Management & Leadership Training

Connected Leadership: Communicating for Influence and Impact

Do you want to be a leader people want to work for? Creating a strong, engaged team translates into a more positive work environment, lower turnover, and increase productivity and collaboration. It also has a direct effect on your organization’s bottom line.

A Connected Leader is able to create a collaborative environment where everyone can be the best versions of themselves. Before starting the program, you will complete the Thinking Preferences Assessment (TPA)* to understand better how you prefer to make decisions, communicate, and solve problems. With this understanding, you’ll be able to recognize the elements that drive your leadership, your reputation, and your engagement with your team.

During the program, you will discover how your communication style shapes your interactions with your team. You’ll identify the styles of your team members and learn what motivates and demotivates different styles. You will discover the four pillars of trust, the conscious and unconscious actions that build and break trust, and a five-step model to restore broken trust. This program will allow you to build stronger relationships and loyalty with your colleagues and get the most out of your team.

Connected Leadership will enable you to identify the characteristics of a connected leader and the qualities of the leader you want to be. You will leave with increased clarity on your current and desired leadership brand.

*The Thinking Preferences Assessment (TPA) by NBI® is an online assessment each participant will complete prior to the program. The TPA reveals your Individual Thinking Preferences – that is, which part of your brain you prefer to exercise the most in thinking and learning.

Attendees Will:

• Improve collaboration and reduce conflict by recognizing and flexing different communication modes
• Discover your personal Thinking Preferences* and how to easily identify those of others
• Leverage your teams’ strengths by understanding style motivations and influences
• Build trust to improve productivity, morale, loyalty, and retention
• Discover the visual, vocal, and verbal tools and distractors that impact your image
• Determine your current and desired leadership brand

Driving Performance

As a leader you are evaluated on the results you achieve with and through your team. Effective leadership is not a one size fits all approach.  To get the best out of your team you need a varied playbook.

Program Objectives:

• Coach your employees to have peak performance
• Deliver engaging and actionable feedback
• Manage and lead your team through change

Executive Presence & Personal Branding

Do people notice when you walk in the room? Do they listen and pay attention when you share an idea? How you show up in the room, get listened to and are known amongst your colleagues are all critical components of your future success.  Delivering strong results is not enough to build a successful career. Presence is a key building block in reaching the executive level. This training focuses on understanding the impact of your interactions on your presence, how you can proactively manage your presence and how to develop your own personal brand.  We discuss how to determine you brand attributes, demonstrate the nuances of body language on your professional presence, and discuss how to strengthen the lasting impressions you make on your network.

Program Objectives:

• Recognize the attributes that impact first and lasting perceptions
• Tweak your body language to enhance your professional presence
• Discover the verbal tools and distractors the impeded your image
• Learn how word choice impacts responses
• Determine how to select your brand personality

Giving Action Oriented Feedback

Performance management’s impact on an organization can be directly felt in the bottom line. Companies with high turnover and poor employee retention rates experience lower employee morale and increased expenses in recruiting and training. Understanding the strengths and development needs of staff can guide employees toward a long-term career track. Communicating the keys to success is even more critical in long-term productivity and retention. This course will provide methodologies for each phase from goal setting to coaching to feedback. Exercises offer an opportunity for participants to begin developing their personal objectives as well as imparting techniques to manage the monitoring, coaching, and appraisal feedback phases of the process.

Program Objectives:

• Create a culture of feedback
• Understand the attributes of effective feedback
• Improve your ability to receive feedback
• Utilize a four part feedback conversation model
• Take a coach approach to managing and feedback

Hardwiring Accountability into Your Workforce

Everyone talks about accountability, but few teams are actually able to fully deliver it. This workshop breaks down the core competencies of accountability and offers a plan for coaching and developing accountability in your team. It will enable you to apply the tools and practices that accelerate greater accountability both individually and organizationally to your every day role as manager, director and leader.

Program Objectives:

• Gain a true understanding of the four elements of the competency of accountability
• Adopt interviewing and hiring techniques that ensure accountability in new hires
• Gain skills in coaching current employees for accountability
• Become fluent in a new employee value metric that measures accountability
• Understand the relationship between accountability and engagement
• Gain key tools and strategies to “hardwire” accountability throughout your organization

Hiring Right: Effective Interviewing

Companies with high turnover and poor employee retention rates experience lower employee morale and increased expenses in recruiting and training. Hiring the right employee for the job will result in increased employee productivity and a bigger bottom line.  Our Hiring Right: Effective Interviewing course provides the foundation for understanding the characteristics that lead to success in your organization and how to interview to identify those traits. Exercises will provide practice in each phase of the process from writing the job description through documenting the interview.

Program Objectives:

• Understand the job requirements
• Prescreen applicants: the resume & the phone interview
• Learn the types of interview questions and what they reveal about an applicant
• Create questions that uncover skill and fit
• Develop an interview structure and style
• Learn techniques to avoid bias and get your questions answered

Managing Change

This workshop looks at, what change means and why we need change. We will include how to identify and understand resistance as well as how to build stakeholder support. Finally, we will discuss the role of the change leader and how to work with other change partners to develop an action plan. 

Program Objectives:

• Assess and increase change readiness and
• Identify and explore impact of strategic pressure points
• Design a communication strategy
• Create a change management plan.

Managerial Decision Making and Problem Solving

This workshop is designed to help participants improve the quality and impact of their decisions, analyze and expand their decision-making methods, and identify solutions for on-the-job problems. 

Program Objectives:

• Discuss why problem solving and decision making are critical to every manager’s success
• Strategize to reach decisions
• Identify techniques to resolve problems more efficiently
• Enhance problem solving and decision making
• Assess and improve individual and team efforts to problem-solve

Providing Feedback & Coaching for Optimal Performance

This program highlights different ways that you can engage your employees in order to get the best performance possible.    Participants will learn the difference between the feedback process and coaching as it relates to the growth and development of their workforce.  A distinctive feedback model will is taught and practiced that supports everyday performance discussions.  The GROW Coaching model is also taught and practiced as tool to drive future development.  Both of these models are supported through improved communication skills; the art of listening is heavily reviewed in this program.

Program Objectives:

• Improve communication skills for greater impact in everyday performance discussions
• Gain tools for coaching and providing feedback that enables improved performance.
• Enable a culture where feedback is welcome, expected and reciprocal
• New tools for setting clear expectations around performance with your people

Project Management

This workshop will cover the structures and practices of Project Management with the overlay of engagement and collaboration strategies.  The focus will be on identifying and defining project objectives, efficiently and effectively coordinating project tasks, and applying the right processes and tools for managing a project team.

Program Objectives:

• Understand project management terms and knowledge areas
• Create a Project Charter that incorporates a project scope, a project plan with deliverables, time frames, resources, and risk analysis
• Incorporate tools from other methodologies such as: appreciative inquiry, story-telling, open space, and world café
• Utilize tools that facilitate workflow and accountability
• Communicate project-related information accurately and effectively
• Discover techniques for making project management meetings more dynamic and participatory
• Leverage collaboration to get projects done better, faster, cheaper, and greener

Team Building

In order to get anything accomplished we must work productively with others who may have various skill sets, education levels and personalities. To build a productive and efficient team, you must allocate responsibility based on desires and strengths. This course will focus on methods to determine the strengths and weaknesses of your team and distribute responsibilities to increase productivity and team morale.

You Will Learn To:

• Manage employee conflict
• Identify appropriate skills set to meet goals
• Delegate fairly and effectively
• Increase employee morale
• Create team vision and purpose
• Adapt your communication style

Team Leadership

Creating leaders in today’s business environment requires a broad set of skills. A leader must exercise influence, solve problems, communicate confidently, manage conflict, and inspire employees. Leadership is about knowing yourself, how your behavior affects the actions of others, and identifying your team’s preferences. Understanding their goals and values, needs and wants, comfort and stretch areas can lead to more effective motivation, delegation, conflict resolution and overall team performance.

Program Objectives:

• Understand the differences between staff, manager, and leader

• Create a shared team vision
• Align motivation and delegation with employee goals to increase performance and growth
• Increase dialogue and constructive feedback and empower your staff to get the work done
• Create accountability while increasing motivation and morale

The New Manager – What You Need To Know

As roles change so do the expectations of your peers, your staff, and your new reporting line. Your success is now dependent on the success of those you manage. The “do it yourself” philosophy no longer applies. You must grow, develop, and motivate your staff to meet the increased expectations. This course is designed to create a smooth transition to the manager role.

Program Objectives:

• Understand expectations and the different skills required as a manager

• Recognize and adapt to the communication preferences of your team
• Communicate clearly up and down the line
• Present yourself as a qualified and credible presence
• Know your role and learn to delegate, motivate, coach, and build a loyal team

The Value of Conflict: Conflict Resolution

Poorly handled conflicts can lead to break downs in communication, reduced morale, and higher turnover. However, when managed well, conflict has the potential to bring value to the organization and the team. Conflict is a costly and often mishandled occurrence in the workplace. Successful conflict resolution occurs by listening to and providing opportunities to meet each side’s needs, and adequately addressing their interests so that they are each satisfied with the outcome. In this you will learn the different conflict modes, how to choose the appropriate strategy for your situation, and how relationships impact your ability to promote the positive outcomes and minimize the negative outcomes of conflict. 

Program Objectives:

• Understand the power and potential of conflict in the workplace
• Learn the five conflict handling modes, positional and problem solving strategies
• Choose the best approach to addressing a conflict situation
• Develop techniques to improve conflict communications and relationships