Campus & Community

Crucial Conversations/Crucial Influence Programs to Be Offered This Summer

Friday, May 17, 2024, By News Staff

Crucial Conversations, a popular professional development workshop series for faculty and staff, will be offered in person beginning later this month. Crucial Influence, an offering for leaders, supervisors and managers from the creators of Crucial Conversations, is also being held again this summer.

Crucial Conversations Program

Crucial conversations take place in organizations every day. They include:

  • Conversations where stakes are high, emotions are strong and opinions differ;
  • Conversations around work quality, time management, productivity, performance, customer satisfaction, sensitive issues, conflict or a strained relationship; and
  • Conversations that are often avoided and/or not handled well, leading to poor outcomes.

Workshop participants will learn how to spot when conversations become crucial, avoid repeating the same conversation, separate facts from stories and emotions, and make clearer decisions and commitments, among other skills.

Four-Week In-Person Crucial Conversations Program

Crucial Influence Program

Learn how to lead behavior change in your team or organization with hands-on instruction, practice and application.

In this course, supervisors, managers and leaders will learn how to:

  • Influence other’s behavior to make big and small changes inevitable
  • Identify the behaviors that will generate desired results
  • Use the six sources of influence to diagnose problem behaviors and identify why people struggle to change
  • Motivate by tapping into personal values
  • Help others learn new skills
  • Harness the power of social influence
  • Correctly incentivize behaviors

Crucial Influence will also be offered in person for faculty and staff leaders this summer.

Important Things to Note for Both Programs

  • Participants must be available for all sessions as the skills taught each week build upon skills and concepts identified in previous sessions. If your schedule doesn’t allow for 100% participation, you can join the wait list for a future offering.
  • Managers and supervisors are highly encouraged to attend, as the program teaches skills that are especially applicable to those managing others.
  • The program provides experiential learning through exercises, practice with real issues and group discussions.
  • Because there is a cost of $350 per person to cover program materials, departmental approval is necessary. The fee will be charged to participants’ budget centers and approval from your supervisor and budget manager is required.
  • Space is limited and registration is required.

Both programs have earned high praise from those who have participated in them.

“It is excellent training for managers and supervisors,” says one participant in the Crucial Conversations program. “Success happens when opportunities are met by preparations. Crucial Conversations are crucial to relationship preservation, built on a foundation where there’s healthy trust, conflict, commitment and accountability; the four main elements that produce results.”

A participant in the Crucial Influence program says “In a very short amount of time, I learned and espoused several ‘concrete’ methods for taking the guesswork out of what is motivating folks around me. In what is clearly a formulaic approach, I can now tailor my influence.”

Email Pam Gavenda, associate director of organizational development and training and Crucial Conversations/Crucial Influence certified trainer, if you have questions about either program.