#225. Sarah Goes to School: Understanding Others, Personal Values, Difficult Conversations

Thinking caps on, ladies! Class is in session!

Once again, Sarah’s sharing study notes from her graduate courses at Concordia University Irvine’s Townsend Institute for Counseling and Leadership. In this stimulating episode, she covers:

• Macro cultures and their effect on organizations and communities
• The value of articulating personal values, mission, and vision statements
• A helpful model for engaging in difficult conversations

"What happens when we avoid hard conversations?” Sarah asks. “Things fester, grow, become more of a problem, become more stressful, and become harder to manage, right? So if we have the confidence to deal with something at the start, we can manage things in a better, more productive way. ... We want to ultimately build up relationships and become closer to people, and dealing with conflict in a healthy manner can actually do that. Building up a culture of healthy confrontation means people live in truth with each other rather than avoiding the truth.”

Resources referenced in this episode include:

• “Having Difficult but Effective Conversations” by Dr. John Townsend
• Organizational Culture and Leadership by Edgar H. Schein

Click to learn more about CUI’s Townsend Institute for Counseling and Leadership.

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