The Business Case for Vital Conversations Training

Curious to know how vital conversations could make a quantifiable difference to your organisation’s success?

Organisations are currently haemorrhaging huge sums money and time as their people fail to proactively engage in vital yet often difficult conversations.

Employee relations & behaviour

Not proactively addressing poor performance or disruptive behaviour leads to poor results, protracted use of management and HR time, settlements or tribunal costs

Business case research soundbites

A recent survey by the government indicated that the average cost of an employment tribunal to the company was £7,000, although out-of-court settlements were often much higher. Research indicates that on average companies pay out £20K a year on tribunals, with organisations of 10,000 employees or more paying £210K a year.

A study in 2006 highlighted that in 70% of teams interviewed a member of the teams continued inappropriate or destructive behaviour had gone unchallenged by the teams manager for over a year. 30% reported that the employee’s behaviour had gone unchallenged for over 3 years!

Organisational silence

Major issues, personality clashes and poor decisions around key projects go unchallenged, leading to massive cost overruns or projects falling way short of the original objectives

Business case research soundbites

In a 2007 survey, 60% of employees reported that a key project they were involved in was seriously off track, yet 78% of those felt unable or ill-equipped to confront the key decision maker . Another study confirmed that 85% of project failures can be attributed to “organisational silence”

Leadership meetings without leadership.

Many leadership team meetings are transactional in nature, meaning that the leaders of the business spend the majority of their time simply updating each other rather than debating, clarifying and challenging the major issues and opportunities the organisation faces

Business case research soundbites

Although a Harvard study indicated that a resilient organisation needed leaders who could “face down reality”, there is no solid research on how effective leadership teams are at leading in the boardroom. My observations of facilitating over 20 senior teams suggest that key issues are not discussed and resolved in the group, but that decisions are made either unilaterally by one or two members or in subgroups or cliques outside regular meetings, leading to organisational politics, misunderstandings, unsupported decisions and poorly executed initiatives.