Practice is the best of all instructors.
— Publilius Syrus

A Skill-Based Competence

This is one of the most popular, interactive, and impactful workshops we offer. Why? Because it’s all about practice. Better still, it’s all about practice that is concentrated on real conversations that matter to you and your district.

The workshop focuses on deepening the conversational capacity of individual members of your team. A team with high conversational capacity, after all, is full of people with high conversational capacity.

“Knowledge is of no value,” said Anton Chekhov, “unless you put it into practice.” The ability to converse in the sweet spot under pressure is a skill-based competence, and building it requires practice. (If something doesn’t require practice to acquire then it isn’t a skill).

Three Core Learning Objectives

In this active and engaging workshop participants will build their conversational capacity by preparing for conversations about their leadership challenges. The purpose of the workshop is three-fold:

1. To help participants build their conversational capacity.
2. To build it by preparing for a conversation that will make a difference.
3. To teach them a powerful approach to preparing for any important conversation that they can use for the rest of their lives – in the workplace and beyond.

Participants will be asked to bring in an issue they’d like to address: a relationship, process, or activity that isn’t working as well as it could; or a problem in need of attention; feedback for a colleague or a parent; or perhaps a parent-teacher conflict to be resolved. Whatever they choose, it should be something that matters – both to them and to the team or the district.

The goal is to find a place where they can initiate a conversation that sparks an improvement in the school or district and to use that work as practice to build their conversational discipline.

Learning Outcomes

In the workshop they’ll learn how to prepare for the conversation so they can conduct it in a focused and effective way. They’ll walk out with tangible new competencies they can apply to their unique issues and conversations. More specifically, in this workshop participants will

• Demonstrably improve their personal conversational capacity.
• Learn how to put together a Conversational Game Plan for important conversations they’re currently facing, as well as those they’ll face in the future.
• Learn how to use learning partners to prepare for an important conversation – a process that helps the partners as much as it helps the person they’re helping.
• Increase their confidence for engaging important but challenging conversations with more focus and skill.
• Enhance their ability to stay on course in the confusing fog of a tough conversation or meeting.

Note: this course is particularly useful for preparing for formal evaluation processes, observation feedback sessions, and parent-teacher conferences.

Prerequisite: Conversational Capacity for Educational Professionals

Length: Customized to fit your training schedule

Randy Weber

Randy Weber has worked with Conversational Capacity concepts and skills for over two decades. With a BA in History from UC Berkeley and a MA in Education from USC, Randy’s primary research and practice has focused on teaching elementary school children the basics of Conversational Capacity. Based on this work, Randy and Craig are co-authoring a new book, tentatively titled Conversational Capacity in the Classroom, to help educators apply the discipline to their demanding work environment.