|
All of our workshops are customized for the participants. For information on our workshop methodology, click here. Additional workshops are available upon request. Workshop content may be combined or modularized at the client’s request. These workshops listed below are representative of those we've presented to previous clients. |
|
Synopses of Training Workshops
|
All of our workshops are customized for the participants. Additional workshops are available upon request. Workshop content may be combined or modularized at the client’s request. |
WORKSHOP TITLE: Leadership for Staff Personnel: Getting Things Done When You’re Not in Charge |
This workshop is a 4-5 day course designed for organization members who are staff/team professionals in neither supervisory nor management positions. Training is in the experiential and practical application of principles, models, and strategies for increasing personal influence. The training is designed to increase self-knowledge, self-confidence, and to gain a better understanding of how their individual behavior impacts on others. Topics include, but are not limited to:
|
- Influence: Employing effective tactics for persuasion.
- Communication: Sending clear and convincing messages, and listening effectively
- Leadership: Inspiring and guiding groups and people.
- Change Agents: Initiating or mastering change.
- Conflict Management: Negotiating and resolving disagreements.
- Building Bonds: Nurturing instrumental relationships.
- Collaboration and Cooperation: Working with others toward shared goals.
- Team Capabilities: Creating group synergy in pursuing collective goals.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) Course |
This 5-day workshop provides first-time supervisors with the knowledge required to effectively lead people and manage teams. The purpose of this workshop is to help supervisors strengthen their leadership supervisory skills by examining self in relation to work, and self in relation to others within the context of the work environment.
LEAD is designed to address the human issues that bear upon a person’s effectiveness as a supervisor. The primary task of supervision is to accomplish work through others. This course helps participants to realistically assess their skills in several critical areas of supervision, and make plans to improve these skills, thereby becoming a more effective part of the leadership team.
During this experiential workshop, participants will have several opportunities to focus on the self, taking an honest look at their personal skills as a supervisor. Participants will accomplish this through self-assessment instruments, reflection, and feedback, thereby helping them identify areas of personal strength and areas for improvement. |
Topics covered include, but are not limited to:
- Influencing and Motivating Behavior: Understanding characteristics of effective leaders and acting as a role model.
- Effective Communications: Identifying desired communications outcomes and establishing strategies to achieve these outcomes. Counseling Skills: Leaders with this skill can define organizational mission and values, discuss individual job expectations and performance, reinforce effective performance/work-related behaviors, correct ineffective performance/ work-related behaviors, and enhance the employee's ability to set and reach career goals.
- Group Development and Conflict Resolution: Leading effective teams and resolving conflicts.
- Fostering Teamwork: The leader of a group has a large impact on the group's effectiveness. Groups with an effective leader can do better than the sum of its members. On the other hand, poorly led groups can do worse than the members could have done independently.
- Problem-Solving and Decision-Making: Leaders with this skill understand and can predict the impact of individuals’ values and attitudes on group decision-making.
- Systems Thinking: Leaders with this skill know that planning is a process of identifying actions necessary to achieve a goal or outcome, and that actions can have predictable responses.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Leadership at the Organizational Level |
Leadership at the Organizational Level is a 5-day course designed to assist key managers in looking beyond daily activities to assessing and interpreting, in an ever-enlarging way, the external environment, the organization, the leadership process, the need for subordinate development at all levels, and the need for continuing self-development. Topics include, but are not limited to:
|
- Organizations as Systems: Thinking systemically and describing models for the manager to use in understanding organizational functioning.
- Influential Communications: Influencing organizations and individuals through key advanced communication skills.
- Team Building/Team Development: Leading effective teams and implementing strategies for developing relationships and accomplishing organizational goals
- Organizational Values: Determining the impact of values on organizational effectiveness.
- Strategic Planning: Thinking strategically and understanding the impact of strategic thinking and strategic decisions.
- Change Mastery: Mastering organizational and individual change by means of a systematic approach.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Leadership for the New Millennium |
This workshop is a 5-day course which recognizes that individual executives who have developed specific leadership skills create excellent organizational performance. Excellence doesn’t happen miraculously, but springs from pacesetting levels of personal effectiveness and efficiency. Great organizations owe their greatness to individuals who have mastered executive leadership skills and then pass those skills on to succeeding generations of executives and managers. Application of these leadership skills requires an understanding that a leader won't succeed without laying a strong foundation of strategic thinking and culture building. To unite strategy with culture requires a vision of the organization's future; in order to implement the strategy for making the vision real requires a climate and culture that is motivated and dedicated to the vision. Topics include, but are not limited to:
|
- Leading through Vision: Providing the organization with meaning.
- Developing and Leading a Learning Organization: Continually enhancing the organization’s capacity to learn.
- Communicating the Vision: Defining the purpose of the organization in a meaningful and powerful way.
- Influencing the Organization’s Culture: Leveraging for organizational success.
- aping the Climate: Creating conditions for organizational excellence.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Team Management Training |
This is an intensive and focused workshop designed to identify and clarify participant's responsibilities and roles in a self-directed work team environment. Participants will learn and apply skills and techniques that will directly enhance their ability to accomplish a full range of team management practices.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Business Ethics |
Business Ethics is a specialized workshop in which an awareness of ethical issues and a systematic approach to solving them are particularly important. Business ethics deals with the establishment and maintenance of vital and significant relationships among human beings---specifically, in this case, among employers, employees, business, and consumers. During this highly interactive workshop, participants understand what business ethics is and why there is a need for education and training in this area; understand how rights, obligations, justice, truth telling, and honesty apply specifically to business ethics; understand the rights and obligations that exist between employers and employees and between businesses and consumers; understand the ethical issues in the areas of business and the environment, affirmative action, reverse discrimination, and sexual harassment; and, learn and apply methods which will elevate the ethical character of the organization.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Mastering Change |
Mastering Change is a workshop in which an awareness of the impact of organizational and personal change is raised and a systematic approach to dealing with change is addressed. While we recognize that all things change, we also acknowledge that only people can choose to change themselves. Active change---self-change---is different from the passive process of erosion and shaping caused by time and changing external conditions. In active change, individuals consciously and deliberately decide to innovate with themselves; then they experiment with novel and useful behaviors strategically designed and value-driven to satisfy their goals to a greater extent than their former behaviors did. No organization can change its patterns of customer service or any other facet of its operation unless its individual members change; and organizational change is more likely to occur when the organization’s individual members are motivated to change and are skilled at self-change. The better we understand what encourages and what interferes with self-change, the more effective we can be not only in fostering our own growth but also in helping others to improve their professional and personal lives. During this workshop, participants will:
|
- Recognize their debilitating “mind traps” (self-defeating attitudes) which are linked to a self-doubting identity
- Learn how to change the self-doubting identity
- Learn and apply new attitudes and behaviors that are more compassionate and self-respecting than former ones
- Achieve a more productive, more satisfying, self-accepting identity by persisting in these new attitudes and behaviors
- Learn how to manage the stress that frequently accompanies change
- Identify organizational and individual sources of resistance to change
- Learn effective strategies for implementing planned change efforts
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Managing Time |
Managing Time is a specialized workshop which acknowledges that time is a unique resource in that it cannot be accumulated, stockpiled, made retroactive, or drawn on account. Each of us has the same amount of time, and each of us has all there is of it. And each of us spends it at a fixed rate. The problem associated with time management is not time, per se; the problem lies within us. Experience shows that managers are aware of the significance of time and recognize that it must be used with utmost discretion. Because of this, managers want to maximize their investment of time. This workshop is designed not just to help participants do more work in less time. Rather, it will help the participants to use their time to achieve more visible, far-reaching results. Participants will learn to:
|
- Recognize our most common time management assumptions
- Identify how time is used by keeping and analyzing a personal time log
- Recognize activities that are “Time Wasters”
- Recognize activities that are “Time Savers”
- Develop an awareness of present activities in relationship to “Time Wasters” and “Time Savers”
- Develop an action plan reflecting individual goals and priorities
- Learn how to resolve conflicts between planned priorities and urgent, last minute tasks through the use of “organizational rules of the road”
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Motivation |
Motivation is a workshop that recognizes that the skills all supervisors and managers require, regardless of level in an organization, are the human skills. Human skills are defined as the ability and judgment in working with and through people, including an understanding of motivation and an effective application of leadership. This workshop will help participants to understand how motivation affects job performance; to distinguish between internal and external motivators; and, to apply the principles of motivation to their own work situations.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Conflict Resolution |
In the course of a week, we are all involved in numerous situations that need to be dealt with through negotiation; this occurs at work, at home, and at recreation. A conflict or negotiation situation is one in which there is a conflict of interests or what one wants isn't necessarily what the other wants and where both sides prefer to search for solutions, rather than giving in or breaking off contact.
Few of us enjoy dealing with conflicts-either with bosses, peers, subordinates, friends, or strangers. This is particularly true when the conflict becomes hostile and when strong feelings become involved. Resolving conflict can be mentally exhausting and emotionally draining.
But it is important to realize that conflict that requires resolution is neither good nor bad. There can be positive and negative outcomes as seen in the box below. It can be destructive but can also play a productive role for you personally and for your relationships-both personal and professional. The important point is to manage the conflict, not to suppress conflict and not to let conflict escalate out of control. Many of us seek to avoid conflict when it arises but there are many times when we should use conflict as a critical aspect of creativity and motivation.
Responding to conflict is difficult for most teams. Effective team leaders can make this process more comfortable and more effective by developing some special conflict resolution skills.
Upon completion of this workshop, participants will be able to: |
- Use team conflict as a growth opportunity.
- Identify inside/outside factors that contribute to team conflict and manage them more effectively.
- Identify and eliminate team leader behaviors that increase negative team conflict.
- Help guide the team to resolve conflict through a proven conflict resolution model]
- Mediate differences and achieve an effective outcome.
- Integrate diverse styles into an effective team.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Supervisory Roles in Coaching and Counseling |
The diversity in today’s new workforce as well as learnings from motivation research call for new ways to look at supervisor’s roles in managing work teams. Traditional functions of management often lead to controlling others with punishment that often results in overt rebellion, passive aggression, and reduced initiative. Newer methods have a human skills focus that promotes respect for workers and consideration of their ideas. This focus results in creativity and greater productivity. This workshop offers a new way to view supervisors’ and managers’ roles. Through the use of a model, participants are provided eight alternatives for increasing employee involvement and participative supervision.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) in Organizations |
The MBTI is used in a wide variety of settings---from small partnerships to large Fortune 500 companies---educational, governmental, medical, and spiritual organizations. In this workshop, people become aware of their personality preferences and how these preferences affect their approach to work. Approaches to resolution of unproductive interpersonal and intra organizational conflict are explored. Team members will assess the strengths and blind spots of their team in a nonjudgmental way, and individuals can evaluate the fit between themselves and their jobs. This workshop is a valuable resource in that it helps to build an understanding of an organization’s norms and culture and greater clarity and understanding.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Enhanced Interpersonal Communications |
This highly experiential workshop has at its core the premise that the quality of a person’s relationships is in direct proportion to the quality of his or her interpersonal communications. In this workshop, participants examine various interpersonal communications models, identify obstacles to effective interpersonal communications, and employ different strategies to overcome these obstacles. Participants also examine the role that perception plays in interpersonal relationships, and develop methods for clarifying perceptions. By the end of this workshop, participants have useful and effective tools for improving their interpersonal skills and relationships with others.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Essential Skills for Team Success |
This interactive workshop provides participants with an understanding of what team building is, reasons for team building, factors enhancing all team building efforts, strategies for developing teams, and facilitation skills. Also explored are the role and nature of groups, identifying and understanding norms, formal and informal leadership, conflict and collaboration in groups, and recognizing the “role” each individual plays as a team member and how to interact with each type.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: The Learning Organization |
How organizations learn or fail to learn will be one of the main determiners of organizational success in the future. In our rapidly changing world, managers and their organizations need to be both “fast on their feet” in order to adapt quickly to internal and external changes, and possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities to shape their own future. Workshop participants will gain an understanding of the characteristics of learning organizations and how these ideas can be implemented; acquire new tools for thinking and interacting around complex issues; improve the quality of their thinking and reasoning; and, integrate a powerful approach to building high performance teams.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Creativity in Business |
Creativity in Business is designed to help the workshop participants to develop and use more creative ability in their daily work. Using the simple yet sound techniques presented during the workshop will make a dramatic difference in personal and professional success. Through self-assessment instruments and guided experiences, participants will discover their own “creativity quotient” (CQ); creativity blocks and blockbusters; skillful techniques for generating ideas; how to manage for creativity; and, develop a personal assessment and action plan.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Dealing with Difficult People |
Dealing with Difficult People is designed to focus on the process of addressing the needs of professionals in a manner that improves morale and productivity in support of organizational and individual goals and objectives. While no one is able to change anyone else’s behavior but their own, our workshop participants learn proven effective strategies for enhancing their own professional and personal effectiveness. In our work during the past 15 years, we have observed persistent individual and organizational behavior patterns which frequently work to the detriment of productive and harmonious work relationships. Specific changes are essential to enhance, encourage, and empower individuals to maximize use of their talents, skills, and experiences in support of the organization’s mission and culture. This workshop provides participants the opportunity to learn and apply new skills for coping with a variety of different styles in a variety of different situations.
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: How to be a Great Communicator |
How to be a Great Communicator is designed to increase the effectiveness of individual behavior and performance, particularly with regard to identifying, discussing, and experiencing key advanced communication skills required to effectively influence human relationships. Emphasis is placed on identifying desired communications outcomes and establishing strategies to achieve these outcomes. The workshop will include, but not be limited to:
|
- The Five Conditions Necessary to become a Great Communicator
- Creating Rapport and Strong Relationships
- Powerful Persuasion Strategies
- Maintaining a Positive Mental Attitude
- Developing Self-Confidence
- How to get People to Pay Attention to You
- How to Target Results
- Hidden Meanings in Conversation
- How to Listen Perceptively
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: The Role of the Leader in Mentoring |
An essential part of any leadership program, The Role of the Leader in Mentoring recognizes that all successful business people do not necessarily make effective mentors; certain individuals are more effective in the role of developing others. Whether or not an individual is suited to the role of mentor may depend on his or her own stage of development and experience. For example, a fairly successful individual may have had a specific, or limited, background and may not have enough general experience to offer. Prior to entering into a mentoring relationship, certain steps must be taken to establish and ensure a successful relationship. Topics include, but are not limited to:
|
- Relating the skills of mentoring to effective leadership
- Understanding the key components and benefits of mentoring
- How to build an effective mentoring relationship
- The role of the mentor and protégé
- Action planning for building and strengthening mentoring responsibilities
|
WORKSHOP TITLE: Strategic Planning and Team Building for Mission Accomplishment |
This is a three - five day intact work group conference or workshop for determination of where an organization is, where the organization wants to be in the future, and how the organization will get from where the organization is to where the organization wants to be in the future. Basically, the outcome of this workshop is the documented desired future of the organization as developed and determined by the intact work group. This workshop results in:
|
- Development and establishment of the organizational values and the norms or behavior to support these values. These values and norms are used to shape and mold the individual behavior of everyone within the organization and describe how the organization wants to be perceived by everyone outside the organization.
- Refinement of the mission statement of the organization so that it states who the customer(s) of the organization are, what the customers expect from the organization, and what is the uniqueness of the organization.
- Development and establishment of the organizational objectives for those areas which the organization must manage to satisfy the customers of the organization.
- Identification and establishment of the Individual Performance Objectives and Standards (IPOS) for every member of the intact work group. The IPOS are based on what each individual is responsible and accountable for in the fulfillment of the organizational objectives and managerial expectations for their position.
|
|
Our methodology is based on evidence cited by J.A. Olmstead that if behavior change is desired, then the learners can best acquire new behaviors by trying them in realistic situations similar to those faced on-the-job. The situations we offer provide the learners the opportunity to experience, observe, practice, and obtain feedback about actual behavior. Generalizations and hypotheses can thus be tested in action (trial by fire) and the learners can translate their knowledge to their own experience.
|
An experiential training approach is especially useful when the behaviors to be acquired are to be applied in situations that cannot be specified in exact or certain terms. Since leadership contains a high degree of uncertainty, "textbook" solutions cannot be specified independent of cause and effect; each problem situation is different, so no "cookbook" solutions are offered.
Executive Leadership Skills training provides practice and helps participants acquire a variety of additional behavioral skills which will enable them to handle and solve any organizational or leadership problem more systematically and more effectively. |
Because most problem situations are so unpredictable and uncertain, training in the skills of leadership and management has too often been theoretical and non-behavioral. As a consequence, most individuals seem to rely on their own opinions or personal experience when confronting leadership problems. This appears to be especially true for senior leaders who have already spent many years solving leadership problems during their career. But almost all senior leaders will admit that their skills were mostly learned haphazardly and inefficiently through modeling others or trial and error.
|
Since most organizations usually allow for few mistakes, trial and error learning has had its costs. Fear of embarrassment and/or over-reactive evaluation has caused many aspiring leaders to stop short of their full potential.
In contrast, the training approach we use provides the aspiring leader with the opportunity to learn leadership skills efficiently. The feedback-rich environment enhances learning; evaluation can be accepted and mistakes can be used to learn from rather than to run from. |
