Conversation Skills
Leaders Who Coach™ Module 3
Leaders Who Coach™ have an enhanced command of conversation skills. They are very intentional in how they listen, ask questions and use language to make sure their conversation partner or direct report wants to stay in conversation with them.
Being influential rests on your ability to actively practice two fundamental principles in conversations:
- Putting the person in front of you at the centre of and in control of designing the solution
- Flexing with a range of conversation techniques, including role-playing and challenging, that best suits the situation
Leaders Who Coach™ demonstrate greater comfort in exploring the emotion in situations, can distinguish between opinion and evidence, and are skilful in how they challenge assumptions and expand their direct report’s consideration of options.
Conversation Skills is the 3rd Competency Group in Leaders Who Coach™.
Course Outcomes
- Understand the WHO Energy Model, and the impact of negative and positive mindsets on your direct report’s ability to self-resolve issues
- Clarify your role in bringing about shifts in perspective and energy within your direct report
- Understand the impact of placing your direct report in charge of designing their own solutions
- Experience why and how deep (active) listening brings about a deeper level of self-awareness in your direct report
- Gain comfort and confidence in exploring your direct report’s emotions, limiting beliefs and possibility blockers
- Learn to respond to strong emotions without getting emotionally triggered or derailing yourself
- Learn to use the six sets of questions for different conversation stages and outcomes, including clarifying thoughts and intentions
- How to explore difficult topics sensitively and/or challenge with compassion
- Develop a personal bank of good questions and phrases to create forward movement in conversations
- Use your direct report’s language contributes to psychological safety
- Develop a more conscious use of stories, metaphors and analogies to help your direct report access and understand new concepts
Everything that you learn in this course prepares you for Leaders Who Coach™ Module 4 — Capability & Capacity of Teams, where you bring all your skills together to grow your direct reports in practical, tangible and strategic ways.
FORMAT | Self-Paced Course |
START DATE | Anytime |
DURATION | 3+ Weeks |
TIME | 2.5 Hours/Week |
CPD CREDIT | 7 HRS |
PRICE | £199 |
Pre-requisite Courses:
Personal Values & Blind Spots
Grounded & Connected
FORMAT | Cohort Course |
COHORT CALLS | 3 Live Calls Thursdays, 10am GMT |
DURATION | 3 Weeks |
TIME | 4 Hours/Week |
CPD CREDIT | 11.5 HRS |
PRICE | £499 |
2021 Enrolment Dates
Pre-requisite Courses:
Personal Values & Blind Spots
Grounded & Connected
Course Details
Conversation Skills is the 3rd Competency in Leaders Who Coach™
Conversation Skills takes you through the next 3 of 12 skills of Leaders Who Coach™.
Meet your tutors

Mag Leahy
Mag graduated as a Coach from Kingstown College, Dublin, with an Advanced Diploma in Personal, Leadership and Executive Coaching. One of the first students of CPD Certified Leaders Who Coach™, Mag is a trusted and inspiring member of the Better Conversations team.
A seasoned Technologist, Mag has worked across many industries and continents during her 20 year career. She realised early that the best teams collaborate openly, everyone is heard and valued, the sense of connection is strong, growth is vital, authenticity is enabled, and position and trust are earned.
Committed to Diversity and Inclusion, Mag is a committed speaker and Executive Coach focused on bringing about changes in collaboration with others.
Mag is Irish, a passionate traveller currently learning Spanish, animal lover, and partner to an equally curly haired novelist. Mag is gaining new perspectives on life, empathy, and resilience through her continuing journey with Long Covid. Never stop loving and learning!

Sehaam Cyrene PCC

Sehaam is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC), founder of Better Conversations, and creator of the online course for leaders, CPD Certified Leaders Who Coach™.
A seasoned entrepreneur and business owner, her coaching, consulting and teaching focuses drawing out the human in us to deepen our understanding of one another and strengthen our relationships. Because it’s our ability to reach across the divide and build inviting bridges, emotional connections, that earn us permission to influence for good.
Sehaam is also the host of Better Conversations Podcast, giving her the privilege of exploring the minds of many diverse and wonderful humans, and holding disarmingly intimate conversations about conversations.
Of Arab-English heritage, she is a single mum to 3 teenagers, a Fox Red Labrador and a long-haired ginger cat to match. Every morning is feeding time at the zoo.
Keep Growing
Follow-on with Module 4 — Capability & Capacity of Teams »


SELF-PACED or COHORT | LEARN MORE »
Belong to a global community
Meet Growth Minded Leaders Like You
Leaders enrolled on our courses are committed to bringing out the best in others by learning the conversation skills that build stronger relationships and support their people to achieve their goals. You’ll be in good company.
Expand Your Network
Meet new leaders at all levels and from all sectors in our online community and in live discussions that are open to our global community or that are part of our courses and certificate programmes.
Get Tutor & Peer Feedback
Leaders on our courses and Better Conversations tutors are always ready to give feedback and are generous with their knowledge, experiences and techniques for coaching conversations with their team, peers and other key stakeholders, like clients and suppliers.

Testimonials from Leaders Who Coach™ Graduates…

I had not thought too much about taking a leadership course when Sehaam asked if I might be interested in Leaders Who Coach™.
Managing a team of 21 (including other people managers), I knew I wanted to learn more and be a better manager. I’d been working with Sehaam as my coach for a while and saw many opportunities with the course as it was focused on coaching and conversation skills. Communicating with clarity has always been an area I’d like to improve in!
I found the course extremely beneficial for my role, and I learnt new skills every week. The group I worked with was amazing, and we had productive conversations every week, which further enhanced my learnings and takeaways. Sehaam is both an excellent coach and course leader! The weekly tutorials were easy to follow, and the assignments kept me accountable each week.
As we’ve now wrapped up the course, I find myself going back to my learnings again and again. I feel more confident in my conversation skills and awareness of how I can communicate with more clarity. Not only am I able to have more productive 1:1s, but I am also able to coach my direct reports to be better people managers and leaders who coach themselves.

Leaders Who Coach™ is a great course for getting the most out of your team. It is an honour to lead people and your people are the company’s biggest asset.
Throughout the Leaders Who Coach™ course, we learned to listen to our direct reports, spot areas to delve into thoroughly, as well as action plan and ensure tasks are delivered and ownership achieved.
In a broader sense, the course made me trust my team more and reduce the chance of unmet deadlines. Great course, great teacher and the Enrichment Cohort, talking to other people in similar situations really helped to get different opinions.

When I first signed up for Leaders Who Coach™, I was intrigued to explore what a leader who coaches looked like. Having worked with Sehaam before as an Executive Coach, I knew that I would get prompts for deep thinking, reflection and that a lot care would have gone into the materials.
I hadn’t prepared for just how much richness there was throughout this journey! It exceeded my expectations. I got a clear sense of what my core values are, had enlightening conversations with those closest to me to understand how others receive my communication, shone light onto my blind spots, and got multiple opportunities to practice my listening and conversation skills.
The video content was well structured, easy to digest and the cheatsheets were handy quick reminders that I could keep with me day-to-day. The Enrichment Calls were exceptionally valuable, even on days when I felt like I might not have much to add or was tired, I came away feeling nourished and refreshed.
Through this course, I’ve gained the confidence to trust in my leadership, lead in ways which align with my values and to shake off the pressures of what I’ve thought “leadership” traditionally looks like. I’m excited to work with others and walk the journey with them, seeing them thrive in their own decision-making and be a resource rather than an instructor.
Real growth, confidence & mastery in leadership

I have defined my leadership style through this course, established my values and the type of leader I want to become through a foundation of continuous improvement and learning. I’m more confident actually having a conversation about my leadership qualities now. This was something I struggled with and avoided prior to coming on this course.
It has given me confidence in leadership that was completely missing before coming on this course. The Leaders Who Coach™ course has been a journey of learning and a healing process where I have reconciled the experiences of the past with the vision for my future.
I enjoyed the Enrichment Calls the most — the opportunity to share the week’s learning, and trial that learning in a safe space with trusted fellow cohort members, was really exciting!
Sehaam Cyrene is first-class as a tutor – calm, engaging, funny and generous – combined with her experience, knowledge and expertise, you learn in an environment that is very empowering!

Leaders Who Coach™ is built upon weekly skills and capabilities modules. Each one includes learning and assignments but the value game changer for me was the weekly Enrichment Calls. These were an opportunity to explore real-life situations and practice the capabilities with Sehaam and fellow students. Digital environments which focus on experiences which are intentional and interactive work for me.
Sehaam’s course also left me with a deeper awareness of who I am.
Coaches have an open, non-judgemental, and instinctive capacity to understand where we’re at and where we’re trying to get to. They prioritise relationships over tasks and build trust from the get-go.
Our society needs these capacities at scale because without trust, truth and cohesion, nothing works. This isn’t a quick fix, and we can’t impose it either. It’s a process we must always work in a space which Leaders Who Coach™ can hold for us to explore together.

I wasn’t doing my best as a leader or for my team outside of technical growth, so when the opportunity to join Leaders Who Coach™ came up, I was interested in the content and the way the course seemed to approach leadership.
The lectures and assignments were of fantastic quality and the lectures were certainly ones to pay attention to, easy to digest and take notes on. The assignments actually made me take action in the real world rather than looking at theoretical scenarios so I actively made an impact.
Sehaam was fantastic — her passion and knowledge coming through during the Enrichment Calls with the group. Not letting people stay silent is a good skill to have as a tutor!
I can say I have grown as a leader and am certainly still growing. My team have noticed a difference on how I approach topics and questions, and I don’t immediately drive to a solution from my own opinions. They’ve been receptive of the initial one-to-ones that we’ve had and are starting to drive their own growth roadmaps even during a very busy period.
I really enjoyed the course. I had no expectations due to never having completed a management course but I feel like I have gone from zero to learning a lot!
…and their rating of Leaders Who Coach™

Highly Recommended by Leaders

Quality of Content

Knowledgeable Tutor

Real Role Assignments & Practical Skills

Enrichment Call Content & Discussions

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Our courses earn you globally recognised Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Credits or Hours.