The HBS Club of CT Presents Sharon Grady and

"How to Have the Conversations You Dread" Workshop

Thursday April 10, 2008    6-8 pm

Greenwich Library First Floor Meeting Room

Learn to successfully navigate your most challenging conversations at a dynamic and interactive workshop. 

Sharon’s workshops on discussing difficult topics always get high marks from HBS audiences. She joins us this year with new insights and exercises to help successfully manage our most sensitive conversations, including:

- Delivering “constructive” feedback to a sensitive colleague

- Saying “no” to an important and demanding client

- Delivering an unsatisfactory performance review to an employee

- Negotiating family time with your spouse

- Deciding with your spouse whether his/her elderly parent will come to live with you

 A skillful coach and educator, Sharon teaches senior executives how to manage conflict and build relationships. Her clients have included American Express, Merck, IBM, Ford, Sears, Royal Bank of Canada, Harvard Business School, MIT, Tudor Investments and Wachovia Bank.

 Among the topics Sharon will explore in this session are:

- What makes certain conversations so challenging for each of us

- Why our usual responses are so often ineffective

- Practical techniques for speaking the truth in a non-threatening way

 Come prepared with examples of your own difficult conversations to work on. It will be a fun and interactive evening!

Click here to purchase tickets at $15 per person!

About Our Speaker

Sharon Grady helps executives and senior teams develop the collaboration and communication skills that determine their success as leaders.

A skillful coach and educator, Sharon has particular expertise in conflict management and difficult conversations. Her clients have included Ford, Merck, IBM, DuPont, American Express, Sears, Royal Bank of Canada, Harvard Business School, MIT, Northeastern University, US West, Wachovia Bank, Consolidated Freightways, Sylvania Mexico, Omni Hotels, Tufts Healthcare, Data General, and McKesson. Sharon’s recent engagements include:

·        Teaching senior executives at a Fortune 100 firm to optimize their strategic effectiveness by using collaboration and productive dialog techniques. Sharon was rated the most effective facilitator in the case-based education program.

·        Delivering targeted coaching and education to help senior executives at a global financial institution deliver difficult performance reviews. Both the executives and their direct reports judged the post-intervention performance reviews written by the executives to be more specific, more actionable, and more motivating than those written prior to the coaching.

·        Teaching the senior team of a major financial institution how to speak candidly to one another and how to deal directly and effectively with conflict. Client comment: “A very productive use of time - maybe even a watershed moment for [our firm].”

·        Coaching a senior executive with strained peer relationships to develop collaboration skills. The executive’s performance improvement was rated “inspirational” by management and resulted in promotion.

Sharon began her consulting career at Mercer Management Consulting in Boston. At Mercer, she trained client teams in TQM and process reengineering, and then coached them through the redesign of business processes such as in-bound call handling, equipment repair, and billing.

Sharon’s work with client teams increased her appreciation of communication’s impact on business outcomes, and led her to found The Grady Company, a consulting firm dedicated to improving the candor and effectiveness of senior level dialogue. Sharon has also served as Chief Operating Officer of Interaction Associates, a global provider of collaboration consulting and leadership education; and as press secretary to US Congresswoman Barbara B. Kennelly.

Sharon is an adjunct faculty member with Duke Corporate Education, the custom executive education provider ranked #1 by Business Week and the Financial Times.  She also teaches with Triad, the communications consulting firm founded by the authors of Difficult Conversations. A frequent guest lecturer and speaker, Sharon has addressed audiences at the Harvard Business School, Tufts University, The Conference Board, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. She is an active member of the HBS Network of Women Alumni, and past chair of the Network’s Entrepreneurial Forum. She is also a past board member of A Better Chance, a non-profit organization that provides educational opportunities to students of color.

Sharon holds a B.A. in English (magna cum laude) from Wesleyan University and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School’s Advanced Program on Negotiation, and speaks fluent Spanish.

Click here to purchase tickets at $15 per person!