Difficult Conversations

To solve the crises of our times, we’re going to have to speak with people who disagree with us. Start dismantling your echo chamber and join an intimate 6-part series to inspect, reflect and practice difficult conversations. 

• Do you feel passionately about an issue but avoid talking about it with family and friends?
• Do you notice yourself getting frustrated at people or headlines with other viewpoints?
• Do you get excited about a new piece of news, a development or a new practice but when you share it falls on deaf ears?

Length

6x 75 minute workshops
or 2 half-days

Interaction

Online of offline- Covid-19 depending

Size

6-12

#practical #storytelling #empower

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Difficult Conversations Series

Over six weeks, in a small safe group, this programme will pick apart what makes up a conversation and what we each take into our conversations without knowing it. We’ll be building on research from Climate Outreach and The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence as well as TED talks and the Oatmeal.
Whilst the principles of the Difficult Conversations programme can be applied to any sensitive topic, we’ll base most of our examples on the climate crisis. The series covers the following topics:

1. Your story | Truth and Imagination
2. Listening and Feelings
3. Tactics | What makes a good conversation?
4. Being wrong | Calling out
5. Learning | Changing our minds | Sharing our new knowledge
6. Keeping the conversation going | Making a commitment to difficult conversations

At the end of the programme you will:

• Have a draft of your story: a script you can use all the time
• Reconnect with the importance of listening and have the opportunity to practice
• Explore the emotions you take into conversations and build your emotional granularity week on week
• Have a toolkit for future conversations
• Have explored what it’s like to be ‘wrong’ in a safe space
• Have re-inspected how we like to learn and know how it can help us talk with others
• Make a commitment to having difficult conversation and pull together the pieces you need to feel supported
• Stay connected with your cohort and spur each other on

What others have said

New dates just announced

Who will be running your workshop?

The workshop is facilitated by Sophia Cheng, the founder of With Many Roots. She is the UK Co-ordinator of Climate Fresk; she heads up communications at If Not Us Then Who?; and co-ordinates Green New Deal UK Bristol Hub, amongst other climate change related activities. 

With a decade of communications experience across the for profit and nonprofit sectors, agency and in-house, Sophia has made a habit of making ‘the hard stuff’ more accessible. Since 2018, she has reorientated her life around the climate crisis. She has forged her decade of communications experience into offering workshops, mentoring, blogging, and more, on the biggest issues of our time. 

Sophia has delivered Climate Fresk to more than 300 people across 30 countries, from remote teams to new groups of volunteers. She is comfortable working across cultures and time zones and learns something new every time she plays.

You can find out more about Sophia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiacheng/