The one skill set all household employees need, the one thing that sets them apart from others who look similar on paper, the one ingredient at the foundation of a successful, long term position is being an effective communicator. This soft skill is listed in the job descriptions put out by the best agencies across the country, it’s on every parent’s most wanted list, and this skill set is something that requires real effort to learn and hone. This series was created especially for those that work in private homes and is focused on helping you gain the skills needed to bring a professional level of communication and conflict resolution to your position.
The series starts with Your Communication Toolkit: Practical Tools to Boost Your Communication IQ, an on-demand session you can view any time before the start of the live sessions.
Then starting on Tuesday, April 21st at 7:30 PM PST AND 7:30 PM EST (two live meetings each night, one for each coast) and April 28th, May 5th, 12th, and 19th, we’ll meet for virtual LIVE trainings where you’ll explore your current patterns that are keeping you stuck, learn new, practical skills that you can immediately put to use on the job, and have the opportunity for individual coaching and support. If you’re not able to make the live sessions, you can access the recorded on demand session available 24 hours after the end of the session. Whether you participate live or access the recordings, you’ll learn new tools and strategies for building and using your professional communication toolkit.
Sessions
- Your Communication Toolkit: Practical Tools to Build Your Communication Skill Set (on demand)
- What’s Keeping You Stuck: Exploring Your Ineffective Patterns So You Can Replace Them with Ones that Work
- Real World Strategies for Setting and Keeping Healthy Boundaries and Asking for What You Need Without Feeling Selfish, Greedy or Guilty
- Offering Your Professional Input with Compassion and Clarity
- Problem Solving Using Mediation Negotiating Strategies
- Working with Difficult Personalities
Your Communication Toolkit: Practical Tools to Boost Your Communication Skill Set
This on demand session in the foundation for your new communication toolkit. It outlines several tried and true user-friendly, practical tools that will transform the way you communicate with others. In the next live sessions, you’ll see how to put these tools to work in a variety of situations.
What’s Keeping You Stuck: Exploring Your Ineffective Patterns So You Can Replace Them with Ones that Work
Before you can put new habits in place, and effective communication is a habit that’s practiced and honed regularly, you need to make space for the new by letting go of the old. In this session, we’ll look at your self-sabotaging habits, what emotional pay-offs and fears are keeping them in place, and we’ll develop ideas on how to gently let them go. Everyone moves at their own pace when it comes to change however self-awareness is always the first step.
Real World Strategies for Setting and Keeping Healthy Boundaries and Asking for What You Need Without Feeling Selfish, Greedy or Guilty
Setting and keeping healthy boundaries and asking for what you need are essential skills for household staffers who want to be happy and successful in their positions while having a healthy life / work balance. But they’re not easy tasks. Unfortunately, many of us have an inner voice that too often tells us that advocating on our own behalf is somehow selfish or wrong or just too scary. But our silence doesn’t make the wants and needs go away, it just creates a chronic feeling of lack – of time, of support, of being respected – and injects a subtle yet destructive mix of anger and resentment into our employment relationships. But it’s never too late to learn to be a great boundary setter and asker. I promise.
Offering Your Professional Feedback with Compassion and Clarity
Part of your job as a professional is sharing your feedback when it’s necessary. This could be sharing feedback with your boss, a co-worker, or another staffer that you supervise. It’s especially difficult sharing your thoughts and feelings when you suspect (or know!) they won’t be well received. Sharing a “negative” message is difficult even when we know it’s a necessary thing. But the alternative – silence – is a heavy burden to carry and over time, is destructive to your job, yourself, and the relationship.
In this session, you’ll learn how to use clear, concise language to craft your message, avoid blaming, accusing, and judging, and keep the conversation on track so your message stays front and center, all while supporting the other person as they process your message.
Problem Solving Using Mediation Negotiating Strategies
Problem solving is built in to every household staffing job description. Being able to respectfully work with others to find a creative solution to whatever problem you’re facing – a boss that’s coming in late 3 nights a week, a co-nanny that has a different caregiving philosophy than yours, a vendor that needs to make some corrections on a job – is key to being a stand-out employee. In this session, you’ll learn tried and true negotiation strategies used in mediations to work through conflict and come up with solutions that work for both parties.
Working with Difficult Personalities
Let’s face it; some people are just difficult to work with. For some, it’s because they have a personality type that’s difficult overall and for others, it’s because their personality type and yours have natural conflict. Whatever the reason, it’s essential to know how to successfully work with difficult personalities rather than shut down, get defensive, blow up, or ignore them and hope the problem goes away. In this session, we’ll look at the most common difficult personality traits and dive into the skills that will help you navigate conversations and problem-solving sessions.
Meet the Trainer, Lora Brawley
Lora’s passionate about helping nannies and parents effectively navigate the search and hiring process, building long-term, positive nanny / family relationships, and improving the quality of nanny care through supporting, connecting, and training caregivers. In her 30 years in the nanny industry, she’s earned a reputation for providing a unique blend of common-sense strategies, intuitive guidance, and real world tools to her parent and nanny clients.
All of Lora’s trainings are infused with her expertise in interpersonal communication and conflict resolution. As a certified family mediator, conflict coach, and communications trainer, she helps others to learn transformative communication skills and to bring those skills to life in their personal and professional relationships.
