Charles Wisner Speaking Topics

• The Untapped Power of Conversations

  We live in conversations like fish in water. From day one we effortless adopt communication patterns from our families and cultures. These patterns operate in the background of our consciousness and serve us well, until they don't.

  My book lays out and explores four types of conversations • storytelling, collaborative, creative and commitment. These are powerful distinctions that increase our awareness of how and why conversations work and why they often don't. The tools and practices of each conversation help us better understand our autopilot patterns, how to change them, and how to be more mindful and effective at work and home. Each type of conversation presents tools and practices ranging from self-awareness to the promises we make that determine who we are and how we show up in conversation. Whether leading an organization, team, or a community group, the new insights can be practically applied to purposefully create more successful conversations.

  Attendees Results:

  • Become aware of their conversational patterns and discover transforming possibilities
  • Learn to process their private negative thinking into productive dialogue.
  • Understand the relationship between awareness, the ego, and talking on autopilot.
  • Adopt communication tools that will increase collaboration and creativity.
  • Adopt the full power of commitment conversations to build trust and accelerate success.

• Killing the Deadly Meeting

  Who among us hasn't sat through boring meetings only to feel like it's Groundhog Day in the next weekly roundup? The only medium by which meetings succeed or fail is conversations. Unfortunately, meetings have been on the same treadmill for years, running the same play book. The tools of my book, The Art of Conscious Conversations, provides a new lens through which we better understand and implement conversational distinctions for making meetings, more dynamic, streamlined, and purposeful. No more filling time, going in circles, unclear results, or letting the loudest voice or most senior person in the room dominate.Having conscious conversations in meetings creates psychological safety, engagement, and wiser decisions.

  Attendee Results:

  • Learn to apply a methodology that increases participation and collaboration.
  • Avoid bad decisions that bypass two critical conversations.
  • Reconsider and change their communication patterns in meetings.
  • Learn how slowing down the conversations makes for better decisions.
  • Reconsider the cultural meeting norms that make participation and success difficult.

Turning Down Our Inner Critic

The committee in our head, always ready with advice, is a conversational pattern that derails our attention, listening, and ability to collaborate. A comment by a colleague or boss can send us spinning down a funnel of worry and despair. Using the tools in my book, The Art of Conscious Conversations, we will explore the relationships between our egos, the voices in our head, that hamper our ability to effectively communicate. A fresh look at investigating the committee dramatically changes how we talk and listen in the face of conflict and stressful conversations. The methodology of processing our private unexplored thinking guides us to reconsider our desires and goals, examine our standards, and become more mindful and able to manage issues of power misalignment.

Attendee Results:

• Re-acquaint themselves with their private thoughts and conversations
• Avoid the two deadly mistakes that shut down or exacerbate conversations.
• Learn four questions to process negative judgments and transform a conversation.
• Model humility and vulnerability to enhance open and honest communication.
• Re-design a conversation and undo damage done and rebuild trust.