Interpersonal communication
Knowing yourself to communicate better and stand your ground
Knowing how you work is the foundation for communicating well and holding your ground. Three days built on the Enneagram — two together, then a third some weeks later, once you have tried the tools and found out where they break.
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 course gives you
Understanding and knowing your personality and your way of communicating is the essential foundation of your personal development and your career. This course pinpoints precise individual areas to work on and develops them in depth.
- Develop your self-awareness through the Enneagram, to analyse your strengths and areas for progress and perform better at work
- Use positive and non-violent communication techniques at work — in sales, in management and in your working relationships generally
- Assert yourself with the self-awareness tool and effective, concrete techniques
- Face aggression and manipulation with simple, positive and non-violent methods
A course in two steps
Step 1 — two consecutive days. You discover the Enneagram, an internationally recognised self-awareness tool that shows which behavioural objectives to work towards to develop your potential, and how to act concretely to reach them. The trainer also gives you positive, non-violent communication tools, concrete and suited to your personality.
Step 2 — one day, a few weeks later. Once you have tried the tools and methods, you are supported in depth on assertiveness, self-confidence and win-win communication, according to your own objectives. This lively, practice-led module works from situations participants have actually lived: self-confidence and self-assertion, dealing with difficult personalities, handling conflict. It is also when you put in place the improvement objectives identified in step 1.
Enneagram e-learning
After the first two days, the e-learning “The Enneagram method — know yourself better and develop your potential” lets you revisit and deepen the key elements of the tool, including the main characteristics of each profile. It stays available at any time, wherever you are and at your own pace.
Questions about this course
In my culture pushing back on a senior colleague is not acceptable. Does this still apply?
This is the most common question in the room, and the course does not answer it by telling anyone to adopt a Western directness norm. It works on what is possible within your own context: private rather than public disagreement, questions rather than contradiction, and building support before the meeting. The aim is to be heard, not to be blunt.
Is assertiveness the same as confidence?
No, and conflating them is why a lot of assertiveness training fails. Assertiveness is a set of behaviours you can use on a day when you feel no confidence at all. The course teaches the behaviours, on the reasonable assumption that confidence tends to follow rather than precede them.
How does this differ from Self-awareness and positive communication?
Both rest on the Enneagram. The two-day course gives the model and the core communication techniques. This one runs over three days, goes further into your own profile, and adds a third day weeks later to work on assertiveness, self-confidence and difficult personalities from situations you have actually lived.
Related courses
Self-awareness and positive communication
The foundation course behind most of ABP's other programmes. Two days using DISC and the Enneagram to understand your own communication defaults, recognise where they cost you, and build the flexibility to work with people who operate differently.
DISC and Driving Forces
Two days on two complementary instruments: DISC describes how someone behaves, Driving Forces describes why. Each participant receives an individual report and leaves with a relationship strategy for the colleagues they find hardest.