Corporate Leadership Series

Leadership Professional Development Programs

The Corporate Leadership Series is designed management level individuals. The workshops are designed as an integrated series of programs that concentrate on topics of interest to corporations and their  managers. The intent is to help this group achieve a corporate environment that is vision-led, goal-directed, and customer-driven. We find that both management and non-management have participated and benefited from these offerings.

Following you'll find descriptions of each of the five workshops (Corporate Leadership; Courageous Leadership Strategies; Process-Centered Leadership; Sex, Laws & Stereotypes; and How am I Doing).

Courses Offered

	Corporate Leadership Series Corporate Leadership Courageous Leadership Strategies Process Centered Leadership Monday Night Football Sex, Laws & Stereotypes How Am I Doing?
	Workshop Methodologies
	Participant Feedback

Corporate Leadership Workshop

The Challenge of Change

Learn why organizations must either grow or die, and discover how to be nimble and quick when challenged by a volatile business environment. Identify why a clearly stated vision is critical to continued organizational growth and pinpoint specific applications for use in your organization. Recognize the direct relationship between acting out your vision and improved individual and team performance. Review the benefits of collaboration, examine the characteristics of high-performing teams, and address the facilitation skills needed to insure team success. Find out why leaders who integrate relationship building skills and core values with the decision-making process develop sound judgment and make wiser choices. This course will help you develop a framework for understanding how the forces of change really work and how to use these forces to your advantage. Expand your leadership capabilities, champion change, and increase organizational effectiveness by combining theory, practice, and fun.

Topics:

• The New Physics of Change – Causes of change, its driving force, and the impact on people and productivity.
• Growth Curve Model – The cycle of organizational development and interventions for long-term success.
• Mission, Vision, and Values – Their roles in shaping organizational growth and prosperity.
• Collaboration – Characteristics of high-performing teams. How to be a more effective team member and facilitator.
• Value-based Decision-Making – Skills for improving judgments and making wise choices during uncertain times.

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Courageous Leadership Strategies^TM Workshop

Why Being the Best is No Longer Good Enough

Help insure your future personal and business success by learning why conventional values are no longer effective in today’s ambiguous, unpredictable, and volatile environment. Stay ahead of the curve by identifying which values are required to succeed in an era of change. You’ll determine whether your values reflect an attitude of embracing or resisting change. You’ll learn specialized interview procedures for finding employees who have the values needed to survive and thrive in an environment requiring flexibility, adaptability, and top performance. Extend your reach from just being the best to one of achieving greatness.

Topics:

• Clashing Values – Dealing with conflicting personal and work values. Understanding the linkage between success and values in a changing environment.
• Achieving Greatness – Attending to detail and requiring peak performance from all employees. Freeing your organization from mediocrity.
• Transforming Your Values – Replacing values reserved for a stable business climate with those that enable success in today’s changing environment.
• Conflict is Good – Appreciating the benefits of conflict through open, honest communication.
• Selection Procedures – Ensuring a values match with a specific values-based interview technique. Assessing whether candidates’ values line up with achieving greatness and peak performance.

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Process-Centered Leadership Workshop

Stay Ahead of the Pack

Discover how focusing on the business processes can help add value to customers, transform non-management workers to professionals, and enhance your strategic planning process. Gain insight into expanding, refining, and creating new products and services. Uncover opportunities to extend your existing market and enter new markets while developing a solid foundation for making long- and short-term business decisions. This course can help you identify your critical business processes and apply methods for communicating, measuring, and managing the performance of these processes. Transform your thinking about how people work, what managers do, and how businesses compete and affect society.

Topics:

• Linking Business Process and Strategy – Applying different approaches to the planning process in a changing business environment. Maintaining organizational health by linking process and strategy.
• Moving Toward Process Centering – Understanding and applying the cornerstones of business process management:
  • Identifying processes and naming process owners
  • Communicating the importance of process to everyone
  • Measuring the process
  • Actively managing the process
• Shifting Views – Altering perspectives on organizational structure, communication, and traditional roles. Examining the new roles of managers and process owners and how they will work differently.
• Innovation, Diversification, Conversion, and Expansion – Capitalizing on existing processes to explore new markets and offer more or different goods or services.

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Monday Night Football

A Play-book of Gender Communication Strategies™

Why do men use sports analogies? Why do women want more details? Why do men keep pushing the envelope? Why don’t women set boundaries? Communication style differences between men and women can impair an organization’s ability to maintain effective teamwork, sales results, and customer service. Unwitting gender offenders are often the cause of sexual harassment complaints, and time consuming investigations.

This seminar highlights common communication breakdowns and blunders caused by stereotypic thinking, false assumptions, misperceptions, and misinterpretation of intentions. Steve and Elizabeth use current research, case studies, and a medley of entertaining video clips to raise your awareness about the substance and subtleties impacting discussions between men and women. They demonstrate how "end runs," "touching base," and "punting" can increase or decrease credibility and respect with the opposite sex..

Audiences Learn:

• How to create credibility when communicating with the opposite sex
• How biological, evolutionary, and social differences affect interactions
• Why sexual stereotypes lead to unfair expectations and assumptions
• How verbal and non-verbal communication style differences affect perceptions
• Specific skills to help resolve communication and behavioral conflicts

Run smart, not scared when dealing with sexual harassment claims, by making sure your response to legal compliance rises above minimum requirements. Develop values-driven policies that reflect the way you want employees to conduct themselves. Review recent court decisions that now favor employers and how they affect your exposure. Understand management's responsibilities for maintaining a respectful workplace environment, and learn the best approaches for preventive action to protect yourself and your organization against financial liabilities. Learn to spot potential risky behavior and what specific action to take. Stay out of court by taking complaints seriously, addressing them immediately, and stopping inappropriate behavior. Develop skills for conducting thorough and objective complaint investigations.

Topics:

• The Big Picture – Recognizing that your organizational values drive day-to-day business decisions. Understanding how government regulations set the floor, not the ceiling for respectful workplace behavior.
• Sexual Harassment – Clarifying the legal definitions of quid pro quo and hostile environment sexual harassment. Developing appropriate policies to avoid litigation and assure respectful treatment of all employees.
• Spotting Risks – Training managers on expected employee behavior and specific procedures for handling complaints and confronting sexual harassers. Understanding the importance of being proactive rather than reactive to potential risky employee behavior.
• Investigations Techniques – Assuring fair treatment by applying probing, impartial investigation skills to gather information in an objective, consistent, and thorough manner.

Note: This course contains explicit language expressed in video scenarios, actual court case summaries, and excerpts from the book, Sex, Laws & Stereotypes. Every effort is made to keep the presentation discussion in good taste when addressing these sensitive issues.

The book, Sex, Laws & Stereotypes, is part of the course materials. This heralded sequel to Outrageous Conduct, is an entertaining and informative odyssey into today’s challenging workplace world. Dr. Elizabeth Fried expands her research of unusual, but real cases with an eye toward key learning points. She addresses serious and often unthinkable employment situations in an offbeat, easy-to-read style, while explaining complex workplace issues. These cases, loaded with pathos, humor, and practical solutions cover ADA, discrimination, sexual harassment, benefits fraud, workplace violence, and more. Experience the virtual reality of HR management as you’re drawn into each scenario. Then benefit from the employee relations and legal tips offered by her extensive panel of HR and legal experts who tell you how to prevent future problems and avoid courtroom battles. This page-turner is used in corporate training programs and college HR courses to captivate students–it’s one business book that won’t lull you to sleep!

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Help employees change and grow for both themselves and their organization. Information is the key to making improvements in competencies, skills, and behaviors for continued growth. Learn why multi-source feedback–gathering responses from the widest circle of observers–provides one of the most effective ways to get the information necessary for successful personal and organizational transformation. Recognize the importance of choosing candid feedback providers and selecting the right coach. Design valid and reliable appraisal instruments, and install safeguards to maintain system credibility and prevent appraiser collusion. Identify when and how to link the 360° approach to reward systems without compromising the quality of feedback.

Topics:

• The Power and the Purpose – Understanding the evolution and variations of the new multi-source assessment model to determine how it fits your organizational needs. Applying the feedback beyond individual performance appraisals to other business areas.
• Taking the Plunge – Designing a system that matches your requirements. Implementing a project that will insure buy-in from stakeholders. Evaluating the results of the information and the process to make sure data is valid and reliable.
• Overcoming Obstacles – Avoiding common pitfalls and preparing for criticism to insure successful design and implementation.
• Linking Pay to Feedback Data – Identifying how and when to connect performance feedback to reward systems while maintaining candid feedback.
• A Look at the Future – Evaluating side benefits of the 360° model and reviewing what other organizations have gained from its use.

Commitment to Quality and Continuous Improvement

We apply a design methodology that enables active learning and continuous improvement. We stay on top of new research, listen to participants, and take their suggestions seriously. This dynamic approach enables our courses to be constantly evolving and improving. Course evaluations, including participant comments are available for review. We also invite you to examine our curriculum design and teaching methodologies.