• to give participants enough understanding of the issues and the Open Conversation approach to be able to promote its implementation in the college
• to show that we all have difficult conversations and to explain why that is the case
• to recognise the negative impact of difficult conversations on our own sense of professional competence, on our work-based relationships and on the culture and task of the college
• to acknowledge and underline the need for an alternative, more positive, stress-free and enabling approach
• to outline an alternative approach - Open Conversation - in terms of its three main principles
• to give some practice in trying out Principle One
• to consider ways of implementing Open Conversation in the college
  

10.0 Introductions, aims and ground rules

10.15 Links between the college's culture, conversational process and difficult
conversations

• Recognising the gap - between the espoused values of the college and the behaviour we actually experience
• Good and bad conversational process
• Being closed-to-learning and open-to-learning

11.15 Coffee

11.30 Identifying that we all have difficult conversations

• Headlining our difficult conversations
• Recognising their frequency and ubiquity

12.0 Why we all have difficult conversations

• Thinking that is open or closed-to-learning
• Recognising the footprints of closed conversation in our own scripts
• The role of assumptions and fixed views in trapping us into closed thinking
• Recognising the negative effects of closed conversation on the college

1.0 Lunch

2.0 Introduction to the Open Conversation model
Escaping from the trap of closed thinking

• The Open Conversation model
• Introduction to Principle One (recognising alternative perceptions and interpretations to our assumptions and fixed views)
• Applying Principle One to our own scripts and evaluating the outcome
• Recognising the positive, beneficial effects of open conversation for the college

3.0 Implementing the Open Conversation approach in the college - practical
considerations

• Why change needs to start with and be supported by senior management to be effective
• Methods of spreading the approach
• Monitoring and evaluating progress
• Small group discussion
• Plenary

3.30 Next steps, summary and close

3.45 Tea and depart

The research on which the Open Conversation (OC) approach is based, together with my own findings from many OC courses, suggests three major outcomes of these difficulties. First, their cumulative effect can be to leave us, as individuals, feeling powerless to affect outcomes in a positive and lasting way and can lead to stress and burnout. Second, they can exert a negative effect on working relationships, and the way that the college is perceived internally and externally. Third, the nature of these difficulties can make it impossible to bring about the very changes necessary to realise the college's mission statement and to achieve the college's task.

This course will introduce Open Conversation and show how it can: enable staff to hear what they need to hear and say what they need or want to say - while maintaining good working relationships; significantly reduce stress and make it more feasible to bring about any real change in the college that is required. This course is suitable only for senior members of staff who have the authority to implement and support the Open Conversation approach.