Offerings

WORKING TOGETHER BETTER SERIES

TEAM BUILDING

THE LEADERSHIP SERIES

OTHER OFFERINGS

OTHER SERVICES


TEAM DEVELOPMENT
WORKING TOGETHER BETTER SERIES

How is your team performing? Could they work together better than they do today? This sequence of workshops is designed for an intact work group or team that has an ongoing need to work together. Some of the sessions are basic to the process and always included in the series. Others are selected based on the needs of the team.

The process usually begins with an interview of the leader or of the leader and all team members to understand the concerns and issues. This information gathering process is followed by a proposal for the suggested approach for working with the team. The most common format for working with the team is a series of half day workshops spread over several weeks or months. However, the format is very flexible.

The elements always included are:

Teamwork Basics

This workshop answers the questions:

  • What is a team?
  • How do teams grow to high performance?
  • What stage is our team currently experiencing?
  • What do we need to do as a team to grow and be more effecitve?

It includes activities that highlight the teams needs.

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Team Communications

Miscommunication often causes conflict or errors in the workplace. One of the primary reasons miscommunication occurs is that we don't all use the same style to communicate. In this session, team members will explore different styles of communication and learn how to apply the learnings to this team.

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Dealing with Team Conflict

Team members working together inevitably run into conflict situations. The conflict can be about the work (e.g. my approach versus yours, schedules, priorities) or about the relationships (e.g. I don't trust you, your style is different than mine). Conflict can be a source of creative solutions, but only if people understand both the value of conflict and how to resolve it. Using the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument and its supporting video, participants will understand the different response styles and begin to see that they can choose how to respond in each conflict situation.

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Building on Differences

We each have a unique personality. The mixing of personalities in a team can be cause for great creativity or for great frustration. Understanding our core needs, values and talents as well as those of others can allow us to take advantage of the differences rather than let the differences slow us down.

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Additional elements in Team Development can include any of the following:

Forming a Team

Getting a team or work group off to a productive and positive start or helping the team recover from having gotten off to a bad start is often a challenge. Questions on the minds of members include: "Why are we here?," "What 's my role?," and "How will we work together?" These are valid and important questions that will be answered in the workshop.

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Group Decision Making

Making good group decisions is a critical skill for teams today. If the group is not skilled in the process, decision making can be very time consuming and often frustrating. Consensus is not the only alternative available to the team. In this session, participants will learn different approaches to group decision making and techniques to make decisions more quickly and effectively.

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Giving and Receiving Feedback

Members of high-performing teams give and receive feedback to one another in an open and honest way. Some of us find it difficult to provide feedback in a useful way. Many of us struggle to accept feedback without getting defensive. This session explores both giving and receiving feedback and provides specific techniques to be more effective at both. Team members will have the opportunity to give and receive feedback to each other in the session.

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Managing Team Roles

Highly effective teams use team roles appropriately. This workshop uses the Management Team Roles Indicator (MTR-i) to identify which of eight key roles individuals are currently playing in the team, and what effect that is having on teamwork and productivity. A 360 degree element can be included to provide rich discussion on how members are working together. The result of the session is a team action plan to move toward high effectiveness and performance.

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TEAM BUILDING

Team building is different from team development in that it is generally a single event designed to give the team a boost. Many of the topics that are used in team development are also used in team building. Team building sessions are most often one or two days off-site. Two sample approaches are listed below; however, the content and approach will be determined based on a interview with at least the leader.

Team Excellence

A key to team effectiveness is the clear understanding of, and building on, differences among members. This one day workshop is customized to the needs of the team and uses one or more of the following:

  • Temperament
  • Interaction Styles
  • Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI)®

Team members explore each other's preferences in terms of style. Exercises are customized for the team and may include subjects such as learning styles, decision making, and leadership styles. The overall team preference is examined and team action plans are developed to move the team toward high performance.

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Optimizing Team Performance

Optimizing Team Performance is designed for teams or work groups that want to achieve the highest levels of performance. Prior to the session, members provide feedback on the team, themselves and each other on values for teamwork using the SYMLOG instrument. In the two-day session, the team examines its current and desired values for teamwork and determines how to close the gap. Individuals analyze their contribution to the effectiveness of the team through understanding their feedback and discussing the feedback with team members. Each individual leaves with personal action plans to be a more effective member and the team leaves with an overall plan to move toward higher performance.

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THE LEADERSHIP SERIES

This program provides managers and supervisors with tools and techniques to increase their effectiveness in leading and managing others. Learning is delivered in interactive workshops with an emphasis on application to the workplace. Participants are encouraged to create and implement personal actions plans in each topic area. Progress on actions are reviewed at the beginning of each session to provide continuity in the material, and to ensure application.

The most common approach is a series of half-day sessions scheduled on some regular basis -- semimonthly, monthly, etc. This format allows people to absorb and use the material. It also takes people away from their work for just half a day at a time, allowing them to focus on the learning during that half day.

Specific modules are always recommended and others are optional and selected based on the needs of the organization and participants. Additional topics can be included as well. I can be developed them or find an appropriate resource to deliver them.

Recommended Modules:

These modules are usually included in the series:

Optional Modules:

These modules will be selected based on the additional skills needed:

Leadership and You

This session is the kickoff session for the series. A model for leadership is introduced to help participants see that leadership takes three forms -- self leadership, leadership of individuals, and team leadership. The curriculum moves them through learning at each of those three levels. In this session, participants will begin to look at their own perspective and skills in the area of self leadership.

Objectives:
  • Set the stage for the program
  • Discuss the differences between management and leadership
  • Learn a model for leadership
  • Explore your leadership philosophy and where it originated
  • Determine actions to increase your effectiveness
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Understanding Differences

We each have a unique personality. The mixing of personalities in the workplace can be cause for great creativity or for great frustration. Part of our personality is how we think, how we gather information and how we make decisions. Understanding the different approaches to these vital functions can allow us to take advantage of the differences rather than let the differences slow us down.

Objectives:
  • Explore personality types via Temperament
  • Discover your personality type
  • Share personality types with other participants
  • Learn the value of having different types in working groups
  • Consider the application of personality types at work
  • Determine actions to increase your effectiveness
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Effective Personal Communication

Miscommunication is often causes conflict or errors in the workplace. One of the primary reasons miscommunication occurs is that we don't all use the same style to communicate. In this session, we will explore different styles of communication and learn how to apply what we learn about others.

Objectives:
  • Learn how personality style influences communication style
  • Learn the major causes of miscommunication
  • Learn specific techniques to be a more effective communicator
  • Determine what you will do to communicate more effectively
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Effective Delegation

An important lesson for leaders is that work gets accomplished through others. Getting that work accomplished requires effective delegation. Most managers agree that delegating work to others is important and of value both to themselves and to the employee. Yet, many admit that they don't delegate as much as they can and should. This session is designed to deal with these concerns and to provide a positive model for successful delegating. Participants will learn techniques for clarifying assignments and overseeing the work without being perceived as "checking up.

Objectives:
  • Explore the value of delegating
  • Assess your ability to delegate
  • Learn how to assign, clarify and oversee delegated work
  • Consider the impact of language on delegating
  • Learn how to overcome the obstacles to delegating
  • Practice delegating
  • Put a plan in place to delegate more effectively
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Resolving Conflict

Employees working together inevitably run into conflict situations. The conflict can be about the work (e.g.. my approach versus yours, schedules, priorities) or about the relationships (e.g.. I don't trust you, your style is different than mine). Conflict can be a source of creative solutions, but only if people understand both the value of conflict and how to resolve it. Supervisors and managers are in the best position to help their people with resolution.

Objectives:
  • Learn five response styles to conflict
  • Identify your response style to conflict
  • Learn approaches for resolving conflict
  • Determine what you can do to deal with conflict effectively
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Leading Teams

Leading teams is a critical and important challenge today. It can be fun and productive or it can be frustrating and nonproductive. Which it is depends on team members' understanding of what it takes to make a team work well together toward success and the leader's ability to help the team work together. This session focuses on the basics of leading a team and provides the opportunity for participants to determine where they need to focus to increase the effectiveness of their team.

Objectives:
  • Consider the challenges of being a team leader
  • Understand the leader's role at each stage of team development
  • Explore the overall role of the leader
  • Determine what you will do as a leader to help your team be more effective
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Establishing Expectations and Giving Feedback

Supervisors and managers are required to provide direction and feedback to the people they lead. Being clear on what you expect is sometimes a challenge. This session will help participants establish and clarify their expectations. Once expectations are set, people need feedback on how they are doing. Sometimes it is difficult to provide feedback in a useful way. And, many of us struggle to accept feedback without getting defensive. This session provides specific techniques to be more effective at both giving and receiving feedback.

Objectives:
  • Examine the value of clarifying expectations
  • Learn how to establish clear expectations
  • Learn techniques for and practice giving reinforcing and developmental feedback
  • Learn how to receiving feedback without getting defensive
  • Determine actions to increase your effectiveness
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Coaching Excellence (1 day)

A key role for managers and supervisors is coaching the people they lead to enhance their contribution to the team and the organization. Understanding the values that drive teamwork behavior and using effective strategies to lead individuals to work with others are critical skills for leaders today. Experiential activities, journaling, sharing of data, and coaching by the facilitator all contribute to an overall growth experience which leads to effective action planning.

Objectives:
  • Self assess your motivation for leadership and teamwork
  • Assess the teamwork values of the individuals you lead
  • Gain an increased understanding of teamwork values and how to coach people to be more effective employees
  • Learn a value-based strategy for well-balanced coaching
  • Determine what you need to do to be a more effective coach

Pre-work: Participants will assess themselves and their direct reports prior to the session.

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Listening Skills

Good communication is key to success in the workplace and good communication starts with listening skills. This session includes an activity to help participants recognize the difficulties and frustrations of communication. Small groups will discuss and share behaviors associates with good and poor listening. An assessment for listening effectiveness will lead to learning specific techniques to be more effective.

Objectives:
  • Experience the challenges associated with listening
  • Assess your listening effectiveness
  • Learn specific techniques for effective listening
  • Create an action plan for improving your listening skills
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Difficult Conversations (NEW!)

Many of us find ourselves in situations where we need to have a difficult conversation with someone, and rather than have the conversation, we avoid it. Somehow, avoiding the conversation seems to be better than what we imagine it will be like to have the conversation. This designed to help participants understand why they avoid difficult conversations and then to learn strategies to hold a productive conversation to gain a desired outcome. Participants will leave with an action plan to use specific tools and techniques to handle difficult conversations successfully.

Objectives:
  • Explore how and why you avoid difficult conversations
  • Understand the dynamics of a difficult conversation
  • Learn the elements in preparing for a difficult conversation - mindset, planning, rehearsal, setting
  • Learn how to have a difficult conversation
  • Plan for and practice having a difficult conversation
  • Create an action plan to improve your skill at having difficult conversations
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Time Management

Where does the time go? It seems there are never enough hours in the day. We all have the same 24 hours each day, yet some people seem to use that time better than others. This session is designed to help you look at your use of time and to provide tips on how you can use your time more effectively and reduce your stress.

Objectives:
  • Assess your approach to time and time management
  • Consider different approaches to prioritizing
  • Determine when to say "No"
  • Learn how to control clutter
  • Create a plan to increase your use of time
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Meeting Facilitation

Leading an effective meeting is more than an art...it takes skill. This session equips participants with tools, techniques, skills and knowledge to effectively facilitate meetings or group work sessions. Participants will learn a variety of ways to help groups gather data, sort data and prioritize data. An emphasis is placed on dealing with difficult behaviors.

Objectives:
  • Lead groups in a variety of methods to gather information for problem solving
  • Help groups prioritize problems and/or solutions
  • Lead groups to focus on process as well as the task
  • Deal with difficult behaviors in groups
  • Create an action plan to be a more effective meeting facilitator
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Building Trust

Trust between a leader and his/her employees is critical to creating a productive and satisfying work environment. Breaking trust is easy; building it can be much more difficult. This session will focus on what trust is and how to build it with employees. Participants will assess the level of trust that currently exists with employees and determine actions to improve that trust where needed.

Objectives:
  • Experience being trustworthy
  • Learn a model for understanding trust in the workplace
  • Examine the level of trust between you and your employees
  • Determine actions to increase or maintain trust
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Creativity for Problem Solving

Problems, large and small, come up every day in the workplace. It's easy to approach problems in the same way each time. In today's competitive world, new solutions are needed. In this session, participants will learn techniques for using creativity to come up with better solutions.

Objectives:
  • Explore your approach to creativity
  • Learn several techniques for jump-starting creativity
  • Practice using creative approaches to problem solving
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Decisiveness

Being decisive is an important competency for leaders. This one-day workshop provides an overall look at the decision making process. Participants will learn to identify the appropriate approach to take for making a decision. The impact Groupthink can have on decision making is explored. Techniques for reaching consensus will be practiced. Participants will create a plan for becoming more decisive.

Objectives:
  • Learn five types of group decisions
  • Learn decision approaches to avoid
  • Practice consensus decision making
  • Consider when to use different decision making types
  • Learn techniques for consensus decision making
  • Determine actions to be more effective leading group decisions
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Managing Change

Change affects people both personally and professionally. Change will continue to be a part of our lives, so managing it is something individuals and organizations need to be able to do quickly and effectively. In this workshop, participants will experience change and learn key strategies for managing themselves, their employees and their organizations successfully through change.

Objectives:
  • Explore the stages and dynamics of change
  • Assess your experience with a current change
  • Experience a change
  • Consider the role of a leader as a change agent
  • Identify action plans to help yourself and the organization manage change
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Remote Leadership and Teamwork (1 day)

Employees today are working in a variety of locations, and it's often not the same location as you. They work at home, at the client's office, in another city or even in another country. With your people working remotely from you, your job as a manager can be more difficult. How do you assign work? How do you know how they are performing? Can you trust that they are doing the right thing? And, how do you even get to know them well enough to do these things effectively? This workshop is designed to help managers learn techniques to be more effective managing from a distance.

Objectives:
  • Explore the issues that surface when leading remotely
  • Learn approaches for building relationships and trust with remote employees
  • Explore one-way vs. two-way communication and determine what you need to do to be a more effective remote communicator
  • Learn techniques for effectively empowering remote employees
  • Learn the Berens' Interaction Styles model and clarify your preferred preference
  • Explore the strengths and challenges of each style in working remotely
  • Consider ways to enhance your approach to measuring the performance of remote employees
  • Create an action plan to use new skills to be a more effective remote leader and worker
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Leadership Excellence (1 day)

As a follow up to the Coaching Excellence session, this session lets participants examine their leadership and teamwork effectiveness based on input from the people they lead.

Objectives:
  • Explore how you are seen as a leader by the people you lead
  • Improve your personal performance
  • Determine what you can do to be more effective

Prerequisite: Coaching Excellence

Pre-work: Participants will be assessed by the people they lead.

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OTHER OFFERINGS

Influencing Skills

To accomplish our jobs we need to influence others. We can influence using positive approaches or negative strategies. In this session, participants will assess and identify the influence strategies they tend to use most. A model for influence planning will be introduced. Participants will us the planning model to prepare for an upcoming situation where they need to influence someone.

Objectives:
  • Identify your preferred influence strategies
  • Examine the styles and behaviors associated with influencing
  • Learn an influencing planning process and prepare for an upcoming situation
  • Create a personal action plan to become a more effective influencer
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Stress Check: Building Resilience

Stress seems to be common in today's work environment. When we feel stressed our productivity tends to drop. In this session participants will identify how their personality influences their stress. They will learn antidotes for these stressors.

Objectives:
  • Identify the sources of positive stress for yourself
  • Find out your own temperament pattern of core needs, values, and talents
  • Discover some typical stressors you may be unaware of
  • Identify antidotes for these stressors
  • Appreciate that others may be stressed by different things than you
  • Find ways to use your talents to build your own resilience to stressful situations
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Personal and Career Development

In the hustle-bustle of day-to-day work, we rarely take time to look at ourselves and understand who we are and where we are going. This session is designed to help you do just that. What are your strengths? What are your interests? What are your values and are you living them? Does your attitude need a checkup? Come spend some time answering these questions and creating a plan for moving forward.

Objectives:
  • Broaden your perspective of yourself
  • Increase your understanding of your personal values and strengths
  • Begin to define and clarify your personal and career goals
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Managing Up

An employee's relationship with his or manager is important to success. This session helps participants think about their manager's perspective and the impact that has on them as employees. Exercises and discussion provide tips and ideas on how to work more effectively with one's manager.

Objectives:
  • Learn the keys to managing up
  • Examine how you respond to developmental feedback
  • Learn approaches to help you respond effectively to feedback
  • Practice giving feedback
  • Consider how attitudes impact others and the team environment
  • Determine what you will do to more effectively manage up
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Facilitation Skills for Facilitators (2 days)

Facilitating meetings or problem solving sessions is a real challenge unless one has the appropriate skills and tools. This workshop clarifies what facilitation is and provides an opportunity to assess one's facilitation skills. Understanding group dynamics is critical to a facilitator's success, and is explored in depth. Focus is spent on decision making, problem solving and conflict resolution tools. A third day is recommended for practice and feedback on use of the tools and approaches.

Objectives:
  • Clarify what facilitation is and is not
  • Learn a variety of methods for groups to gather information for problem solving
  • Explore several approaches for using creativity in problem solving and for prioritizing problems and/or solutions
  • Practice dealing with difficult participant behaviors
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Advanced Facilitation Skills for Facilitator and Leaders (4 days)

This offering builds on the 2 day offering above by going into more depth on the topics as well as providing practice opportunities for every participant. Working in groups, facilitator practice includes feedback and the opportunity to adjust based on the feedback.

Objectives:
  • Enhance your understanding of the dynamics of groups.
  • Examine your current skills in facilitating groups and initiate an action plan for ongoing practice and improvement.
  • Identify and practice core processes in groups including contracting, problem solving, decision making and managing conflict.
  • Practice the facilitation skills of observation, listening, and reflection, asking the right questions and giving feedback.
  • Gain confidence and skills in facilitating power dynamics and dysfunctional behaviors that emerge in groups.
  • Enhance skills in knowing when and how to intervene to encourage individual and group participation and cooperation.
  • Help groups be more productive, energized and creative.
  • Practice facilitating groups around specific case situations and receive feedback on practices.
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Train the Trainer (1 to 2 days)

Subject matter experts are often the best people to train others on technical or functional skills. The challenge, however is that subject matter experts often don't have strong training skills. Participants in this one-day workshop will gain a foundational understanding of Adult Learning Principles, both through the course content and through experiencing effective adult learning first hand. A key area of focus in the workshop will be on platform skills -- using ones physical presence to support a presentation by effective use of eye contact, gestures, movement, etc. Another key area of focus will be on facilitation skills -- managing group dynamics, creating and maintaining group involvement, and keeping a course on track and on schedule. With the addition of a second day, participants will practice delivery and receive feedback from the instructor and other participants.

Objectives:
  • Learn to stimulate and increase your participant's learning
  • Use effective "platform" skills
  • Use visual aids to support a topic
  • Use effective "facilitation" skills
  • Feel more confident in your ability as an effective instructor
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E-mail Etiquette

Research shows that the average worker is unproductive 25% to 33% of the time. E-mail is a significant contributor to that productivity problem. This interactive session is designed to provide insight to participants about their approach to using e-mail and to identify key e-mail time wasters. Exercises demonstrate the value of conversation over e-mail for complex and important issues. Small group discussion and the sharing of best practices provide many practical and easy to implement e-mail tips. Participants also learn techniques to influence others to use e-mail more effectively.

Objectives:
  • Explore how e-mail impacts productivity
  • Identify key aspects of e-mail that waste the most time
  • Share techniques for using e-mail effectively
  • Learn how to influence others' use of e-mail
  • Determine specific actions to increase personal e-mail productivity
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OTHER SERVICES

Group Process Consulting

How effective are your meetings? The common approach to improving meetings is a focus on clarifying the meeting purpose, using an agenda, keeping track of time and assigning roles. All of these are important, but these items are not often the major cause of meeting ineffectiveness. The key is group dynamics. How do people interact? Who speaks to whom? Who's heard? Who isn't? Who has influence? How does the group handle conflict, decision making and problem solving?

As your Group Process Consultant, I will participate in your meetings and bring to the group's attention my observations on how it's operating and make suggestions of ways to interact better and improve meeting productivity and satisfaction.

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Meeting Facilitation

When you and your team have problems to solve or decisions to make, it is often most effective to use a meeting facilitator . This allows all members to focus on the content while as your facilitator, I focus on the meeting process, paying attention to both the task and the relationships.

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Structured Interviewing Skills

Since the best predictor of a job applicant's future work behavior is their past work behavior, the session focuses on the behavioral approach to interviewing. Participants will learn how to use a structured approach to interviewing, including preparation, the interview itself, and follow up. A video will demonstrate key interviewing techniques and illustrate how to deal with common interview situations. Workshop discussions and exercises will provide clarity on the value of developing good interviewing skills. Learning will be reinforced in role play exercises.

Objectives:
  • Plan a logical, structured interview that includes pre-planned interview questions
  • Recognize the importance of developing an interview plan based on thorough knowledge of the job
  • Understand that a behavioral example is a specific life-history event that can be used to determine the presence or absence of a skill
  • Use interviewing techniques that allow for interviewing control
  • Explain why it is important to make selection decisions based on facts and information, not on a gut feeling
  • Recognize why some questions cannot be legally asked in the interview process
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Retreats

Designing a retreat agenda so that key topics are covered, people feel engaged, and useful output is created can be a challenge. Keeping the day flowing and on schedule can often be even more of a challenge. I will work with you to design a session that meets your objectives and then facilitate the day so that you can focus on the content and your role. I will design and run an appropriate opening activity to get people immediately involved and connected to each other. I can also provide tips and tools to inspire creativity.

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Individual Coaching

I provide one-on-one coaching, in person or by telephone with a variety of people, including executives, managers, supervisors and trainers. Each coaching relationship is customized based on the needs of the person needing the coaching. Options include observation and feedback, assessment, problem solving, etc. See Specialties for more detail and examples.

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360 Assessment

Selecting and implementing a 360 Assessment is more involved than often realized. I have worked with 360 style assessments since 1989. My expertise includes:

  • selecting an assessment
  • administering and monitoring the process
  • training individuals how to read and interpret their feedback
  • providing one-on-one coaching
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Mentoring

Training isn't always the most effective way for employees to learn skills or build their career. In many organizations, mentoring happens ad-hoc. Capitalizing on the knowledge, experience and skills of your employees requires a good approach to mentoring. I will work with you to design and implement a mentoring program that matches the needs of your organization.

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Emerging Leaders

Who will you be moving into leadership and management roles in the organization? I will work with you to design a program to identify and build the skills of these individuals. By looking at their talents, skills, values, attitude and style, individuals will understand themselves and their motivations for leadership. Focus on understanding styles of others and on communication skills will prepare participants to be more effective immediately in their current role as well as in future leadership roles.

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Cracking the Personality Code -- Gain a Remarkable Understanding of Yourself and Others
Do you ever feel misunderstood by others, or at times feel perplexed understanding them?

Many of our relationship challenges are simply a lack of knowing how the marked differences between personality types impact our interactions. Likewise, our own life is much more rewarding when our personal choices come from an understanding of what drives our own unique personality type.

In this dynamic, interactive 2-day workshop, you will learn how to:

  • Significantly improve the quality of your relationships
  • Transform challenging relationships into harmonious ones
  • Effectively reduce conflict and misunderstanding
  • Realistically realign your expectations of others
  • Communicate more successfully with all types of people
  • Appreciate and rely on each other's unique attributes
  • Excel in your relationships at work and with clients

In addition to improving relationship skills, you will GAIN…

  • A deeper self-knowledge to help you define and achieve goals
  • Insights to help others understand and meet your needs
  • Information to realign the expectations you hold of yourself
  • The ability to make life decisions suited to your uniqueness
  • A better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses
  • Information to capitalize on those strengths through discovery of your core needs, values & talents
  • A connection to your true nature, minus the influence of your life experiences
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