A leading care provider recognised the need for its care coordinators to effectively manage high-pressure interactions between service users, their families, and field staff. The emotional toll of coordinating care for vulnerable children and adults and balancing multiple priorities often led to challenging conversations. To address these issues, the care provider implemented a tailored Difficult Conversations Training Programme to equip care coordinators with the communication tools and strategies to navigate these high-stress situations confidently.
CASE STUDY
Empowering Care Coordinators through Difficult Conversations Training for a Leading Care Provider
Background
Challenges
Care coordinators faced the following key challenges:
- Managing emotional conversations with families and field staff often led to miscommunication and conflict.
- Balancing multiple competing priorities created additional stress and impacted decision-making.
- Navigating performance issues or changes in care plans required coordinators to communicate clearly, often in intense circumstances.
Objectives
The goal of the training was to empower care coordinators by:
- Enhancing their ability to prepare for and conduct difficult conversations with clarity and compassion.
- Providing tools to manage emotional triggers and responses, enabling them to remain calm and composed in high-stress interactions.
Fostering a supportive work environment that encourages open communication and reduces conflicts, ultimately leading to better care for service users and higher staff retention.
Framework Component: Strategic Communication and Emotional Resilience
This case focused on equipping care coordinators to handle sensitive, high-stress interactions using the Team Dynamics Framework.
Training Delivered:
I designed a Difficult Conversations Training Programme that included workshops on emotional management and communication strategies. Coordinators engaged in guided simulations to build confidence and learn to de-escalate emotionally charged situations effectively.
Approach
The Difficult Conversations Training Programme was designed to address these challenges directly. The programme consisted of:
- Pre-Work: A reflective questionnaire allowing care coordinators to identify their stress triggers and assess their current communication strategies.
- Interactive Training Sessions: Over two sessions, care coordinators learned practical techniques for handling difficult conversations, managing emotions, and fostering more transparent communication. Scenarios included dealing with sensitive family discussions and addressing performance issues with staff.
- Strategic Conversations: The training focused on the importance of strategic communication, ensuring that coordinators approached each conversation with clear objectives and outcomes. This approach helped reduce stress and improve team collaboration and overall job satisfaction.
- Post-Training Follow-Up: A 60-minute online follow-up session reinforced the skills learned during training, allowing participants to reflect on their experiences and further refine their communication strategies.
Outcomes
- Improved confidence: Care coordinators reported feeling more confident handling difficult conversations, leading to fewer misunderstandings and conflicts in their daily roles.
- Enhanced emotional management: Coordinators could recognise and manage their emotional triggers, which helped them remain calm and focused during challenging interactions.
- More robust team dynamics: Open communication became more prevalent within the team, reducing workplace conflicts and fostering a more supportive environment. This improved team morale and led to better care outcomes for service users.
Sydney Hayden, in the healthcare sector, shared her experience with the training: “If there is a session that could benefit any individual in the workplace, it’s Difficult Conversation training with Adele. I’ve used Adele’s techniques to decenter myself from tense, difficult conversations I usually dread. It has empowered me to embrace my leadership qualities and vastly reduced my need to consult senior management about difficult conversations. There are unconscious patterns I’ve been stagnant in that Adele has guided me to recognise – I cannot overstate how useful it has been.”
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