Courses Available:

 Speaking Beyond Words     Managing Difficult Conversations     Leading and Developing Teams
The Inner Game of Management     Lowering the Boiling Point: De-escalating Tense Situations

Building and Sustaining Collaborative Relationships     Strategic Thinking and Planning     Critical and Creative Thinking

Managing Differences, Disagreements and Conflict     Critical Thinking and Decision Making

Speaking Beyond Words

Overview

Your ability to lead others depends less on your title and more on your skill of influencing perspectives and decisions. In this course, learn the skill of communicating with people, and presenting topics, messages, projects, and goals in a clear and engaging way. Discover how your tone of voice, word choice, facial expressions, and body language can communicate unintentional messages and create conflict. You will be given opportunities to practice skill sets that build confidence, authenticity, and a compelling style in your communications.

Objectives:

As a result of this course, participants will be able to

    • Align their words, body language, and delivery to communicate clear, confident, influential, engaging messages and presentations.
    • Apply communication techniques that minimize miscommunication and misunderstandings.
    • Enhance their personal style to communicate information more effectively and explain ideas or inspire action.
    • Apply appropriate language and behaviors when giving and receiving feedback.

Managing Difficult Conversations

Overview

Do you avoid difficult conversations, hoping the issue will go away or the situation will resolve on its own? Avoiding difficult conversations may lead to resentment, bigger conflicts, and emotional stress. In this interactive and engaging course, you will learn how to manage your emotions and adopt a mindset that prepares you to approach difficult conversations using strategies that result in better outcomes. You will practice techniques that create an environment of calm, openness, and relationship building.

Objectives:

As a result of this course, participants will be able to

    • Initiate and respond effectively to conversations that are uncomfortable, serious, challenging, high stakes, emotional, and/or important.
    • Choose appropriate reactions and emotions during difficult conversations.
    • Apply techniques to keep conversations healthy and productive such that issues are resolved while preserving the relationship.

Leading and Developing Teams

Overview

Is your team stuck in their progression toward productivity and performance?  There are seven stages of development that teams must go through to achieve and sustain high performance. This course helps you identify your team’s stage of development and plan ways to apply research-based practices of exemplary team leadership. You will explore causes and solutions to a range of symptoms your team may be experiencing, such as: distrust, uncertainty, fear, apathy, disharmony, misalignment, missed deadlines, and overload. This course is designed to support you in leading your team’s continued movement toward synergy, alignment, and results.

Objectives:

As a result of this course, participants will be able to

    • Describe the process of leading a team to high levels of trust, commitment, engagement, and performance.
    • Determine the stage of a team’s development and the issues that must be resolved for the team to progress
    • Apply leadership and team development best practices to address team challenges

The Inner Game of Management

Overview

Management effectiveness is often seen as being able to perform basic management functions such as planning, decision-making, goal setting and delegating.  While these skillsets are valuable to the management role, it is possible to attain these technical skills and still experience persistent frustrations and challenges as a leader by failing to effectively manage your “inner game”.  The “inner game of management” is the game that takes place in the mind of the leader that drives decisions, actions, and interactions. When you fail to adopt a mindset that allows you to manage your personal triggers, your ego, your need for control and your need to be liked, a variety of dysfunctional leadership practices result. This course examines these dysfunctional practices and helps leaders understand their unconscious drivers and motivations to increase awareness, confidence, and effectiveness as a manager.

Objectives:

As a result of this course, participants will be able to

    • Utilize techniques to Identify and manage their personal triggers
    • Manage the three key subconscious drivers of leadership effectiveness
    • Identify symptoms of an ineffective inner game that are evident in their management
    • Apply emotionally intelligent practices to the most challenging aspects of their leadership.

Lowering the Boiling Point:
De-escalating Tense Situations

Overview

Managing yourself and others in heated discussions is required to work synergistically with co-workers, partners, and the general public. When discussions get heated, words and actions could damage trust, credibility, outcomes, and relationships. In this highly interactive course, participants will practice using behaviors that shift the tone from contentious conversations to more open and productive interactions. They will identify the underlying causes for conversations becoming counterproductive and learn techniques for managing emotions to get interactions back on track.

Objectives:

As a result of this course, participants will be able to

    • Identify and develop awareness of their behaviors that provoke angry, defensive, or counter-productive responses.
    • Choose behaviors that keep conversations from becoming contentious.
    • Apply techniques to cool heated exchanges and resolve tense situations.

Building and Sustaining Collaborative Relationships

Overview

Does your current working relationship with project teams, partners, co-workers, or managers reflect collaboration, mutual value and respect? Successful relationships are built on trust, mutual regard, active communication, and on-going engagement. In this course, our “Collaboration Model” provides strategies to build and sustain relationships that are inclusive and productive. You will use tools and templates to ensure clarity of shared goals, roles, and expectations; and practice ways to sustain collaborative relationships that yield real results.

Objectives:

As a result of this course, participants will be able to

    • Adopt the mindset of a trusted collaborator.
    • Choose behaviors that promote trust, mutual value and respect.
    • Assess collaborations and determine when rebuilding or preserving is needed.
    • Plan and implement strategies to strengthen collaborative relationships
    • Utilize tools to work together in mutually beneficial partnerships to accomplish objectives, leverage information, and achieve results.

Strategic Thinking and Planning

Overview

The most consistently influential leaders are strategic thinkers. In our busy, evolving roles, it is tempting to go from one challenge to the next without giving thought to the unintended future impacts of our decisions and actions. In fact, many of the challenges you face today may be the result of reactionary decision-making and short-term thinking.  In this course, you use tools and exercises that help you elevate your perspective to address immediate needs in ways that position you, your team, and the organization for longer-term success. You will identify characteristics of strategic thinkers and apply best practices of strategic thinking and planning to real-world and thought-provoking situations.

Objectives:

As a result of this course, participants will be able to

    • Distinguish between strategic thinking and non-strategic thinking.
    • Demonstrate a strategic thinking mindset.
    • Reference tools to think, plan, lead, and solve problems strategically

Critical and Creative Thinking

Overview

Have you wondered how to be more clear, discerning, and innovative in your thinking?  This requires both creative and critical thinking which is a balance that many people find difficult to achieve. This course provides tools, processes and practice using our “SKILLED” model which is a holistic approach for developing expansive thinking. Engaging in this course will help you become more creative, analytical, innovative, and influential.

Objectives:

As a result of this course, participants will be able to

    • Challenge their thinking using a critical and creative thinking model.
    • Implement strategies that address faulty logic and promote resourceful thinking.
    • Draw conclusions that are logical and innovative.

Managing Differences, Disagreements and Conflict

Overview

In an environment with diverse backgrounds, education, ethnicities and expertise, differences of opinion, priority, values, and style are normal everyday occurrences. People hope to avoid conflict by attempting to diminish or ignore disagreements, but the conflict does not just go away.  In this interactive course we address how to effectively manage differences and disagreements, to keep them from becoming unhealthy conflicts. Participants will engage in practicing the CALM method to handle conflict effectively, improve relationships, increase productivity, and reduce the stress surrounding the disagreement.

Objectives:

As a result of this course, participants will be able to

    • Apply cultural competency skills to manage differences and disagreements.
    • Identify behaviors that keep normal differences beneficial
    • Choose responses in conflict situations that strengthen decisions, relationships, outcomes and understanding.
    • Demonstrate the CALM method to reach healthy resolutions.

Critical Thinking and Decision Making

Overview

Have you ever been immobilized by a tough decision you needed to make or spent hours rethinking a decision that did not go well?  Thinking critically impacts the quality of your decisions which ultimately impacts your every action and interaction. This powerful course helps you enhance your decision-making skills by engaging in more deliberate and productive critical thinking and decision-making processes.  You will practice critical thinking techniques to increase your effectiveness and avoid making common decision-making pitfalls.

Objectives:

As a result of this course, participants will be able to

    • Apply systematic approaches for thinking more critically.
    • Select strategies for making timely, well-considered decisions.
    • Practice critical thinking and decision-making techniques in real-world situations.
    • Implement a plan to avoid the common traps of decision-making.