Our courses and training are tailored to each client's requirements. Most can be delivered in person or virtually.

 

 

Half-Day Sessions

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​Leading with an Inclusive Lens (DG)
This workshop will introduce a framework for inclusive leadership ground in 5 behavioral competencies to lead with an inclusive mindset.  Participants will begin by reflecting on their personal leadership styles and then move into discussions on how to build inclusive teams.  They will walk away with personal and team level commitments to help then incorporate inclusion into their work and leadership styles.

Learning Outcomes:

• A shared model for inclusive leadership.

• Clarity on strengths and challenges around inclusive leadership culture.

• Dialogue to develop shared commitments and vision towards an inclusive leadership culture.

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​Leading towards Equity (DG)
This workshop will help participants understand and explore unconscious bias and the role it plays in systemic inequity in our organizations.  This workshop is presented in three sections: defining unconscious bias, understanding the science and biology that drives unconscious bias and the ways it leads to conscious and systemic inequities and exploring debiasing techniques at individual and organizational levels.  Participants will learn more about this topic in service of being able to expand their own self-awareness and better prepare to mitigate the impact in their leadership and work styles.   

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand what unconscious bias is.

• Learn the science and biological factors that contribute to bias formation.

• Define different forms of unconscious bias that may be impacting you and your organization.

• Learn de-biasing techniques for mitigating your own unconscious bias.​

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3 Hour Courses

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Claim Your Authentic Voice (MO)

Life experiences sometimes left us believing that certain parts of ourselves are flawed and unacceptable. This mistaken conclusion caused us to feel different and less worthy than those around us. Expressing these pieces of our whole selves began to feel risky and frightening, and we, therefore, developed habits to silence them.

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This reflective and experiential class will lead participants in exploring and identifying the ways they have silenced themselves to the detriment of their well-being. They will look at these habits head-on, reflect on how they affect their lives, and create strategies for claiming their full, authentic voices. They will begin expressing an all-embracing version of themselves, so that their vitality, creativity, and passion may shine through in all areas of their lives.

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The class will provide a safe, supportive environment, and it will include instruction, reflective exercises, interactive discussions, and break out groups. Participants will:

• Recognize the ways in which they habitually silence parts of themselves, often without realizing it;

• Name the effects that this silencing has had on their lives and identify which circumstances precipitate and deepen this silencing;

• Develop strategies for reconnecting with and listening to the voices inside them that have gone unheard for a long time;

• Explore the concept of courage and how it relates to finding and sharing their voices;

• Learn practical ways to bring these often tentative voices into the light and strengthen them; and

• Identify how these voices may enhance their lives, both personally and professionally.

 

Effective Communication for Impact and Success - A DiSC Virtual Workshop (MS)

Effective communication in the workplace contributes not only to professional performance but also to a positive work environment. This program helps professionals understand their preferred communication style and how to determine the preferred communication styles of colleagues and other business partners. Participants learn a method of ‘people-reading’ and discover how to facilitate communication for successful outcomes. Participants will:

•  Learn four different approaches to communication.

• Complete a ‘DiSC Workplace’ self-assessment to discover their preferred communication style.

• Understand their strengths and challenges when communicating with different styles.

• Learn a method of ‘people-reading’ to better understand others’ communication styles.

• Learn how to adapt personal styles to increase communication agility.

  

Effective Problem-solving (MS)

The ability to solve problems and make effective decisions are key abilities critical to professional success. Professionals of all levels regularly face tasks and challenges that require skills and a mindset focused on constructive and creative problem-solving, along with the ability to identify and develop effective solutions that support organizational goals. In the virtual ’Effective Problem-solving’ workshop, participants will explore how both mindset and process play a key role in being an effective problem-solver. The workshop offers opportunities for colleagues to collaborate on group activities, explore key topics and develop practical strategies to apply in the workplace. Participants will:

• Identify key attributes and best practices that promote effective problem-solving

• Learn a structured approach to problem-solving and decision-making

• Explore key areas that impact judgement and effective decision-making

• Gain insight into how to think creatively about tough challenges

• Learn tools and techniques to strengthen their approach to developing effective solutions

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Leadership at all Levels (MS)

In the ’Leadership at All Levels’ workshop participants will explore leadership attributes and approaches that can support their professional success. Regardless of current role or level, in the organization we are often presented with situations and opportunities to take a leadership approach and mindset. Understanding how to best ‘lead self’, ‘lead others’ and ‘lead with an innovative mindset’ can serve to increase our impact and the ability to work through everyday challenges. Participants will work on group activities with colleagues to explore key topics and develop practical strategies to apply on return to the workplace. Participants will:

• Identify key attributes demonstrated by impactful leaders

• Explore how effective leadership is a ‘state of being’

• Learn tools and techniques to strengthen their approach to being effective leaders in their current role

• Identify some practical strategies to support their effectiveness and professional success​

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 2 Hour Courses

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​Listening Effectively (MG)  How do you get to the heart of the matter?

Active listening is critical for establishing trusting relationships. It helps you to engage attentively to what is being said. The goal as a listener is to truly understand the speaker’s perspective (whether you agree or not) and to communicate that understanding back to the speaker to confirm accuracy and understanding. To accomplish this, it is important to first be silent. After this session, participants should be able to:

• Focus on the speaker.

• Monitor your self-talk.

• Seek first to understand, not just to look for an opening to speak.

• Demonstrate active listening by paraphrasing, asking clarifying questions and capturing the emotion.

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​Asking the Right Questions (MG)  How do you get to the heart of the matter?

The right questions depend on what you want to accomplish. Generic questions inspire new action, expand possibilities, and make a positive impact. Powerful questions empower, instill a sense of value and efficacy, and encourages the person’s development. The questions that get to the “heart of the matter” are the ones that help the receiver self-discover and uncover new and meaningful information for the questioner. After this session, participants should be able to:

• Discern the disposition of an effective questioner.

• Identify the types of questions.

• Describe the role of listening.

• Use questions to help self and others get closer to the “heart of the matter”

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​Giving and Receiving Feedback (MG)  How do you get to the learning faster and find the value in the feedback even when it may be delivered poorly?

As human beings, we often hunger for feedback. However, many people will tell you that when they do get feedback, it is often because of something they have done wrong. This session is designed to help leaders learn how to provide feedback anytime that the message is due. Whether feedback is formal or informal, and whether it is provided to employees, peers, or someone else, there are ways that it can be structured to be effective and lasting. After this session, participants should be able to:

• Explain why feedback is essential.

• Apply a 3-step framework for providing formal or informal feedback.

• Use descriptive language in delivering feedback.

• Describe six characteristics of effective feedback.

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Effectively Dealing with Difficult People (MH)

Handling disruptive behavior individually or when it happens in a group is challenging.  This webinar will focus on how to manage your own thoughts to effectively respond to disruptive behavior in the moment.  These techniques are not specialized for individual contributors or managers, they are for anyone who is triggered by a comment or behavior that another person unintentionally portrays that you would like to dampen and stop.

• Controlling your inner dialogue to remain in control to respond instead of reacting.

• Trusting your gut to feel confident in your response.

• Skill building with role-playing to build confidence to implement right after the seminar!​

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 Managing your Presence and Remaining Inspiring on Video Calls (MH)

In our current forced season of working remotely, we cannot take our eye off the career progression ball!  Maintaining your credibility, effectiveness and impression management is imperative at all times and needs the addition of new skills when we are in a remote status.

• What do I really look like on camera?  Strategies to make you want to be on video.

• What message am I sending – ensuring that you are sending the message you want at all times on remote calls.

• Managing the remote meeting – confidence-building strategies to ensure you are comfortable with interrupting and navigating the meeting to a constructive conclusion.

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Managing Emotions (MH)

A huge part of managing others is managing their emotions.  This seminar will focus on the emotional aspect management and how it affects the manager, the employee, and productivity.  Three main focus areas are:

• Increasing awareness of how emotions are made and how they impact our physical body and our brain.

• Driving home that managing emotions starts with you before you can even attempt to manage someone else’s emotions.

• Learning and applying the gift in each emotion so that you can effectively translate the behaviors you see into feelings and move quickly to a constructive conversation.

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The Language of Leadership (MH)

This training module has been created to ensure a common language among leadership professionals. The content does not dive into great depth to ensure you are an expert, rather it introduces you to a descriptive language that provides you the ability to describe observed behaviors and share those observations accurately, professionally, and successfully. At the end of this course, you should be able to:

• Have a basic understanding of the Lominger Competency Framework.

• Know where to locate resources for more information.

• Start using these resources immediately and effectively with your employee base during performance discussions, resume writing, succession planning as well as within everyday peer discussions.

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​Flexible Leadership (MH)

Remaining flexible during change is difficult as someone is moving my cheese.The more important the status quo is to someone, the more they will oppose the change. This webinar will focus on how to remain focused on your piece and how you fit into the whole course of change the company is requesting and staying driven towards the parts of the change you can control.

• Understanding when to manage (task-oriented) and when to lead (process-oriented).

• Remaining communicative during change (our instinct is to clam up).

• Involve your team in the ‘how do we get there’ phase since what is dictated to them by the company.

 

Interactive exercise would include identifying which type of hold out each person displays and having an open dialogue about the pros/cons of staying in that lot (Awareness and stuck in panic, bottom liners going right to solutions, denial for the lack of fairness, or the ‘O well’ ers’ who role with it).

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Remaining an Inspired Presence during Change (MH)

Within this webinar (which is closely related to separate webinars on Executive Presence and Inspirational Leadership) I will focus on the five essential capacities to inspire employees to perform during uncertainty. It is focused more inwardly to each manager.

• The five essential capacities.

• Where are you stuck? as it is showing to your employees.

• Getting to the employees’ discretionary effort.

 

Interactive exercise would include time with all voting on which capacity they are struggling with and then show strategies for dealing with each one.  There is usually a selection time for volunteers to share personal stories/examples to work through in real-time.

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Motivating others through change/Helping employees adapt to change (MH)

Using a combination of philosophies from Prosci and The Change Cycle, this webinar will focus more on the outward impact of a manager’s relationship with change. Now that they own their specific struggle with adapting to change and how it could potentially be showing, how do they then inspire their employees to do the same: accept and adapt to change.

• Review the change curve.

• Focus on two of the following change stages that are most relevant to Dow DuPont.

  1. From loss to safety

  2. From doubt to reality

  3. From discomfort to motivation

  4. From discovery to purpose

  5. From questions to understanding (with a healthy dose of communication)

  6. From understanding to integration

• Give the participants a tool to identify where each of their employee’s lands on the cycle of change and then provides relevant tools that help each manager work with each employee using the targeted suggestions.

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​Delivering day-to-day Feedback (MH)

Unlike performance reviews or difficult conversations, most feedback is given on the spot or close to it.This webinar will focus on one specific tool to impart to the participants' brains to use every time they need to give one the spot feedback for targeted improvement.

• Situation – behavior – outcome Model.

• Review multiple situations where this model can be used.

• Practice practice practice: first with scenarios I have brought and then with real examples shared by the participating managers.

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Communicating Change to Keep Engagement (MH)

This webinar focuses more on understanding the ways that people view change in order for the manager to respond appropriately. There are traditional ways that people respond to change, and techniques offered for identifying which way your employee engages and then techniques for ‘speaking their language’ that allows the employee to feel heard and engaged.

• Introduce and explain the four traditional responses to change.

• Review the skills offered to assist in successfully attending to each type of resistance.

• Practice practice practice:  first with scenarios I have brought and then with real examples shared by the participating managers.

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 Adapting your Message to the Receiver (MH)

This webinar focuses on the skill of adapting your message to the person standing in front of you.  Recognizing that each person comes from a different perspective is part of the battle, adapting your message to where they are is the other half. Therefore, this webinar focuses on what clues to look for when decoding where the recipient is, and then how to adjust your message to be effective in the moment.  This webinar is designed for day-to-day conversations.

• Introduce and explain the layer model.

• Review specific examples of each.

• Use exercises as the basis for understanding and immediate use.

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​Building Emotional Intelligence (MH)

With a focus/slant of teaching a manager how to teach their employees emotional intelligence so as not to insult any participant, this webinar will focus on self-awareness and their bias towards their own opinion – especially focusing on our natural tendency to assume we are right and then move forward with our actions and decision making based on that ‘fact’.There is not as much lecture in this webinar as there is participant interaction responding to a myriad of examples to prove to the sceptics that they do think this way – thus teaching self-awareness supporting their emotional intelligence journey.

• Explain the idea of your mind being a condo and the view from yours is inherently different from someone else’s.

• Introduce the idea of questioning to validate thoughts v. statements to validate thoughts.

• Use multiple examples of triggering statements that produce assumptions from the participants to discuss a) and b) above.

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​Building an Individualized Development Plan (IDP) (MH)

An IDP is a building block of every company and government agency. While they may look different, the content is generally the same across all industries.This webinar will discuss those three key areas and provide best practices for creating your own.

• Explain the three areas of the IDP:

  1. What you are good at, not so good at, and what you really suck at.

     • Understand the key reason why and the career impact of being able to articulate each one of these areas.

  2. What you want to be when you grow up both immediately, short term, medium term, long term and before you retire.

     • Each one of these has benefit to the IDP and are not necessary to know in order to start or complete an IDP.

  3. The developmental gap area.

     • Identify those areas that you would benefit from developing and those areas that would be a waste for you to invest in developing.

     • Relate to all goals.

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​Ready to Answer: The Power of Impromptu Speaking (JE)

The way in which we answer questions impacts our ability to connect with our audience, to build trust, to persuade, and to demonstrate our competence—even when we are not entirely sure of the answer.  There are skills that can be learned and practiced that allow us to effectively field unexpected questions.

 

Explore the three most important skillsets for impromptu speaking: effective language, masterful delivery, and organized content.  Building capabilities in these three areas allows us to be prepared for the unexpected and to answer questions with confidence and agility. It includes several interactive mastery sessions that allow for practice and exploration.  Learning Objectives:

 

• Understand the masterful use of words in six categories that support powerful, impactful language.

• Develop the key components of non-verbal communication that reinforce the message in an answer.

• Master three frameworks for mentally organizing content quickly and effectively to deliver valuable answers and to build speaker confidence.

 

​5 Steps to Powerful Conversations (JE)

The Latin root of the word conversation means, literally, to turn together.  How can we utilize our communication together to allow our teams to turn towards collaboration and to allow our work to turn towards progress?  

 

By understanding our role as listener and speaker, we can begin to unlock the power inherent in an exchange of perspectives and ideas.  By learning skills that enhance our abilities in these roles, we can unlock conversations that strengthen our teams, accelerate our progress, and amplify our results. It includes several interactive mastery sessions that allow for practice and exploration.  Learning Objectives:

• Understand the way in which our approach impacts our ability to listen.

• Explore the key elements of empathy in listening.

• Uncover obstacles that often discourage learning.

• Learn to organize communication for better understanding.

• Utilize the six categories of speech to build better agreements.

 

Tell It Well: Utilizing Storytelling for Inspiration (JE)

Every speech is persuasive.  We speak to have an impact and that impact is only possible when the listener is engaged.  Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools for establishing a connection that fosters engagement.  Humans crave stories.

 

Learn to utilize the art of a well-told story to connect with your audience, to teach with examples, to generate enthusiasm, and to drive home your point. It includes several interactive mastery sessions that allow for practice and exploration. Learning Objectives:

• Unlock the power of story formats that your audience is already primed to understand.

• Understand the powerful role of story in communicating the mission, in holding attention, in speaking to persuade and in building consensus.

• Learn simple storytelling techniques to enliven communication and build connection with any audience.

 

Design Cycle Thinking:  A Framework to Design and Implement change (JE)

Why do most brainstorming sessions result in a pile of ideas that are never implemented?  Brainstorming is just one component of change design and implementation.  Discover the framework that organizes the process from challenge to change in a way that maximizes creativity and minimizes waste.

 

Masters of innovation follow the design cycle framework to progress systematically, to learn, to test, to prepare, to implement and to analyze the success of the change.  Learn how to design cycle thinking can galvanize your team, smooth your transitions, deepen your learning, and maximize your outcomes. It includes several interactive mastery sessions that allow for practice and exploration. Learning Objectives:

 

• Explore the design cycle that architects, engineers, and other creatives use to foster innovation.

• Understand the applications for the design cycle in brainstorming, problem solving and team cohesion.

• Utilize the four stages of the design cycle to design and implement meaningful, useful, and durable change.

 

​On All Sides:  Prevent and Resolve Conflict (JE)

Conflict breaks team cohesion, destroys collaboration, fosters dissatisfaction, and disrupts productivity.  We come to work with our own perspective, our own driving values, and our own style of working.  Sometimes, our attributes, thoughts, and behaviors generate conflict with others.

 

It is possible to establish a culture that diminishes the likelihood of conflict.  When conflicts do arise, it is possible to defuse the situation and to subsequently rebuild the relationships.  Conflict may be inevitable, but it does not have to be frequent or permanent.

 

Key Objectives:

• Understand the roots of conflict—perspective, communication, and expectation.

• Explore the six speech acts—six categories of speech that are the basis for building clear agreements that prevent ambiguity, misunderstanding, and disappointment.

• Install a “yes, and..” mindset and the bias towards assuming good intent that reinforce positive interaction.

• Learn techniques for preventing conflict before it arises, for defusing conflict if it does occur and for repairing a relationship after conflict.

 

​Developing Resilience as an Everyday Practice (SG)

A 90-minute zoom session introducing employees to the basic tenets and a few practices for increasing their emotional resilience.  This will be experiential, with at least 3 activities participants will do in their home/workplaces.  A few minutes upfront will be devoted to increasing participant awareness of our conditioned responses to stress such as fight and flight, followed by a basic framework for resilience as a counter to learned responses to stress and change.  There will be time throughout for questions and comments. Participants will:

• Gain an understanding of stress and resilience and the role the body plays in shifting stress.

• Experience practices to reduce stress.

• Reflect on what practices work for them and design a plan for building their resilience.

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Success With Stressful Communication (MO)

Virtually alI jobs involve the presentation of ideas that sometimes make us nervous and apprehensive. How we present ourselves and our ideas affects our work relationships, our reputations, and our potential for advancement. We all sometimes feel stressed anticipating times when the spotlight will be on us and what we’re saying, including important meetings, critical phone calls, and presentations of all sizes. This experiential workshop will explore the importance of both external and internal preparation to achieve successful communication and offer tangible strategies customized to each participant.

 

Participants will:

• Learn how to develop a definition of successful communication that’s specific to them, their workstyle, and their responsibilities;

• Gain insight into how to prepare for challenging work interactions, including both actions and mental and emotional preparation;

• Learn how to remain calm and confident during the delivery of their ideas; and

• Become skilled in using a highly personalized, constructive system to objectively assess how the communication event went so that they can both identify areas of strength and learn lessons for continued improvement.

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Thrive in the Workplace - Practical Insights From the Yoga Tradition (MO) 

Overwhelm and stress in the workplace are pervasive and decrease our effectiveness on the job.  Accumulated stress leads to increased anxiety levels, poor concentration, physical symptoms, and challenges with confidence. In this workshop, participants will learn simple insights, tips, stretches, and breathing exercises from the yoga tradition to help them get and stay relaxed and vibrant. The format is both instructional and experiential. Note: This workshop is not a yoga class; no special clothes, props, or experience with yoga are necessary.

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The participants will learn:

• The ways that chronic stress affects our confidence, self-image, and performance, as well as insights to assist us in maintaining healthy mental states;

• How to identify the characteristics of physical and mental tension;

• The role our bodies play in creating and mitigating stress, as well as basic physical stretches that can be done anywhere and anytime to address the effects of stress on our well-being; and

• The importance of breath awareness in creating and managing stress, as well as simple, accessible breathing exercises that can be done anytime to address the effects of stress on our nervous systems.

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Leading in A Virtual World (MS)

Being an effective and impactful leader can be demanding at any time, but now in the world of virtual work it can be daunting and challenging. Leaders, managers, and supervisors who strive to be the ‘best they can be’, now have to adapt to be effective in a system where boundaries, communication and operating methods have shifted, and where ensuring their teams and staff members are engaged and performing can be a greater challenge. This interactive and virtual workshop explores the ‘new world of work’ and identifies tools and methods to address challenges in today’s virtual workplace. Participants will:

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• Explore and understand the barriers and challenges to effective performance in the virtual workplace

• Understand the fundamentals of being an effective leader in the virtual workplace

• Learn tools and techniques to keep virtual staff in high engagement and high performance

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