Interpersonal communication
Knowing yourself to communicate better and stand your ground
Knowing how you work is the groundwork for communicating well and holding your position. Three days on the Enneagram: two together, then a third some weeks later once the tools have been tried on real situations and the difficult ones have surfaced.
What you will be able to do
- Know the key principles of the Enneagram: the 9 base types, and the notions of integration and disintegration
- Know your own personality base type in the Enneagram
- Use your "wings" to improve your positive 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 positive communication technique
Programme
Opening round
- Objectives, expectations and what is at stake for each participant
The fundamentals of communication
- The drama triangle and transactional analysis
- Video, discussion and input from the consultant, based on the participants' own experience
The Enneagram and what it is good for
- The instrument and its nine profiles
- Strengths, talents and points to watch for each profile, in behaviour and communication
Finding your own base type
- Why know yourself better, stakes and benefits
- Understanding your motivations and what drives you
- Understanding where your way of communicating comes from
- Which objectives to set, and by which method to reach them
Adapting to each personality
- Identifying the profiles around you, and which dominate
- How to communicate and give feedback to each profile
Communicating positively and non-violently
- The non-violent communication method
- Making a criticism assertively and confidently, without aggression
- Thanking and encouraging with real impact
Conflict and aggression
- Answering an aggressor, and handling your own frustration
- Four methods for answering an objection or an attack
Closing the first two days
- Individual action plans
- Each participant commits to the tools they will use before day three
Day three, some weeks later
- Feedback on using the tools, and on what each participant has since found out about their own profile
- Photolanguage, each participant presents their profile to the group
- Recognising your communication profile through transactional analysis: Parent, Adult, Child self-diagnosis on two real difficult situations
- Using the results to define areas of improvement and build an individual action plan
- Individual coaching for each participant on their own situation
- A practical method for identifying and adapting to the profiles around you
Final conclusion
- Spoken and then written evaluation
- Individual recommendations for each participant
What this training gives you
Understanding your own personality and how you communicate is the groundwork for everything else: it is what lets you adapt to someone who works differently without pretending to be someone you are not.
Three days, built on the Enneagram, with the third held a few weeks after the first two.
Holding your ground where everyone knows everyone
Assertiveness is taught differently for a small island economy than for a large one. Here, the person you push back on today is someone you meet again socially, and a colleague’s family may work for your supplier. Participants routinely say the hard part is not the argument but the fact that it does not end when the shift does.
The training takes that seriously. The work is on saying the difficult thing in a way that leaves the relationship intact, because the relationship is not optional.
Questions about this training
Why is the third day held later?
Because the first two days hand over tools that only reveal their difficulty in use. The gap of a few weeks lets participants try them, fail at some, and bring the real cases back. A consecutive third day would be theory on theory.
Is this a personality test?
No. The Enneagram is used here as a working model of nine motivations and of what each one does under pressure, not as a label. Nobody is given a number to carry around.
What does standing your ground mean in practice?
Saying no without attacking, holding a position when it is pushed, and answering aggression without either absorbing it or returning it. Those are the situations the role-plays are built from.
Does it help with guests and clients as well as colleagues?
Yes, and in a hospitality economy that is often the main use. The same mechanics apply to a guest complaint at the desk and to a disagreement with a colleague.
Related trainings
Self-awareness and positive communication
The foundation programme behind most of the others. Two days using DISC and the Enneagram to see your own communication defaults, recognise the situations where they cost you, and build enough flexibility to reach people who work nothing like you.
DISC and Driving Forces
Two instruments that answer different questions: DISC describes how a person behaves, Driving Forces describes why. Two days, an individual report for each participant, and a worked relationship strategy for the colleagues they find hardest.