Training

Common Ground offers a unique approach to skills development. We believe in customizing our trainings to meet the needs of our clients. We work closely with the client organization's training contact to ensure that the training is designed to meet the objectives of the organization. We know that your staff's time is valuable and are committed to making sure that participants come away with skills that they can immediately implement in their jobs. Common Ground is dedicated to providing excellent quality and enjoyable training programs by emphasizing experiential learning enhanced by mini-lectures, demonstrations, videos, role plays and discussion.

Often, we conduct training in two parts. Part I imparts the skills desired in an experiential workshop environment. In Part II, as requested by the client, the trainer facilitates participants' integration of the skills introduced in the training by acting as an individual or team coach.

Trainings offered by Common Ground include:

Conflict Management

As with life generally, conflict is inevitable in the workplace. This fact of life is not bad. Indeed, positive change and growth can come out of conflict. Successful employees, managers and executives use problem-solving skills to work through conflict within their organizations to build morale and affect positive change. In this training, participants will take an assessment that will indicate their conflict management style, learn how to assess a conflict situation, learn to select a strategy to resolve the situation, and develop approaches to use with others involved in the conflict. Also, the communication skills of active listening, reframing and effective speaking are addressed and practiced.

Effective Negotiation

You cannot not negotiate. Negotiation is a daily activity on and off the job. Maximize your outcome in negotiations by honing interest-based negotiation and competitive bargaining skills. Participants will develop expertise in effective negotiation preparation, dealing with difficult people and elegantly dealing with negotiation tactics. In the training, participants will discuss human psychology in the negotiation process and how to negotiate in light of these human factors. Also, participants will learn proven questioning techniques and telephone negotiation do's and dont's.

Mediation Skills

Cutting-edge companies realize that people in conflict can often resolve their issues more effectively with the assistance of a third party trained in mediation skills. Sometimes a professional mediator from outside the organization is necessary. Other situations can be resolved very effectively by using internal mediators. Or, the manager of employees might be called upon to mediate between two or more employees. Common Ground offers training for internal mediators and managers in the skills that professional mediators use to resolve organizational conflict. Participants will develop an ability to determine mediability, manage the mediation process, implement appropriate interventions, and remain neutral in the process.

Developmental Facilitation for Meetings

Meetings are a fact of life in the business world. Unfortunately, many meetings go longer than necessary, lose focus, create frustration, and do not accomplish their intended purposes. This training is designed to enable participants to develop effective meeting facilitation skills such as: meeting preparation, building powerful agendas, developing meeting guidelines, creating buy-in to the purposes of the meeting, creating action plans, building consensus and assuring follow-through. This training is valuable for all levels of the organization, staff, management and executive.

Teams that Work

In this increasingly complex and fast-paced world no one individual can accomplish his or her work objectives alone. Teamwork is becoming increasingly important in these challenging times. In this training, teams will learn how to understand each other's work, communication and decision-making styles, establish optimal roles for team members, implement procedural and behavioral guidelines, develop systems for team and individual feedback, and learn to overcome fear and control issues on the team.

Productive Communication Techniques

We communicate constantly at work, verbally, non-verbally and in writing. Although we communicate all the time, many people have not been trained in how to communicate well. Communication begins with the thoughts that we have, the words that we formulate and how those words are expressed. Moreover, communication is often expressed using no words at all. In this training, participants will develop the skills of active listening, reframing and effective speaking. They will learn to develop rapport using verbal and non-verbal techniques, de-escalate emotions, determine what is underlying a spoken message, and read unspoken messages. Also participants will learn techniques for dealing with anger, other people's as well as one's own.

Common Ground can custom-design a training program for your organization!

To contact Common Ground: E-mail: RAmadei@aol.com; Phone:303-604-1960.