When we deliver training in-house at your venue, everything from the 3-day training is pro-rata, and the relevant costs (excluding expenses) for up to 12 delegates are:-
 

- 3-day Internal Mediator - £7,995 + VAT

- 2-day 'Difficult' Conversations - £5,330 + VAT

- 1-day Avoiding Conflict - £2,665 + VAT 

- 0.5-day Hints & Tips - £1,332 + VAT for up to 12 delegates (note: if in-person the minimum charge is one day)

Yes. We cover all corners of the UK. The only difference your location makes is to expenses - we only charge minimal expenses, and for example mileage will be from Nottingham or where the Trainer lives (whichever is the least).

Basically, if you take our 3-day mediator training programme and take out the mediation process but leave in the skills, that's the main focus of this training - it teaches managers the skills and techniques we use as mediators to resolve issues between people. When managers attend these sessions they get a lot out of the practical 'having a go' elements and it helps them to think differently about workplace issues - basically giving them the confidence they need to nip issues in the bud.

Just to give you a flavour, these are some of the areas covered:-

• Having a go at 'difficult' conversations (practical role play sessions across both days)
• The importance of getting to know people
• Cost of conflict
• Triggers of conflict
• Recognising conflict
• Body language
• Culture
• Individual discussions to understand issues
• Remaining neutral
• Focusing on interests
• Exploring options for mutual gains
• Questioning skills
• Reframing
• Bringing employees together to discuss conflict
• Communication: a key root cause
• Understanding perspectives
• Active listening
• Supporting people to manage emotions
• Driving issue resolution
• Next steps / help required

If you are wanting to see a real step-change in managers having the right conversations and nipping issues in the bud, we highly recommend the 2-day 'difficult' conversations programme if at all possible - mainly due to the time afforded to the actual practical application of the skills they learn, which is so important.

Whilst two days together is ideal, we do understand the operational impact it can have when releasing managers for two days at a time. For this reason, some of our clients split the training - for example on two continuous Mondays. We will fit the training around your operational requirements - we couldn't call ourselves Pragmatism if we didn't have any flexibility! We will always suggest delivering the two days as close together as possible so you can maximise momentum, but we will make work whatever suits your business needs the best.

In terms of the one day programme, please see the question below for more information.

The Pragmatism one-day Preventing Conflict course aims to give managers the tools and confidence to address conflict within their team.

The day starts by exploring the costs of conflict, helping managers understand how early intervention can prevent escalation and reduce the negative impacts on colleagues' time and resources.

We emphasise the importance of managers being proactive at this stage and why supporting early conflict resolution is a key part of their role. We examine what conflict 'looks like' in each manager's team to ensure that the training delivery is tailored to recognise the challenges that they face.

The day then moves on to how managers can recognise conflict. What subtle signs indicate that there is a problem? We identify some common causes of conflict, such as cultural and background differences, different communication styles, different approaches to work tasks and the role of perceptions in conflict.

We then look at how we view conflict in the workplace, delving into how we often focus on an employee's position, e.g. 'they are bullying me', 'they don't respect me', 'they don't work hard'.

We recognise that our colleague has made the decision to take this position and that instead of investigating if a colleague works hard or not, or if they are behaving in a way that constitutes the legal definition of bullying, we need to understand why they have made the choice.

Did they decide that their colleague was a bully because they talked over them in team meetings? Was it because they took credit for their ideas? Was it because they didn't help them when it appeared that a project wasn’t going to be delivered on time? We appreciate the importance of acknowledging the root cause of the problem rather than focusing on statements. To resolve a problem, we need to focus on finding solutions to these root causes.

The training then supports managers to develop key skills to help them address conflict proactively.

We consider how to get the best out of one-to-one sessions with colleagues and how we can then bring them together to have a productive conversation about moving forward. We explore the importance of active listening, how to reframe a statement to save the conversation, how to direct colleagues to a resolution rather than dwelling on past events and how to comprehend the merits of a solution to ensure that we leave behind a 'SMART' agreement that will stand the test of time.

Finally, we dissect how breakdowns in communication can be a key root cause of conflict. We analyse why communication can be so challenging and what skills we can lean on to support our colleagues when they feel emotional, when perceptions are shaping their judgements, and the filters in their brains are making it difficult for them to see conflict in a different way.

The content that we cover in our one-day, and two-day course is broadly similar. The benefit of the two-day course is the opportunity to role-play different conflict scenarios, which contextualises the training and helps managers to really put into practice what they have learnt over the two days.

Both courses are interactive and centred around delegate conversations / input, including breakout time to talk content over in small groups, and provide the opportunity for managers to have a go at tasks such as 'reframing'. However, the opportunity to 'have a go' and really develop their skills is much greater in the two-day course.

For managers who are leading teams of people who need to really nip issues in the bud, we highly recommend the two-day programme.

We hope to run open courses for our 2-day 'Difficult' Conversations programme soon. We will update the website when these are available, but in the meantime please drop us an email and we will put you on the list for informing you when the the dates are released.

We will deliver the one-day Avoiding Conflict and the half-day Hints and Tips training virtually, as due to time there is much less of a practical element. There are still group coaching discussions, and these can take place virtually. We do, however, always recommend in-person training to gain maximum effect.

We will not, however, deliver our 2-day 'Difficult' Conversations or any of our mediator training programmes online. The practical elements of learning these skills is so critical, and you simply cannot learm the skills anywhere near as effectively over a screen. Because of this, we are unwilling to compromise the quality of our training. 

We realise this may mean that some clients decide to source alternative training for either 'difficult' conversations or mediator training, but we will only operate at the very highest of standards.

To go straight to the correct page on the website, simply click here.

No - they can go straight on to the internal mediator programme. The way our 2-day training is designed, we are teaching managers many of the skills, tools and techniques that we use as mediators but not the actual mediation process itself. Therefore, there is no need to duplicate their training. Please take a look at the accredited mediator page for more details.

Our training is unique because the training and coaching is delivered by our real-life mediators who utilise these skills every day in their work mediating some of the most difficult and complex workplace issues you can imagine. The training was also designed with our Director Pete Colby who, having spent several years as an operational manager in manufacturing, understands the needs and challenges of first line managers.

Our training provides managers with a very high level of skills that they will be able to utilise in most workplace situations - from absence and performance management, through to dealing with disputes between employees.

Much of the training on the market which is branded as 'having difficult conversations' is purely theoretical for a few hours delivered by a trainer rather than an expert in having these conversations. The combination of being a highly competent mediator and trainer is unique and quite rare, which is why our training delivers the skills and confidence that managers actually need - not just the theories.