[from our archive]

A few months ago I attended this conference that focuses on helping women in their career and personal development. This gave me an opportunity to learn about  many topics including conflict management, negotiation and positive confrontation techniques, presentation skills etc. All these, known as soft skills or people skills, can help one in his/her professional and personal lives to deal with other people and be a more effective person. I am going to share some of those here with our readers.

There was a talk about “The Power of Positive Confrontation” by Barbara Patcher. This is from her book with the same title. She said, many sticky situations we face in our day to day life, sometimes we are bothered by other peoples’ behavor, yet very seldom we are able to confront those people politely and powerfully. Either we don’t say anything (but say it in their back) or we say it rudely, either way it makes the realtionship worse. But if we can deal the situation with positive confrontation techniques we could solve some issues at the same time improve the realtionships with those people. Interstingly enough, she says she was this person who was never able to confront, she herself spent a lot of time in her adult life learning this skill.

Pat Kirkland gave a talk on “How to Manage with Power”. In the power game we are either a predator or a prey. She taught a way when even if you are considered a prey you can act such a way that you can take control and achieve a positive result. Both the parties can be in a win-win relationship. One doesn’t need to a boss always to manage with power, things she said could help the employees to take control. This skill can help in any relationship, be it between a parent and a child, a husband and a wife or a  manager and an employee.

Barbara Stanny mentioned something that really opened my eyes. She said if you want to make a significant difference in your life you have to come out of your comfort zone. You have to strech your capabilities in order to make a leap. Think about it – when you want to jump you  are to put more energy than when you are walking but the jump takes you to a higher position than you were before.

There a was a talk by Patricia Fripp on presentation skills. Key points were, don’t start with something clich’e (stereotype ). The opening should say what you are going to talk about, then talk about it and in summary say what you just talked about. For example, you are the third speaker in a meeting, you start with, “Ladies and gentlemen, Thanks for taking time today to come to this meeting…”, do you think that is really getting any attention from your audience? Not really. Insead you could say, “In the next fifteen minutes, you are going to hear about some magnificient story about …”.

I personally was very excited to learn about all such things and so these days I started reading more on these topics. Below is a list of books from those speakers and others in case anyone is interested. And no, I am not getting anything for this free advertisement:). Hope our readers will be benefitted from these as well.
-Sharmin

Book list:

Fripp, Patricia – Get What You Want
Fripp, Patricia – DVD: Preparing Powerful Talk
Fripp, Patricia – CD: Inside Secrets
Fripp, Patricia -Opportunity Doesn’t Knock
Gandy and Clark – Choose! The Role that Choice Plays in Shaping Women’s Lives
Harvey and Herrild – Comfortable Chaos
Laschever, Sara – Women Don’t Ask
Pachter, Barbara – The Jerk with the Cell Phone: A Survival Guide for the Rest of Us
Pachter, Barbara – The Power of Positive Confrontation
Pachter, Barbara – When the Little Things Count…and They Always Count
Stanny, Barbara – Overcoming Underearning
Stanny, Barbara – Prince Charming Isn’t Coming
Stanny, Barbara – Secrets of Six Figure Women
Stanny, Barbara – Why Women Earn Less: How to Make What You are Really Worth