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Half Day | Max. 20 Participants
Workshop Outcomes
- Apply practical, immediately usable frameworks for effective communication
- Structure and open conversations with clear purpose and shared direction from the outset
- Navigate complex or resistant conversations while maintaining momentum and relationships
- Create clarity around outcomes, ownership and next steps in any conversation
- Build a consistent team approach to communication that strengthens alignment and accountability
Topics Covered
- Why Conversations Fail to Drive Action: Understanding common breakdowns in meetings and workplace discussions
- A Practical Framework for Action-Focused Conversations: Turning dialogue into decisions and committed action
- Setting Conversations Up for Success: Establishing purpose, outcomes and expectations from the start
- Navigating Complexity and Resistance: Maintaining progress in difficult or unclear situations
- Driving Clarity and Accountability: Ensuring ownership, follow-through and alignment across teams
Location
- Willing to work interstate
- Willing to work internationally
How can this workshop be delivered?
- Face to Face
- Virtual
Overview
In complex organisations, the quality of conversations directly determines the quality of outcomes. Yet many teams find that their meetings, briefings, and working discussions generate energy without clear direction, leaving people unclear on what was decided, who is accountable, and what happens next. This workshop addresses one of the most common and costly friction points in leadership: the gap between having a conversation and having a conversation that actually moves things forward. Participants develop the skills and habits to make their conversations more purposeful, clearer in their outcomes, and more reliably translated into committed action. The session draws on frameworks that are immediately applicable, not theoretical models that require months of practice before any value is realised. Whether the conversation is a team meeting, a difficult one-on-one, a stakeholder briefing, or a cross-agency negotiation, participants leave with a consistent and adaptable approach for ensuring clarity, ownership, and follow-through.
Workshop Outcomes
- Apply practical, immediately usable frameworks for effective communication
- Structure and open conversations with clear purpose and shared direction from the outset
- Navigate complex or resistant conversations while maintaining momentum and relationships
- Create clarity around outcomes, ownership and next steps in any conversation
- Build a consistent team approach to communication that strengthens alignment and accountability
Topics Covered
- Why Conversations Fail to Drive Action: Understanding common breakdowns in meetings and workplace discussions
- A Practical Framework for Action-Focused Conversations: Turning dialogue into decisions and committed action
- Setting Conversations Up for Success: Establishing purpose, outcomes and expectations from the start
- Navigating Complexity and Resistance: Maintaining progress in difficult or unclear situations
- Driving Clarity and Accountability: Ensuring ownership, follow-through and alignment across teams
Who is this workshop for
Leaders and teams who want to understand how to have conversations that actually move things forward.
Handouts/materials provided
Workshop materials and worksheets provided.
What to bring
A growth mindset and willingness to share experiences and learn.
Facilitator
About the facilitator
Marie O'Brien's consulting and coaching practices leverage the latest research in neuroscience and future of work studies. She works with forward thinking leaders, executives and emerging talent, helping them create and craft their own style of leadership by connecting with their strengths and behaviour patterns to understand how they interact with their surrounding environment. Marie is passionate about enabling individuals and organisations to reimagine and create more positive and productive relationships with work in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous world.
Marie has an exceptional background as a highly experienced and skilled organisational change consultant, facilitator and strategist. With over twenty years experience in facilitation-based organisational effectiveness programs, in both the private and public sector, Marie can be considered a true leader in her field.
Her career began in Federal Law Enforcement where her skills and knowledge led her into policy and process design, risk management and the creation and facilitation of high level values-based organisational effectiveness programs. She was instrumental in the initiation of the NSW Corruption Prevention Network establishing this industry body at a time of great need in both the public and private sector.
Some of the organisations Marie has worked with include multinational pharmaceuticals, high-profile telecommunications companies, blue chip financial organisations, federal and state public sector organisations and small to medium-sized enterprises in Australia and New Zealand. As General Manager Australia, Mariner7 (a Carter Holt Harvey Company), Marie’s passion for assisting organisations to reach high performance was realised. It was here that she implemented leading edge online performance practices and processes to support transparent, high-performing cultures within client organisations.
Marie's previous positions include a Committee Member of the AGCCKC (Australian Government Consultative Committee on Knowledge Capital), the Chair of the NSW Knowledge Management Forum, Board Member for the Institute for Information Management Ltd, a founding committee member of the Australasian (Most Innovative Knowledge Enterprises) MIKE Awards, Founding Chair of the NSW Corruption Prevention Committee and Convenor of the AHRI (Australian Human Resources Institute) NSW L&D Committee.
With an outstanding track record in business, Marie continues to consult to, coach and co-create with a broad client base in building learning organisations, organisational change and knowledge management as well as facilitate career empowerment programs.
“Thank you for all your support and professional coaching, although it’s your individual style and ability to connect that makes you so good at what you do on a personal level. You have really entrenched in me some very useful habits and styles, and I am very grateful. Wishing you every success with your future clients. They should consider themselves very fortunate to have you as their coach.” (Quote from an executive coaching client)
Key Expertise
- Influencing Skills
- Effective Communication
- Leading in Complexity
- Change and Transition
- Organisational Development
- Internal Consulting Skills
- Design Thinking
- Building Learning Organisations
- Knowledge Management
- Executive Coaching
Industry Focus
- Public Sector
- Private Sector - All Industries
- Compliance and Audit
Based in:
About the facilitator
Marie O'Brien's consulting and coaching practices leverage the latest research in neuroscience and future of work studies. She works with forward thinking leaders, executives and emerging talent, helping them create and craft their own style of leadership by connecting with their strengths and behaviour patterns to understand how they interact with their surrounding environment. Marie is passionate about enabling individuals and organisations to reimagine and create more positive and productive relationships with work in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous world.
Marie has an exceptional background as a highly experienced and skilled organisational change consultant, facilitator and strategist. With over twenty years experience in facilitation-based organisational effectiveness programs, in both the private and public sector, Marie can be considered a true leader in her field.
Her career began in Federal Law Enforcement where her skills and knowledge led her into policy and process design, risk management and the creation and facilitation of high level values-based organisational effectiveness programs. She was instrumental in the initiation of the NSW Corruption Prevention Network establishing this industry body at a time of great need in both the public and private sector.
Some of the organisations Marie has worked with include multinational pharmaceuticals, high-profile telecommunications companies, blue chip financial organisations, federal and state public sector organisations and small to medium-sized enterprises in Australia and New Zealand. As General Manager Australia, Mariner7 (a Carter Holt Harvey Company), Marie’s passion for assisting organisations to reach high performance was realised. It was here that she implemented leading edge online performance practices and processes to support transparent, high-performing cultures within client organisations.
Marie's previous positions include a Committee Member of the AGCCKC (Australian Government Consultative Committee on Knowledge Capital), the Chair of the NSW Knowledge Management Forum, Board Member for the Institute for Information Management Ltd, a founding committee member of the Australasian (Most Innovative Knowledge Enterprises) MIKE Awards, Founding Chair of the NSW Corruption Prevention Committee and Convenor of the AHRI (Australian Human Resources Institute) NSW L&D Committee.
With an outstanding track record in business, Marie continues to consult to, coach and co-create with a broad client base in building learning organisations, organisational change and knowledge management as well as facilitate career empowerment programs.
“Thank you for all your support and professional coaching, although it’s your individual style and ability to connect that makes you so good at what you do on a personal level. You have really entrenched in me some very useful habits and styles, and I am very grateful. Wishing you every success with your future clients. They should consider themselves very fortunate to have you as their coach.” (Quote from an executive coaching client)
Key Expertise
- Influencing Skills
- Effective Communication
- Leading in Complexity
- Change and Transition
- Organisational Development
- Internal Consulting Skills
- Design Thinking
- Building Learning Organisations
- Knowledge Management
- Executive Coaching
Industry Focus
- Public Sector
- Private Sector - All Industries
- Compliance and Audit
Based in:
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