Interpersonal communication
Self-awareness and positive communication
The foundation course behind most of ABP's other programmes. Two days using DISC and the Enneagram to understand your own communication defaults, recognise where they cost you, and build the flexibility to work with people who operate differently.
What you will be able to do
- Know the 9 base types of the Enneagram
- Know the notions of integration and disintegration
- Know your own personality base type in the Enneagram
- Use your "wings" to improve your communication and move your projects forward
- Give constructive corrective feedback using the "sandwich" technique
- Give constructive positive feedback using non-violent communication
- Answer aggression or manipulation (judgements, generalisations, distortions) accurately with a proven technique
Programme
Knowing yourself better
- What is at stake, and what you get out of it
- A 140-question Enneagram assessment on communication and behaviour
- Defining your strengths and talents
- The points to watch in your behaviour and your communication
- Understanding your motivations and what drives you
- Understanding where your way of communicating comes from
- Setting one precise objective for progress
The filters that distort communication
- The iceberg
- Beliefs — interpretation, and the private world each person carries
The traps to avoid
- The Karpman triangle
- Manipulation games
The keys to positive communication
- Assertiveness: being fair, truthful and precise at once
Techniques
- Adapting your communication to the other person's type
- Making a request without aggression, using non-violent communication
- Refusing — saying no calmly, without guilt and without leaving frustration behind
- Expressing a criticism
- Answering bad faith and objections
- Answering an aggressor — generalisations, judgements
What this course gives you
Understanding your personality and your way of communicating is the essential foundation of your personal development and your career. This course pinpoints precise individual areas to work on and works on them in depth. First, you discover the Enneagram, an internationally recognised self-awareness tool that shows which behavioural objectives to work towards and how to act concretely to reach them. Then the trainer gives you concrete interpersonal communication tools, suited to your personality, to make your everyday communication easier.
- Analyse your strengths and areas for progress through the Enneagram, to assert yourself and perform better at work
- Use positive communication techniques at work: in sales, in management, in working relationships
- Assert yourself with effective, concrete techniques
- Face aggression and manipulation with simple methods
E-learning available
An e-learning module on the Enneagram complements the course. It stays available at any time, wherever you are and at your own pace.
Questions about this course
What is the difference between DISC and the Enneagram?
DISC describes observable behaviour — how you tend to act, particularly at work. The Enneagram describes motivation — what you are moving toward and away from underneath the behaviour. Two people can share a DISC profile for entirely different reasons, which is where the second model earns its place.
Are the results shared with my employer?
No. Individual profiles belong to the participant. Where a company commissions an in-company session we may report anonymised group patterns if that is agreed in advance, but never individual results, and participants are told exactly what will be shared before they complete anything.
Is the Enneagram scientifically validated?
Not in the way a psychometric instrument is, and we say so rather than overclaim. It is used here as a structured way to think about motivation and to have a better conversation, not as an assessment or a diagnosis. DISC is the more rigorously constructed of the two.
Can a whole team do this together?
Yes, and it is the format with the most durable effect. A team that shares this vocabulary can name a friction pattern out loud months later instead of privately concluding a colleague is difficult.
Related courses
Knowing yourself to communicate better and stand your ground
Knowing how you work is the foundation for communicating well and holding your ground. Three days built on the Enneagram — two together, then a third some weeks later, once you have tried the tools and found out where they break.
DISC and Driving Forces
Two days on two complementary instruments: DISC describes how someone behaves, Driving Forces describes why. Each participant receives an individual report and leaves with a relationship strategy for the colleagues they find hardest.