Interpersonal communication
Self-awareness and positive communication
Understand why you communicate the way you do before trying to change any of it. Two days: an Enneagram questionnaire to place how you operate, then concrete techniques for asking, refusing and criticising without attacking.
What you will be able to do
- Know the 9 base types of the Enneagram
- Know the notions of integration and disintegration
- Know your own personality base type in the Enneagram
- Use your "wings" to improve your communication and move your projects forward
- Give constructive corrective feedback using the "sandwich" technique
- Give constructive positive feedback using non-violent communication
- Answer aggression or manipulation (judgements, generalisations, distortions) accurately with a proven technique
Programme
Knowing yourself better
- What there is to gain from working on how you yourself operate
- A 140-question Enneagram questionnaire on communication and behaviour
- Your profile's strengths, talents and watch-points
- Understanding your motives and where your way of communicating comes from
- Setting a precise objective rather than a good resolution
Filters and traps
- The iceberg: what you say, what you think, what the other person hears
- Beliefs, interpretations, and everyone's private frame of reference
- The drama triangle and the games of manipulation
The keys to positive communication
- Assertiveness: accurate, honest and specific
- Adjusting your communication to the personality in front of you
- Making a request without aggression, using non-violent communication
Techniques for the hard moments
- Refusing: saying no calmly, without guilt and without over-justifying
- Criticising a fact rather than a person
- Answering bad faith and objections
- Answering attacks: generalisations, judgements, distortions
What this course gives you
Understanding your personality and your way of communicating is the essential foundation of your personal development and your career. This course pinpoints precise individual areas to work on and works on them in depth. First, you discover the Enneagram, an internationally recognised self-awareness tool that shows which behavioural objectives to work towards and how to act concretely to reach them. Then the trainer gives you concrete interpersonal communication tools, suited to your personality, to make your everyday communication easier.
- Analyse your strengths and areas for progress through the Enneagram, to assert yourself and perform better at work
- Use positive communication techniques at work: in sales, in management, in working relationships
- Assert yourself with effective, concrete techniques
- Face aggression and manipulation with simple methods
E-learning available
An e-learning module on the Enneagram complements the course. It stays available at any time, wherever you are and at your own pace.
Questions about this course
How does this differ from "Knowing yourself, communicating better, standing your ground"?
This one spends half the time on communication technique — NVC, refusing, criticising, answering an attack — with the Enneagram as the starting point for understanding why certain sentences cost you more than others. The three-day course goes deeper into the Enneagram itself, its nine bases and their dynamics, and adds a day some weeks later on assertiveness. If your aim is to be more comfortable in difficult conversations, take this one.
Does the questionnaire settle my profile for good?
No, and that limit is stated during the session. A questionnaire gives a working hypothesis that each person confirms or sets aside once they read the descriptions. Participants regularly recognise themselves in a base other than the one the questionnaire indicated: their own sense of it decides, not the score.
Does non-violent communication work on someone who does not practise it?
Yes, and that is precisely the point of it: it assumes no reciprocity. Making a request that separates the fact, the feeling and the need has an effect even on someone who knows nothing of the method, because it removes the accusation they would otherwise have answered. What does not work is using NVC vocabulary while keeping the intent of a reproach.
Do I have to discuss my personal life during the course?
No. The work is on professional situations, and each person chooses what they share. The questionnaire is given back individually and nothing obliges a participant to announce their profile to the group — though most do so unprompted within half a day.
Related courses
DISC and Driving Forces
Two days on two complementary instruments: DISC describes how someone behaves, Driving Forces describes what drives them underneath. Each participant receives an individual report and leaves with a relationship strategy for the people they find hardest to work with.
Knowing yourself, communicating better, standing your ground
The long format, with a third day some weeks later. Three days to place your profile, understand where your way of communicating comes from, and acquire concrete answers to aggression and manipulation.