For every event we host, we guarantee the highest possible level of professional training. The following skill sets and descriptions offer an overview of some of the training you can expect.
Appreciative Inquiry | Business Assessment Tools | Conflict Resolution
Emotional Intelligence | Interpersonal Communication Skills
Neuro Linguistic Programming | Skills for Dealing with Criticism | Strategies for Excellence
Appreciative Inquiry
Management thought leader Peter Drucker suggested that if we were to focus on our strengths our weaknesses would become irrelevant. Appreciative Inquiry is a process of inquiring into what works well for your organization and then focusing your efforts and resources for even greater success. Appreciative Inquiry uses the following tools:
- Building on your organization's strengths
- Well-formed outcome: start with the end in mind - this process gives questions to ask to make certain you hit the finish line
- 6 step reframe: turning our challenges into opportunities
Business Assessment Tools
Understanding the real operating metrics of your organization is critical to your success. Knowing which questions to ask, when and what to expect is the path to an effective organization.
- 4+2 Model: how effective is our business?
- Value Migration Model: are we adding or depleting value in our business?
- Hedgehog Model: find your sweet spot
- Three Horizons Model: keeping your pipeline flowing
Conflict Resolution
Conflict is an inevitable and important human process. Conflicts are likely to increase during times of change, and may lead to creative or destructive results.
By understanding and learning to manage conflict, we can increase the likelihood of positive outcomes as a result of conflict. Increased understanding can lead to the production of better ideas, allowing long-standing problems to surface and dealing with those problems, clarifying each person's point of view, and allowing the tension of conflict to stimulate interest and activity.
- The following models are the backbone for conflict resolution:
- Conflict orientation process: discovering the different styles of dealing with conflict, for both you and the folks you work with
- Evaluating the health of your organization
- Role clarification process
- Rapport building
- Neuro linguistic programming
- Learning to ask productive questions
- Transitions and conflict
- The dreamer/realist/critic neurosort
Emotional Intelligence
"...The key to making leadership work to everyone's advantage lies in the leadership competencies of emotional intelligence: how leaders handle themselves and their relationships. Leaders who maximize the benefits of primal leadership [emotional intelligence] drive the emotions of those they lead in the right direction"
-from Primal Leadership, 2002, p.6
- The latest information on Emotional Intelligence and the attributes of effective leaders
- Personality - the gift of the difference to your business
- Thumbnail sketches of personality types
- Dealing with Emotions - understanding them is to our professional advantage
Interpersonal Communication Skills
Clear, effective communications lead to clear, effective action. The more clearly you communicate, the more effectively your organization will respond. If your results are not what you want or need, maybe it relates to less than clear communications.
- Paraphrase - who is saying what?
- Overview of communication - what happens in conversation?
- Perception check - when to check it out.
- Productive questions - where are we?
- Interpersonal gap - why the conversations go awry.
Neuro Linguistic Programming
Neurolinguistics is the study of the structure of subjective experience. It stands for the basic process people use to encode, transfer, and guide their communications and perceptions.
The primary goal of NLP is to provide more choices for behavior by challenging what we perceive as limitations. As we learn to understand more and more variables, we have more and more freedom to choose, decide, change, and grow.
Skills for Dealing with Criticism
The ability to provide critical evaluations and receive constructive feedback is one of the most important skills a leader can have; it can mean the difference between an effective organization and a revolving door.
- Role renegotiation model: creating sustainable relationships
- Fogging: softening the blow
- Negative inquiry: critic turned coach
- Paraphrase: do I understand?
- Perception check: what is behind the smoke and mirrors?
- Behavior description: what you see is what you get
Strategies for Excellence
In his classic 1996 article, Michael Porter said, "Operational Effectiveness is not strategy...The root of the problem is the failure to distinguish between operational effectiveness and strategy." Effective and consistent performance requires a clear understanding of your firm's strategy, operations, and everyone's role within the organization.
- Decision making strategies: using your brain's mainframe
- How to run an effective meeting
- Neurolinguistics/rapport building: the worlds we create with the words we choose