-15 percent at Sprint.
Teamwork — At MaineGeneral Health, employees trained in Crucial Conversations were 167 percent more likely to speak up and directly resolve problems when they saw a teammate demonstrating poor teamwork or being disrespectful.
Relationships — Survey results gathered at Franklin Pierce College six months after a Crucial Conversations intervention showed that passive-aggressive behavior and anger due to deficient communication was down by 14 percent, while trust levels had increased by 15 percent.
Safety — Managers who went through the training at MaineGeneral Health showed a 53 percent improvement in speaking up over managers who had not been trained about shortcuts that could be dangerous for patients.
Employee Satisfaction — At AT&T, employee satisfaction rose by 20 percent. At The University of Colorado Hospital, turnover decreased from 38 percent to 12.5 percent.
Efficiency — At AT&T, billing costs were reduced by 90 percent after Crucial Conversations training. At Sprint, customer care expense was reduced by $20 million annually by automating and speeding up processes.

Are you craving similar results? Let VitalSmarts' Crucial Conversations presentation be the catalyst your organization need to drive rapid and sustainable change, get stalled change initiatives back on track, and turn good individuals and teams into key contributors.

Length: 1 to 3 hours
Audience: General to Executive Level

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