Check out our Infotoon giving #hints and #tips about #Assertiveness!

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Welcome to Fresh Learning: The Video

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Goal planning is not just for New Year resolutions

January typically marks a time for both individuals and organisations to re-assess their performance and both personal and professional goals in order to reach the potential that they know that they can.  But does this have to be the case?  Realistically this is something that we should be doing all of the time.  Therefore, what do you want to achieve, and how do you translate this into action?

Here are some pointers to help you:

• What are your goals for (either personal or work-based)? - write them down.
• Are these SMART (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely)?
• Get to 15 minute task level – what are all the things you need to do in order to achieve your goal, we recommend using sticky notes in order to gather these tasks and then sort them into some kind of order and keeping the tasks to around 15 minutes in length to help make them achieveable.
• To achieve these goals, what do you need to do each month? Write a monthly to do list including what you need to do to achieve these goals, along with other regular tasks you know you will also have to complete this month.
• Translate the tasks onto a weekly plan of what you need to complete each week - be specific and break things down into manageable chunks - including the regular tasks you need to complete.  Plan which day you will complete each element - be realistic about when you will actually be able to complete things.
• Write your to do list for each day - be realistic and only list things you have the ability to complete (this reduces the negativity associated with not crossing things off).  Be specific and break things down to a full list of tasks, not just 'complete project x'. 
• Try to include specific Project tasks on a regular basis, using your 15 minute tasks to take action without taking up too much time
• Build the habit – it takes time to build a habit, force yourself to complete several tasks a week and in time you will find yourself completing them without even thinking about it
• Review your progress regularly, assessing your daily to do list each day and planning the next day - challenge where you are procrastinating and force yourself to break your ineffective habits through repeating your planning and review each day.  Review your weekly and monthly goals periodically to ensure you are meeting them too.
• Ask others to help you - ask line managers, colleagues and friends to support and encourage you to achieve these goals and form new, productive habits.

Fresh Learning offers a range of training and support with delivering excellence in Time Management and goal setting. If you would like to contact send us a message using the contact form on the right-hand side of this post.

Customer Service: Part II

Continuing with our Week of Customer Service, we now turn to look at two important facets of this: Active Listening and Handling Complaints.

Active Listening and Questioning Skills

Ensuring that the customer knows that you are listening to what they are saying is crucial to gaining their confidence. The following skills will help you to use active listening and questioning to help to gain their trust and rectify the issues that they are talking to you about.

Space                    

Give the customer space to tell their story. Don’t feel that you have to constantly be speaking, and, most definitely, never interrupt the customer.

Verbal Nods                

Show that you are listening and ‘present’ with the customer through verbal nods (eg Mm-hmm, A-ha etc). Verbal nods are especially useful when the customer cannot see you.

Echoing                  

Highlight key points that the customer has made by echoing what they have said.

Reflecting                  

Show that you can understand the customer’s emotions by reflecting how they are feeling. (eg I can understand that this has been very upsetting for you.)

Summarising

Once the customer has told you their story or point of view, highlight that you were listening by summarising and paraphrasing what you have been told. This will help to ensure that you have understood everything that the customer has said, and prompt them to give you any additional information that they may have forgotten.

Questions                  

Vary your use of Open and Closed Questioning to allow the customer to tell their story and gain all of the information that you need.

Remember:

Open Questions…

• Solicit more than a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or other one word response
• Aim to get someone talking
• Useful for general information
• Common lead-ins are what, how and why

Closed Questions…

• Solicit ‘yes, ‘no’ or other one word responses
• Limit talking and control direction of conversation
• Useful for gaining specific information
• Common lead-ins are who, when, did and which

Handling Complaints

It is, unfortunately true that there are times when things don’t always happen as they should. 

At these times it is particularly important to be confident to deal with the patient / customer as the quicker and more efficiently a complaint is dealt with and responded to, the easier it usually is to fix it both for the customer and also for our reputation.

When someone complains to you it is important to remember that:

• The complaint is not a personal attack on you (even if the complainant is trying to make it seem like that).
• Customers have a right to make a complaint.
• People have bad and stressful days, and sometimes these contribute to the complaint
• You should try to prepare mentally and emotionally to deal with the complaint

Handling Complaints - the LAST model

Listen 

Positive body language, active listening – don’t interrupt

Ask questions 

Using the questioning techniques outlined above

Sympathise 

Give a sincere sympathetic statement (explore difference between sympathy and admitting guilt).

Take action to resolve the complaint 

Resolve the complaint, but know you limits and ways you will be able to escalate the complaint if it is beyond them. Don’t forget to keep any promises you make, and never to over-promise. 

Also, don’t forget to log the conversation if necessary to ensure that the conversation, when it took place, who was present and its outcome has been recorded.

Fresh Learning offers a range of training and support with Customer Service, and other courses . For more information, send us a message using the contact form on the right-hand side of this post or email hello@freshlearning.eu.

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Week of Customer Service: Welcome!

What is Customer Service?

There are many ways of defining Customer Service, The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as:

“assistance and other resources that a company provides to the people who buy or use its products or services”

The customer is at the center of the their own universe.

It’s hard, but necessary, remind staff of this reality, every day and to keep it in mind, in good times and bad, yourself.

Here’s what “the customer is at the center of their own universe” means in day to day language:

• Your hangover doesn’t matter to a customer, even though it’s making you feel like death warmed up. 
• The traffic jam you suffered through on the way to work doesn’t matter to your customer, even though it’s still rattling around in your head. 
• Your frustration with the new technology in the office doesn’t matter to the customer. Even your fascination with nifty new features in the technology doesn’t matter to the customer.

What matters to the customer is the customer, and the people the customer cares about, a category that only very slightly at best includes you, the service provider.

Every minute the customer is with you, the customer is thinking about their own reality. Or the reality of their relationship with the people who matter to them.

Think about this reality–because it is reality. Incorporate it into everything you do in business. You’ll be amazed at the rewards you reap. 

Fresh Learning offers a range of training and support with Customer Service, Time Management and other courses . For more information, send us a message using the contact form on the right-hand side of this post or email hello@freshlearning.eu.

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Conflict Resolution: Types, Causes and Conflict Intervention

Following on from our last blog, where we defined conflict, we now discuss and define types of conflict, where conflict occurs and some ways that we can start to intervene in order to more effectively manage conflict.

Types of Conflict

Conflicts can be categorised into three general types:

·     Intrapersonal Conflict occurs within us: when we are at odds with ourselves, when we are torn between choices we need to make, when we are frustrated with our goals or accomplishments.  Conflict with ourselves very often leads to conflict with others.

·     Interpersonal Conflict occurs between two or more individuals.  We might get into a heated debate in a meeting, get in an argument with a co-worker or have a bad encounter with our boss. This is the type of conflict we are most concerned with in this workshop, although our discussion has bearing on the other types. Learning to deal with others often gives us an insight into how to deal with our own issues.

·     Intergroup Conflict occurs between groups: nations, gangs, work areas, etc.  For example, your department at work might have an ‘us vs. them’ attitude about some other department. Or they may simply not understand how their work impacts others.

Remember the story of Romeo and Juliet?  The two title characters are forbidden to be together by their families. They are torn within themselves whether to follow the wishes of their family or follow their own hearts (intrapersonal conflict).

Interpersonal conflict occurs between Romeo, Tybalt and Mercutio, who fight one-on-one in the street because of the animosity between the two families. Tybalt kills Mercutio, and Romeo, in turn, kills Tybalt.

Intergroup conflict exists between the Capulets and Montagues because of a long-standing enmity between the two family groups. Tybalt doesn't hate Mercutio and Romeo because of anything they've done to him, only because they are Montagues.  The hatred is between the groups.

Each of the three conflict types builds upon one another to create the final tragedy of the story: the death of Romeo and Juliet.

Causes of Conflict

There are many causes of conflict and these can be placed into three general categories: Communication, Personal and Process

Communication causes of conflict come from infrequent or ineffective communication e.g., lack of feedback, misunderstandings, lying, criticism, discounting and sarcasm.

Personal causes of conflict come from ego, personal biases, and lack of empathy e.g., differing personalities, perceived disrespect or lack of concern, past friction, differing backgrounds, differing values or beliefs, and prejudice.

Process causes of conflict come from differing views about what should be done or how it should be done e.g., differing goals, differing approaches to a problem, differing perspectives on an issue, and differing sources of information.

Generally speaking, Communication and Personal sources of conflict are the least beneficial to your organization. They tend to attack people on a personal level.  Process conflicts, on the other hand, often allow people to clarify what is most important and make positive changes to the way things are done. For this reason managers should actually encourage constructive Process conflicts and work to eliminate Communication and Personal conflicts. By involving representatives of all parties we can achieve a Win-Win scenario which improves long term business goals and inter-departmental working.

Conflict Intervention Checklist

ASSESS the Climate

Understand the issues

Ø Determine the root cause of conflict.

Ø Determine all the parties involved.

Determine your role

Ø Clarify your relationship.

Ø Determine if you are the best person to mediate.

Ø Obtain agreement and support from all parties.

Measure costs and rewards

Ø Identify the cost and rewards for each individual.

Ø Determine how the conflict impacts the organization.

Ø Recognize the impact of conflict decisions.

SET the Stage

Neutralize the situation

Ø Identify feelings first, facts second.

Ø Move to a non-threatening location.

Ø Remain neutral.

Gather information

Ø Identify common points of agreement.

Ø Acknowledge major areas of difference.

Define the conflict clearly

Ø Summarize points of view.

Ø Make assumptions explicit.

BROKER a Resolution

Promote a win/win scenario

Ø Build alternatives and options.

Ø Define the solution(s) and goal(s).

ØCommit to a solution.

Ø Document the acceptable resolution precisely.

FOLLOW UP on the Resolution

Ø Encourage mutual respect.

Ø End on a positive note.

Fresh Learning offers a range of training and support with Conflict Resolution, Management and other courses . For more information, send us a message using the contact form on the right-hand side of this post or email hello@freshlearning.eu.

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Introduction: Conflict Resolution

What is conflict?

Conflict

Most people are hesitant to mediate an interpersonal conflict. Who wants to get involved in a heated discussion when you’re not sure how to solve it and you don’t want to make it worse? Be successful at conflict intervention by learning how to move toward a positive solution for everyone involved.

Conflict is often seen as negative, it is human nature, yet it can lead to great change and improvement. We even have conflict within ourselves, without any outside interference.  Given that we have to live with conflict, it’s useful to see how can we adapt and adjust to make the process go more smoothly and create a positive end result.

Conflicts are a natural and inevitable part of people working together, sharing diverse thoughts, concerns, perspectives, and goals.  As a manager, you’re going to have to deal with conflict situations both as a mediator (to help resolve conflicts between others) and as a participant (when you, yourself, are in conflict with someone).  These situations can be complex and difficult to manage—such as an ongoing personality clash with a co-worker—or simple and easy to manage—such as two associates disagreeing over a meeting agenda.

Unfortunately, people often make the mistake of treating all conflicts as destructive confrontations that should be avoided or resolved as quickly as possible.  In reality many conflicts provide an important opportunity to improve business results.  Hard to believe—conflict a good thing?  Yes. Disagreements and differing points of view, when managed properly are essential to an innovative workplace.

For the most part, conflicts are not big, emotional blowouts or scenes of physical violence—although these can and do occur, especially in workplaces in which conflict is not managed well.  Conflicts usually involve the small stuff that continuously grinds down working relationships. These can include:

• Loud radios, talking, or other noises that distract co-workers
• Someone grabbing the last cup of coffee without making a new pot
•  Someone barging into your office and interrupting your work
• Someone leaving the copy machine with the message ‘Out of paper’
• Someone discounting what you say in a meeting

What is conflict resolution?

There are many ways to resolve conflicts – surrendering, running away, overpowering your opponent with violence, filing a lawsuit, etc.

Common forms of conflict resolution include:

Negotiation is a discussion among two or more people with the goal of reaching an agreement.

Mediation is a voluntary and confidential process in which a neutral third-party facilitator helps people discuss difficult issues and negotiate an agreement.  Basic steps in the process include gathering information, framing the issues, and developing options, negotiating and formalizing agreements.  Parties in mediation create their own solutions and the mediator does not have any decision-making power over the outcome.

Arbitration is a process in which a third-party neutral, after reviewing evidence and listening to arguments from both sides, issues a decision to settle the case. Arbitration is often used in commercial and labour/management disputes.

Mediation-Arbitration is a hybrid that combines both of the above processes. Prior to the session, the disputing parties agree to try mediation first, but give the neutral third party the authority to make a decision if mediation is not successful.

Early Neutral Evaluation involves using a court-appointed attorney to review a case before it goes to trial.  The attorney reviews the merits of the case and encourages the parties to attempt resolution.  If there is no resolution, the attorney informs the disputants about how to proceed with litigation and gives an opinion on the likely outcome if the case goes to trial.

Community Conferencing is a structured conversation involving all members of a community (offenders, victims, family, friends, etc.) who have been affected by a dispute or a crime.  Using a script, the facilitator invites people to express how they were affected and how they wish to address and repair the harm that resulted.

Collaborative Law refers to a process for solving disputes in which the attorneys commit to reaching a settlement without using litigation.

Negotiated Rulemaking is a collaborative process in which government agencies seek input from a variety of stakeholders before issuing a new rule.

Peer Mediation refers to a process in which young people act as mediators to help resolve disputes among their peers.  The student mediators are trained and supervised by a teacher or other adult.

Coming later this week hints and tips to help you resolve conflict more effectively.

Fresh Learning offers a range of training and support with Conflict Resolution, Management and other courses . For more information, send us a message using the contact form on the right-hand side of this post or email hello@freshlearning.eu.

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