Welcome to Season 2 of Talking Sense! The theme for this series is Management.

Gwen and Will talk about the definition of a manager, what they’re responsible for, and the challenges of the leap to manager. In particular the pitfalls of being a “super doer”, perhaps something that enabled the promotion in the first place.

They discuss how being a great manager first of all means a change of mindset, and how a manager’s focusshould be on ensuring they create a motivated and empowered team. Who, when they perform well, in turn reflects positively on the manager.

There also needs to be a willingness to deal with difficult situations, getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, thereby removing the barriers to better performance.

Enjoy!

In this last episode of the first series, Gwen and Will discuss how the different conflict management techniques from the last session can help us deal with different opinions effectively.

Our mindset is key when dealing with other peoples’ opinions, and having an open or growth mindset will ensure we deal more effectively with our biases and adopt a more neutral state, thereby behaving less emotionally or irrationally.

Providing the right environment is also important, so giving people as much information as you can in advance of a discussion, as well as meeting people beforehand to “set the scene” really help, then people can air their opinions safely without the associated strong reactions.

This time Gwen and Will talk about how different needs drive the potential for conflict, and how levels of assertiveness and cooperativeness are key to identifying the most appropriate way to negotiate, using the five conflict management styles.

They discuss what you need to do when entering into a negotiating-type conversation, how each of the five styles are appropriate in different situations, and how they also depend on whether the outcome you want to achieve is to preserve arelationship or to achieve a specific goal.

They also talk about mindset, and how important it is that we maintain focus on the outcome, versus the awkward feeling when entering into this type of conversation.