The Maunuhanga – Wellington Postdoctoral Society invites you to this Research Leadership Workshop for Early Career Researchers. The focus to be on developing effective conversation skills.

Effective conversation skills are useful for early career researchers when communicating with colleagues, collaborators, stakeholders, and students. As most early career researchers are still growing their networks, conversations with collaborators and stakeholders can be critical. We need to promote our research in both academic and non-academic contexts. Academically, we need to present our research to peer researchers and seek potential collaborations. Non-academically, we need to promote our research to industries, communities, and other stakeholders to seek cross-disciplinary collaboration and potential funding. Conversations with colleagues and students are equally important with more chances to practice it in our daily environment.

What it’s about
Effective communication starts with understanding what you want to achieve, and how you will know that you have. As Dr Genie Laborde says – communicating without an outcome, is like travelling without a destination.

It is about knowing that every situation is different, and different types of communication skills will be needed depending on each situation. For example, the approach to communicating when you need to be assertive, is quite different to one where you are helping someone solve a problem.

By the end of this session, you will:

• understand when to use different types of communications skills through exploring the Problem Ownership model – developed by Dr Thomas Gordon, author of P.E.T Parent Effectiveness Training, Leadership Effectiveness and many other books.
• learn the CDR model for conversations - Connect, Discover, Respond and the skills of:
  • setting the scene for the conversation,
  • building rapport and trust,
  • being culturally responsive
  • using Discovery Questions and Solution Focused Questions
  • Active Listening techniques such as Reflective Listening, and
  • being assertive and clear.

Date: 11 October 2024
Times: 1.10 – 2.40pm
Location: AM 103