This session is designed to help your people build their diplomatic skills to enable them make better choices when supporting an impassioned customer, helping to reduce the customer’s emotion and collaborate on finding a solution. When the customer is upset, angry or disappointed conversations can get heated, and we inadvertently make it worse through the innate human response of fight or flight, the wrong choice of words or mismatched energy. But, if we can make it worse, we can also make it better.
- Recognise their own response to a situation and when it might be helpful or unhelpful
- Choose non-confrontational language to reduce the heat and regain control
- Demonstrate collaborative behaviours to show the customer you have their back
Session outline
This is the overview for the half-day, face-to-face session. Timings are approximate and will flex depending on the needs of the group. Virtual delivery follows the same content and sequence but with different timings and excludes the additional practise section.
1. Welcome to GREAT Diplomacy (40 mins)
- What will you learn? Session overview and objectives
- Activity: What gets your back up?
- Our human response to challenging situations – fight or flight
- How this can show up in customer conversations and the impact each has
2. Three strategies (90 mins)
- Recognise your reaction:
- The Success Principles – choosing your response
- Activity: Recognise your reaction and choose your response
- Mind your language:
- Choosing accountable language
- Activity: Mind your language – building trust with your customer and demonstrating that they are in safe hands
- Collaborate:
- Collaborating with the customer to find a solution
- Activity: Collaborate – examples of how this would sound in a customer conversation
BREAK (15 mins)
3. Practise (F2F only – 60 minutes)
- Activity: Practise reducing the heat – apply what you’ve learned to real situations that you face every day
4. Action plan and close (15 mins)
- Reflect and prepare actions
- Activity: surprise!
- Close
