Drive Better Outcomes

Change with Less Pain:

Have you ever been frustrated that the people around you didn’t seem to move as fast as you expected them to when adopting the change in front of them? Have you watched initiatives fail as the energy-builders at the head of the line switched their focus onto something else before the thing even got done? Have you gotten part way through a change and wondered if this was still the right thing to do?

In this course, learn to guide others through change by recognizing indicators of change appetite, anticipating challenges, and providing the support that team members and stakeholders need through times of transition. Following a proven process and exploring the different types of support that people commonly need, we’ll work through tools and tips to help guide conversations and bring people through change more effectively.

This engaging look at change and transition will help you look at change with fresh eyes, with the end goal of improving your ability to help others through the transition process–regardless of the change itself or the change appetite of those involved.

Pillar – Change is a Process, Not an Event

Learning Outcomes:

By attending this session, participants will...

• Recognize the most common symptoms of change and transition as well as indicators of change appetite
• Implement proven strategies to help guide others through change successfully
• Demonstrate simple adjustments to personal mindset and attitude to help influence the mindset and attitude of others
• Gain a tool for planning communications through times of change that help build and maintain buy-in from others
• Practice a simple, easy-to-replicate model that offers both strategies and tactics to help bring those around you through change successfully

Advanced Facilitation:
Some meetings – and some meeting participants – require extra care and finesse. Busy executives with limited time on their hands, distracted individuals whose minds are elsewhere, and people caught up in organizational politics that don’t align with the other meeting participants can make things really tough! Whether we’re trying to understand the technical details of a specific issue or we’re planning for the next several months or years for our organization, our meetings need to be productive and useful. The best compliment to a meeting facilitator is to be invited back, and that doesn’t happen unless the people in the meeting agree that the meeting was effective. Gain and practice proven techniques to protect the productivity of the meeting and keep things moving forward well, even in the face of apathy, distractedness, excessive chattiness, resistance, hostility, unreasonable dominance, and other unproductive behaviors. In this full-day workshop, we’ll weave stories of disruptive behavior into techniques of how to manage them with grace. Keeping in mind the essentials of any effective meeting and supplementing those critical foundations with advanced techniques to use when the meeting is at a standstill. This class will prepare you to facilitate even the highest-stakes meetings with any of highest profile participants.

Pillar – Returning Business Value

Learning Outcomes:

• Practice anticipating and preparing for the challenges that will most likely occur in your meeting environment
• Gain proven techniques as a facilitator to keep your cool under fire
• Practice regaining control in a safe environment, so you can be ready when the next meeting turns unpleasant
• Gain tools you can use to help others manage better meetings where you work

High points Tools:

• From EEEWW! to OOOH! – The characteristics of an effective meeting
• Plan Well – Open Well – Facilitate Well – Close Well – a simple framework for ensuring a good meeting
• Content Listening and Process Listening – Two types of listening as a facilitator and how to do both when there’s just one you
• Who will do What by When –turn pipe dreams to action items
• The Fist of Fives – a consensus building tool for teams

The Art and Science of Emotional Intelligence:
Using a balance of instructor-led presentation and engaging, hands-on skill practice that simulates real-life situations in a nonthreatening way, this session will launch you on your way to being more effective in your current role by helping you raise your Emotional Intelligence and leverage emotional intelligence more effectively. Dispelling common myths about emotional intelligence, and packed with practical, try-this-now tips and techniques, this session has been increasingly popular since its inception. Regardless of your own Emotional Intelligence, you’ll walk away with tools you can use to get even better and ways to influence those around you to also grow their own Emotional Intelligence.

Pillar – Making Authentic Human Connection

Learning Outcomes:

• Gain a simple model for understanding the four stages of Emotional Intelligence
• Practice examples of how to apply Emotional Intelligence in familiar situations
  1. Starting with the role of self-awareness in effective interpersonal interactions
  2. Continuing with the value of self-management in achieving goals at work
  3. Exploring the importance of other awareness and how to identify where someone else is coming from
  4. Focusing on the criticality of relationship management and how to ensure that the situation moves forward in the best possible way for everyone involved
• Encounter stories and anecdotes, tools and techniques to learn “the easy way” to avoid the most common and most painful mistakes around Emotional Intelligence
• Experience tools and techniques to help you improve your influence with others, including a tailored quick reference guide for future development

High points Tools:

• Group Norms – a flexible device that helps us set and hold ourselves accountable to shared expectations
• DISC – a simple, classroom encounter with this tool for ease of conversation from the perspective of helping us have better communications
• Communication Planning Tool© – The Your Clear Next Step easy-to-apply four-quadrant tool that can be used in as few as seconds to help prepare for the communications that “matter” to be certain of your own purpose, take into account your communication preferences, focus on the needs of the audience, and make a plan to ensure the communication is effective.
• Working with Me Tool – an easily adaptable tool to improve self-awareness and other-awareness to set up individuals who are working together off on the right foot for effective relationships
• Team Development Tool© – The Your Clear Next Step proven and simple-to-use tool that leverages in a fast and easy-to-revisit way the key elements of a safe, healthy, and high-performing team.

Time Management Hacks:

Overview: A half-day session filled with practical, tactical tools to increase your own productivity and bring joy back to your day.

A quick Google search will tell you that top time wasters at work include unnecessary or wasteful meetings, multitasking, interruptions or distractions, low-value work (email/social media, or even non-work), and working without a plan. If you don’t have much time to give but wish you had more time to get stuff done, join us for this half day session that’s worth its weight in gold. Packed with ready-to-use tools and techniques, easy to recognize stories and familiar examples. We’ll bring you prove hacks for getting the most out of your work day so you can get on with your life after work.

Pillar – Returning Business Value

Learning Outcomes:

• Gain empowering phrases and conversation starters to take control of their time back when others appear to be hijacking it
• Encounter an easy-to-use tool to help understand their own tendencies, strength and challenge areas for getting work done at work
• Explore tools such as “the flow” for stacking your day and your work for success