Advanced Communication: Persuasion, Conflict and High-Stakes Talk

By the end

What you'll build

• Map the people in a decision by role, interest, fear and the evidence each one actually moves on
• Distinguish a stated position from the interest underneath it, and surface the interest with a question that does not read as a challenge
• Choose and defend a frame honestly, and run six reframing moves without using 'but' or 'actually'
• Build a case with one claim, sourced evidence and a warrant written out as a full sentence
• Apply the disclosure, reversibility, interest and exit tests to your own persuasion before you use it
• Generate options and agree an objective criterion instead of trading concessions under pressure
• State a walk-away point as a specific action with a date, distinguishing information from threat
• Run the de-escalation sequence — slow, name, reflect, ask, propose — and write an apology that names the act, the impact and one concrete change
• Mediate between two colleagues using a structured sequence, and recognise the conflicts that must go to a formal channel instead
• Deliver unwelcome news headline-first, disagree upward before a decision, and stay coherent under hostile questioning

Curriculum

What's inside

7 modules · 48 lessons

1. 01

   Reading the Room: Audience and What Changes a Mind

   7 lessons
   • Start Here: What This Course Is and Is Not
   • What Actually Changes a Mind
   • Audience Analysis: Mapping the Room Before You Speak
   • Check: Audience and Mind-Changequiz
   • Lab: Build a Stakeholder Map for a Real Decisionwriting lab
   • + 2 more lessons
2. 02

   Framing and Reframing

   7 lessons
   • Frames: The Sentence Before the Argument
   • Six Reframing Moves
   • When Not to Reframe
   • Fill the Blank: Frame Wordsfill blank
   • Metaphors That Carry a Framemetaphor idiom
   • + 2 more lessons
3. 03

   The Persuasive Case: Claim, Evidence, Warrant — and Its Ethics

   7 lessons
   • Claim, Evidence, Warrant
   • Evidence That Survives Contact
   • The Ethics of Persuasion
   • Check: Structure and Ethicsquiz
   • Template: The One-Page Casespeech template
   • + 2 more lessons
4. 04

   Principled Negotiation as a Communication Discipline

   7 lessons
   • Positions and Interests
   • Options and Objective Criteria
   • Your Walk-Away Point, and How to Say It
   • Check: Negotiation as Communicationquiz
   • Recall: Negotiation Vocabularyflashcard sr
   • + 2 more lessons
5. 05

   Heat: De-escalation and the Apology That Works

   7 lessons
   • What Heat Does to Language
   • De-escalation, Step by Step
   • The Apology That Works
   • Writing Lab: Draft a Real Apologywriting lab
   • Speaking Lab: Slow, Name, Reflectspeaking lab
   • + 2 more lessons
6. 06

   Standing in the Middle: Mediation, Hard News and Disagreeing Upward

   7 lessons
   • Standing in the Middle: The Third-Party Role
   • A Sequence for Mediating Between Two Colleagues
   • Unwelcome News, and Disagreeing With Someone Senior
   • Interview Lab: Run a Mediation Openinginterview lab
   • Writing Lab: The Unwelcome-News Messagewriting lab
   • + 2 more lessons
7. 07

   Under Fire, and the Capstone

   6 lessons
   • Staying Coherent Under Hostile Questioning
   • Capstone Brief: What You Are Producing
   • Timer: Rehearse the Four-Minute Casetimer
   • Presence Lab: Hold Steady in the Hard Minutepresence lab
   • Capstone Part One: Deliver the High-Stakes Casespeech practice
   • + 1 more lesson

The shape of it

How this course works