Popular Training Programs

As you read about the programs please keep in mind that all of these have been designed by us, which means that they can be modified and tailored to fit your organization and your training needs and objectives. Multiple day programs can be trimmed for shorter time frames or presented as a series of brief modules. Modules can be taken from different programs and combined to create a new program for you or we can design completely new programs if needed.

Accountability: Managing for Maximum Results

This 2-day training program is based on Sam Lloyd's book of the same title and we recommend providing a copy of the book for each participant to supplement and reinforce the learning. Training participants learn how to improve accountability by building stronger relationships with employees, using performance contracts, giving feedback skillfully, reinforcing desirable behaviors, coaching, using a relationship audit worksheet, and other practical techniques and skills. When the manager/employee relationship is a solid one based on trust, mutual respect, clearly defined expectations and goals, effective communication and a commitment to continuous improvement, there is no problem with accountability!

Balancing Work & Home

Recent human resources research indicates that the majority of employees want their managers and their organization to be aware of their needs for balancing their lives. Many report that they will leave their current employment to join an organization that will help them with this need! With more and more single parents, dual career couples, single employees who resent being expected to work longer hours while married employees take care of family issues, others who feel the pressure to upgrade their knowledge and skills to remain competitive - the demands on the time and energy of employees continue to grow and they want help learning to find and maintain a balance. This 2-day program helps each participant develop their personal plan for sorting out priorities, planning time, defining agreements with others who play important roles in their lives, identifying support sources, and other important techniques for achieving the balance they desire.

Coaching Skills to Build Peak Performance

This is a 2-day training program used by organizations such as StorageTek, Hitachi America, Specialized Bicycles, Red Mesa School District and others and conducted as a public registration seminar in partnership with universities such as San Jose State, Vanderbilt, Southern Methodist, and Colorado State. Supervisors, Team Leaders and Managers learn how to delegate more skillfully, how to give feedback (both positive and negative), how to help employees learn from mistakes and solve problems for themselves, how to confront problem behavior and other very valuable skills for helping employees be their best. Supervisors and managers consistently tell us they wish they had received this type of training early in their careers!

Creative Decision Making

A version of this program was originally developed for Mary Kay Cosmetics because they wanted to improve the creativity of their marketing group. We have broadened the program to apply to all kinds of organizations and to help participants not only expand their creativity but to help them learn a number of techniques for improving decision making. The training can be done as one or two days of training with numerous practical applications in a highly involving experience which stimulates creativity and innovation and has a definite team-building bonus!

Customer Service Excellence

If your customers were asked to name an organization that provided "Super Service" would they think of you? Most people have a difficult time thinking of any examples of truly excellent service which means that most organizations have much room for improvement. This 2-day program helps participants develop a customer service attitude and new skills for serving both internal and external customers better by exploring the tools and techniques used by some of the best (Disney, Nordstrom and others). Trainees learn how to do a better job of handling telephone calls, creating rapport with customers, identifying needs, getting clear commitments, handling irate customers, anticipating needs, etc. Participants leave this training with increased confidence, new excitement about doing their jobs well and improved skills that can be used immediately upon their return to work!

Effective Meeting Skills

Every organization runs on meetings - lots and lots of meetings! The most common complaints of meeting participants are that the meetings take too long and too little gets accomplished. During the 2 days of this training people learn the basic tools and techniques for helping meetings run smoothly - from the mechanics of agendas, ground rules, timekeepers, etc. to the interpersonal skills of communicating clearly and succinctly, listening effectively, resolving emotionally charged disagreements, reaching consensus, reinforcing desirable behavior and extinguishing undesirable behavior, and making sure each different personality type gets the message. Practice sessions help participants learn important behaviors and skills they can use in their very next meeting to help the meeting be more effective.

Effective Presentation Skills

More and more people are expected to give presentations as part of their job – reporting progress on assignments, proposing ideas and changes for improvement, explaining systems and procedures, selling products and services, announcing new developments to the public or media, etc.   Few people have ever received any training in how to give such presentations and the results are painfully obvious! This training teaches people how to plan a presentation from scratch, how to organize their ideas and information, how to use different techniques to get through to all types of audiences, how to handle questions, how to involve audience members, how to resolve presentation anxiety and other valuable tools and techniques for improving presentations.

Effective Supervision

This training program can be from 1 to 4 or 5 days in length depending upon the range of topics, depth of learning and the amount of practice desired (longer is better when it comes to learning and building skills!). The topics covered can range from the basics of Planning, Organizing, Executing and Monitoring to the more specific skill sets such as Creating Rapport & Building Relationships, Delegating, Giving Feedback, Identifying and Meeting Motivational Needs, Resolving Conflicts, Reinforcing Desired Behavior, Confronting Problem Behavior, Improving Teamwork, etc. This training is particularly effective when customized for the organization with real-life situations that supervisors can identify as being relevant to their needs. Stories, examples, workbook exercises and practice sessions help supervisors learn just what to say and do to improve their effectiveness with their employees.

Leading Teams: The Skills for Success

Following the publication of Sam Lloyd's book with this title, we developed this 2-day training program to help supervisors, managers and team leaders learn how to provide effective leadership. They learn how teams form, bond, develop trust and respect for one another, commit to a common purpose and work together to achieve their goals. They also learn how to anticipate and handle the predictable conflicts and slumps that occur. Participants in this training also learn how to create and build better rapport with each individual, how to identify the motivational needs of each member of the team, how to maintain discipline and generate enthusiasm and pride within the team!

Managing Multiple Priorities

The typical time management course works fine for analytical personalities but often does not help others! This 2-day training program is designed to help all personality types learn to use their time most effectively without having to purchase expensive time management systems that can actually reinforce being obsessed with details! Participants learn how to clarify their values, the organization's values, distinguish between urgency and importance, improve their goal-setting skills, assign realistic priorities, communicate wants, needs and expectations more effectively, get better commitments, listen more skillfully to prevent time-wasting misunderstandings and other important tools and techniques for maximizing productivity. Everyone has their own unique time management challenges and this training allows each participant to choose the approaches that work for them.

People Skills

Everyone in the organization deals with people but most people have had little or no training to help them be effective with people! This 2-day training program helps participants understand how all communication involves personality factors, how relationships develop predictable challenges and problems, how conflict occurs and what to do about it, how to communicatemost effectively with different personality types, how to be more assertive without becoming aggressive, how to listen skillfully for maximum understanding and empathy and how to negotiate with people for desired changes in behavior. Practice exercises help participants develop new skills that will pay dividends in all of their relationships   - with coworkers, employees, bosses, customers, friends and family.

Persuasion & Influencing Skills

This 3-day program was originally designed for Bristol-Myers Squibb and later was added to the Executive Development series of seminars at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. Several other companies have contracted with us to have this training conducted for their employees. This program uses a profile instrument that gives participants feedback about how frequently they use five different negotiating styles in dealing with others. During the three days participants learn how to improve their skills to increase their flexibility and effectiveness with all of the styles. The emphasis of the training is learning to use the win-win style known as collaboration with individuals and in group interaction.

Professional Telephone Techniques

For the many people who communicate with your organization by telephone those conversations are not only their first impression but often are the most lasting impressions of your organization! All too often the people talking with your customers by telephone have received little or no training to help them serve the caller professionally and effectively. Anyone who deals with people by telephone (external or internal customers) can do a better job after completing this valuable training - receptionists, salespeople, technical support, accounting staff, shipping, etc.

Participants learn how to handle irate callers, how to respond to difficult inquiries, how to transfer callers with the little extra touches that make positive impressions, what to say and what NOT to say!

Respectful Relationships

This half-day to full-day program was designed at the request of an organization experiencing continuing problems with harassment and discrimination. Rather than use the traditional approach of providing information about the laws and accompanying "Don't do these things" messages, we developed a program to address the underlying problem of people being disrespectful toward others. This training raises awareness of how others can perceive words and body language signals as being disrespectful (even when not intended) and teaches participants how to use communication skills to be as respectful as possible with others at all times. They also learn how to respond when someone does interpret their words/actions as disrespectful to resolve the problem on the spot rather than allow it to escalate into a grievance or lawsuit.

Self-Esteem & Personal Power

Employees at all levels in your organization can be more effective by building self-esteem! Everyone has some room for strengthening self-esteem, confidence, positive attitude and expectations, vision and goals, and skills for handling themselves assertively. Participants in this 2-day program develop their own goals and plans for building new strengths and skills under the guidance of our highly experienced trainers. Enhanced self-esteem translates into higher levels of motivation, improved productivity, more confident risk taking, quicker decisions, reduced stress and more effective interactions with others.

Strategic Planning / Long-Range Planning

The quality of the planning in an organization is often the key ingredient of success and most managers have received little training in how to do it well! We offer workshops in both the strategic planning and long-range planning and goal-setting processes with very experienced consultants who have helped numerous organizations improve their success. Our trainers use highly participative and practical approaches that allow participants to apply the lessons learned to their own planning needs.

Survival Skills for Secretaries & Administrative Assistants

The most under-appreciated employees in most organizations are among the most critically important for keeping things running smoothly! This training program not only gives you a tool for recognizing these valuable employees but will also help them handle their jobs more effectively. Participants learn how to use their time productively, how to deal with stress, how to listen skillfully, how to be more assertive, and other skills for handling the wide range of duties and people in their jobs. (1 or 2 days)

Team-Building

In contrast to the Leading Teams program, this training is for all of the team members including the designated leader to help them learn to work together as effectively as possible. The training is most effective if at least 2 days are devoted to it. The participants learn how to develop consensus about their mission and goals, action plans and problem solving and they develop improved skills for everyday communication, resolving conflicts, strengthening rapport and trust among the team, giving feedback to each other and receiving feedback from one another, and learning how to use the collaborative, win-win approach for decision making. Numerous exercises create opportunities for the team members to use the techniques and skills while developing new awareness of the challenges and rewards of teamwork. Following this training with some team experiences such as a "ropes course" or other exercises which put the participants into situations which require teamwork for successful outcomes provides additional skills practice and reinforces the lessons of the basic team-building training. We can help to arrange and facilitate such additional experiences.

Training for Trainers

This program helps anyone learn to do a better job of training others. Not only trainers, but also supervisors, managers, team leaders and team members need to know how to teach someone else. Hewlett-Packard has used this training program with hundreds of people because they expect everyone to be able to teach others how to do what they do! During these 2 or 3 days participants learn how to plan what they want to teach to someone to make sure that the learner learns and remembers what they learn. They also learn the personal skills required to create rapport with the learner, to communicate most effectively, how to make sure the learner is understanding, how to give feedback skillfully to assist the learner's skill development, how to use various techniques and tools for helping others learn, recall and remember most effectively.

Turning Stress Into Success

More and more employees report that their jobs are more stressful than ever. This training helps people understand what stress is, what is producing stress (not always obvious), what stress does to them (physical, emotional, mental, relationships, productivity) and what to do to reduce the stress or at least the negative effects of the stress. Each participant has the opportunity to develop their own stress management program and learns numerous techniques for dealing effectively with the stress in their lives. Lowering stress improves health and productivity that benefits the organization as well as the individual - a win-win benefit that will be greatly appreciated by your employees. (1 or 2 days)

If you have a special need or training objective ask us to design a customized program!

Many of these programs were originally designed to meet clients' requests.