How to disagree
constructively at work
Disagreement is the engine of good decision making. Yet many of us find it difficult to challenge others and to be challenged ourselves.
This ground-breaking workshop has been designed to help individuals and teams to improve their capacity for constructive disagreement and hence for effective collaboration and group decision making.
Virtual and classroom deliveries available
Key benefits of this workshop
- Learn to reframe disagreements as moments of creative collaboration
- Get better at disagreeing confidently and constructively
- Improve your ability to be disagreed with and to integrate others’ ideas and opinions
- Nurture a positive disagreement culture in your team
Unlock the creativity of disagreement
How do you generate your best ideas?
Teams have a big advantage over individuals when it comes to generating ideas and solving problems: They comprise a mixture of people with different perspectives, experiences and skills. Bring this wealth of knowledge to bear on a problem, and you have a much greater chance of reaching the optimal solution.
Too often though, this rich resource isn’t tapped. Ideas generated by leaders or dominant personalities go unchallenged because others feel uncomfortable disagreeing, or become inflexible and entrenched because disagreement turns into a contest with winners and losers.
This is bad for morale and produces bad decisions. But what can you do to prevent it? How can you get better at disagreeing well? and how can you help encourage a positive and healthy approach to disagreement in your team? This course provides the answers.
This practical and innovative workshop provides the business case for disagreement, and equips you to disagree better and to encourage a positive disagreement culture with those you work with. You’ll learn flexible techniques for disagreeing that are authentic to your communication style, and find out how to adapt the way you disagree to the different personalities you work with. You’ll also walk away with an action plan for immediate implementation back at work.
“Working with Cambridge Exec has been a massive success and has provided a large section of our colleagues across the business with the tools and techniques to transform difficult conversations into every day conversations… A course and trainer I would highly recommend
Alexandra Willians, Northern Gas Networks
Workshop agenda
Part 1: The value of disagreement
1. Disagreement as a powerful and productive force
2. Highlights of the research on disagreement
3. The benefits to the bottom line of disagreeing
4. The cultural value of disagreement and cognitive diversity
Part 2: Learning to disagree well
5. Why it can be hard to disagree
6. Recognise your natural disagreement style
7. Work with the strengths and gaps in your natural style to become better at disagreeing
Part 3: Coping with others' disagreement
8. Identify and respond flexibly to other people’s disagreement styles
9. Working with someone who constantly disagrees
10. Develop your ability to manage challenge, disagreement and conflict
11. Building your Emotional Intelligence
Part 4: Practical application
12. Creating/contributing to a culture of constructive disagreement
13. Skills practise using real-life case studies
14. Action planning on your own scenario
Additional support beyond the workshop
After taking part in the How to Disagree workshop, you’ll receive access to a dedicated course webpage packed with useful resources, articles and ideas to help build on your learning going forward.
We also provide one-to-one email coaching support to help you apply your learning when you’re back at work.
Our clients include:
Your facilitator
Kate Jennings is a highly experienced leadership development consultant and coach, as well as a qualified counsellor. She has facilitated large-scale leadership and communications programmes for a wide range of organisations.
Kate’s background is in the food industry, where for many years she led teams working with clients such as M&S, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. Building on this experience she has spent 15 years working with executives and staff teams for some of the UK’s most well-known companies. Kate works across private, public and voluntary sectors, with clients in the UK, Europe and USA.
How to book
Virtual and classroom workshops
We can bring this workshop to your offices anywhere in the UK, or deliver it for you live over the internet as virtual training.
In most cases we can provide an all-inclusive quote to cover design, delivery and materials with some basic information:
- Which course you are interested in
- Where the course would take place (or if virtual)
- How many delegates need to be trained
Just drop us a line with these basic facts and we’ll get back to you with a no-obligation quote on the same day.