Communication and self-awareness
Self-awareness and positive communication
Understand why you communicate the way you do before trying to change anything. Two days: an Enneagram test to place how you operate, then practical techniques to ask, refuse and criticise without attacking.
What you will be able to do
- Know the nine Enneagram types and the notions of integration and disintegration
- Identify your own personality type and what it imposes on your communication
- Use your wings to widen your communication range
- Give constructive corrective feedback using the sandwich technique
- Make a request, a refusal and a criticism without aggression using NVC
- Respond accurately to judgements, generalisations and manipulation
Programme
Knowing yourself better
- What is at stake, and what there is to gain, in working on how you operate
- A 140-question Enneagram test on communication and behaviour
- Strengths, talents and watch-points of your profile
- Understanding your motivations and where your way of communicating comes from
- Setting a precise development goal rather than a good resolution
Filters and traps
- The iceberg: what we say, what we think, what the other person hears
- Beliefs, interpretations and each person's frame of reference
- The Karpman drama triangle and manipulation games
The keys to positive communication
- Assertiveness: being fair, genuine and precise
- Adapting your communication to the other person's personality
- Making a request without aggression using nonviolent communication
Techniques for difficult situations
- Saying no calmly, without guilt or excessive justification
- Voicing a criticism that is about a fact and not about the person
- Responding to bad faith and objections
- Responding to aggression: generalisations, judgements, distortions
Questions about this course
How does it differ from “Know yourself to communicate and assert yourself better”?
This course spends half its time on communication techniques — NVC, refusing, criticising, responding to aggression — with the Enneagram as the starting point for understanding why some phrasings cost you more than others. The three-day course goes deeper into the Enneagram itself, its nine types and their dynamics, and adds a day a few weeks later on assertiveness. If your goal is to be more at ease in difficult conversations, take this one.
Does the test determine my profile once and for all?
No, and that limitation is stated during the session. A questionnaire gives a working hypothesis that each person confirms or sets aside on reading the descriptions. Participants regularly recognise themselves in a different type from the one the test indicated: their own sense of it is what counts, not the score.
Does nonviolent communication work with someone who does not practise it?
Yes, and that is precisely its value: it requires no reciprocity. Making a request that separates the fact, the feeling and the need works even on someone who knows nothing about the method, because it removes the accusation they would have responded to. What does not work is using NVC vocabulary while keeping the intent of a reproach.
Will I have to talk about my personal life during the course?
No. The work focuses on professional situations, and everyone chooses what they share. Test results are given back individually and nothing obliges a participant to announce their profile to the group, even if most do so spontaneously after half a day.
Related courses
DISC and Driving Forces
Two days on two complementary instruments: DISC describes how someone behaves, Driving Forces describe what drives them underneath. Each participant receives their individual report and leaves with a strategy for the people they find hardest to work with.
Know yourself to communicate and assert yourself better
The long format, with a third day a few weeks later. Three days to place your profile, understand where your way of communicating comes from, and gain practical responses to aggression and manipulation.