Difficult Conversations Delivery Programme

KCHFT currently delivers training to our staff to provide them with help to deal with conversations where the needs/wants, opinions or perceptions of the involved parties are diverse, with these positions underpinned by strong emotional content. Usually the reason behind such strong feelings and emotions is that they have a lot at stake and they dread the potential consequences such as a conflict. This training is based on a licensed product and KCHFT now wishes to explore the range of available products and to ensure that they are maximising their resources.

We will be splitting our requirement into 3 lots, as detailed below. For both Lots 1 and 2 we would expect providers to be able to demonstrate that they offer a proven training intervention that creates behavioural change by providing participants with tools to engage with and resolve difficult conversations, preserve and develop professional relationships and hold people at work to account.

The course should be interactive and provide opportunities to practice the taught skills to help consolidate the learning. We would like to see an integrated package which offers both the tools to have impactful conversation as well as the tools to hold individuals to account but we have split these into separate lots to test the products available in each of these areas.

The training intervention should utilise recognised strategies from emotional intelligence and communication models such as Transactional Analysis based techniques. This initial intervention should recognise the importance of exploring and challenging the role of ‘self’ as well as that of any other party involved in a difficult interaction, and needs to demonstrate sufficient time to do this is built into the intervention. Engagement and translation of learning to the workplace will be supported by a follow up session to explore the application of the skills in the ‘real world’ and to bolster and strengthen strategies to continue to improve effectiveness in dealing with these conversations, and to explore ways to increase the accountability of those being engaged by participants where improvements are still required.

These training interventions will be internally facilitated by our in house team, who have experience in delivering emotional intelligence content. We recognise that there may be a train the trainer element required. We are now looking for products which may include a train the trainer product, supported by a range of tools and resources to both support the learner, in the form of handouts or ‘toolkits’, and to enable our internal team to continue to support our workforce, which should include trainer guides.