Instructor Led Seminars

Our instructor-led seminars are designed with busy professionals in an increasingly fast-paced environment in mind. We offer multiple delivery methods to meet different business needs.

Click here or call us at 856-503-8757 to let us know the seminar from the list below and delivery method you have selected.

List of seminars. New Seminars are added regularly so visit often to see what’s new. Click on each title to see an outline.

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Riding the Wave of Change

Thriving on the realities of the 21st Century organization

All human progress is brought about by change. Yet, some of the most trying times in any organization are periods of intense, rapid, or continuous change. And contrary to the corporate world of the 20th Century, corporate change is no longer episodic; it’s a daily experience!

How do you then cope? Beyond coping, how do you thrive on change?

Participants learn:

• The necessity and inevitability of change
• Why change is desirable
• How to cause change/why you should be a change agent
• How to leverage change to achieve personal and corporate excellence
• Things that should not change
• Why people resist change
• Leadership’s role in a changing environment
• Managing change you have control over
• Managing change that’s thrust upon you
• Managing resistance to change
• How to lead in times of change

Who should participate: All levels of employees, supervisors, managers, HR/OD professionals, and people interested in thriving in today’s constantly changing environment.

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From Being on Edge to Gaining the Edge!

Building Effective Interpersonal and Communication Skills

This seminar affords you the opportunity to learn critical communication and interpersonal skills that will help you excel in any role in your organization. By including the interpersonal element of communication, you learn how your emotion, demeanor, personality, preferences, and behavior impact your message, interaction, and relationship with others.

Participants will

• Examine the communication process
• Clarify two-way vs. unidirectional communication
• Identify effective communication skills
• Identify barriers to effective communication
• Identify and discuss fundamental interpersonal skills
• Discuss emotional intelligence in interpersonal relations
• Examine principles of interpersonal communication
• Learn ways to communicate with difficult people or audiences
• Learn ways to craft and communicate a difficult message
• Learn ways to leverage technology to facilitate communication
• Learn ways to use appreciative inquiry to gain the edge
• Learn ways to properly give and receive feedback
• Learn ways to effectively communicate in meetings
• Learn ways to listen as a factor in effective communication
• Identify personal deficiencies in communication
• Create an action plan for improvement

Who should participate: All levels of employees, management, senior leadership, and anyone who desires to improve his/her relationship building and communication skills.

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From Coaching to Counseling

The piece of your job you wish someone else did!

You excel in all of your managerial responsibilities except in the area of addressing the “people issues”. Every time one crops up – error, poor performance, negative attitude, tardiness, and absenteeism – you wish it would go away without any intervention. When it doesn’t you lose sleep, patience, and sometimes, your professional demeanor. By the time you’re “forced” to take action, it’s already out of control. Why didn’t you act sooner?

Participants will

• Understand their role as a coach
• Learn when coaching is appropriate and why it should precede counseling
• Learn why coaching is key to building a strong and productive relationship
• Learn appropriate disciplinary steps and when to apply them based on organization policy and subject to applicable laws
• Learn how to anticipate and nip potential serious issues in the bud
• Learn the dangers in procrastinating or avoiding employee issues
• Learn how to leverage their HR and OD resources in forestalling problems
• Apply learning through role plays and practice
• Leave seminar with helpful tools

Who should participate: Supervisors, managers, HR/OD professionals, and people in nonprofit and governmental organizations who have responsibility for leading others.

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How to Bury the Hatchet

Lessons in Conflict Resolution

This seminar is designed to equip managers with critical skills for nipping concerns in the bud before they become major conflicts and for resolving conflicts once they occur.

Participants will

• Learn types of conflict
• Locate sources of conflict
• Learn the consequences/costs of conflict
• Learn faux steps in dealing with conflict
• Examine individual behavior/preferences and conflict
• Examine the idea and applicability of “healthy” conflict
• Discuss techniques for forestalling conflict
• Examine the implications of conflict avoidance
• Identify preferred methods of conflict resolution
• Role play approaches to resolving conflict
• Leave seminar with a proven approach to conflict resolution

Who should participate: Supervisors, managers, HR/OD professionals, and other individuals engaged in conflict management.

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The Power of Two!

Building a High-Performing Team

Whether you’re starting a brand new team, reenergizing a functional crew, or refurbishing a worn out one, your success as an organization depends greatly on your ability to tap into the synergy that a well-oiled team generates. As you will learn, your team’s weakness is one of your organization’s biggest liabilities.

This seminar is designed to show participants how to turn a group into a team, how to achieve and sustain a high energy level, and how to achieve and exceed organizational goals while allowing each member of the team to excel.

Participants will

• Learn to differentiate between a team and a group
• Learn practical steps for building a high-performing team
• Identify key characteristics of a high-performing team
• Identify factors that can cause a team to become dysfunctional
• Learn the costs/consequences of a dysfunctional team
• Learn how to manage non-players
• Determine where their team is on the high-performance continuum
• Create and review an action plan for moving their team forward

Who should participate: Team leads, team members, all levels of leadership, HR professionals, etc.

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Understanding the Dual Role of Supervisors®

To add the greatest value to their organizations, today's supervisors must be savvy and comfortable in these two roles. As the below chart shows, we help supervisors raise the bar and close the gap.

 

Core Management Role	Core Leadership Role
Hiring	Coaching
Staffing/planning coverage	Mentoring
Attendance management	Trust building
Performance management	Team building
Effective communication	Effective 2-way communication
Staff development	Leading change
Reward and recognition	Leading by example
Counseling	Releasing potential
Employee discipline	Strategic planning
Separation management (firing)	System thinking
Operations management
Budget management

 

Return on your investment:

• Learn how the combination of these approaches impacts teamwork, retention, organization culture, and generates the best possible results for you and your organization!
• Learn when it's necessary to emphasize one role more than the other
• Learn what each of the responsibilities in these roles entail and how you can incorporate them in your supervisory role.
• Identify your strengths and opportunities for improvement and create an Individual Development Plan.
• Identify opportunities for improvement on your team and develop a strategy for achieving the desired state.

Who should participate: Supervisors and managers at all levels who want to increase their net worth and help their organizations excel!

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Human Resources for Today's Supervisor

As the strategic role of HR has grown, so has the HR role of supervisors. Today's supervisors have to contend with attracting and retaining top talent, significant work-life balance issues, a plethora of laws and regulations, growing corporate fraud and malfeasance, evolving diversity issues, and much more! This seminar provides an understanding of how to tackle these issues and effectively partner with your HR professionals in the process.

Return on your investment:
In addition to being grounded in current HR laws, this seminar will teach you how to:

 

• hire the right people for your team and put them in the right roles;
• bring out the best in each of your team members;
• effectively communicate with your staff;
• appropriately recognize and reward team members;
• proactively identify and manage performance issues;
• effectively resolve conflicts;
• manage employees' personal life issues overflowing into the workplace;
• manage difficult or angry employees and customers;
• manage employees with psychological problems;
• manage office romance;
• terminate someone's employment without creating a legal nightmare; and
• much more!!!

Who should participate: Supervisors and managers at all levels who want to increase their net worth and help their organizations excel!

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Laying the Foundation for an Ethical Corporate Culture®

Did you see any of these headlines?

• Philadelphia Official Convicted of Fraud
  Former treasurer guilty on 27 counts in city corruption case - CNN
• Ex-WorldCom CEO Ebbers Guilty
  Ex-WorldCom CEO Ebbers Guilty: Faces up to 85 years in prison after being convicted on all counts in accounting fraud. - CNN
• Adelphia Founder, Son Found Guilty
  (conspiracy to loot cable company, bank and securities fraud) - Washingtonpost.com
• Enron Finance Chief Pleads Guilty
  (Fraud) - BBC News

These are only a few of high profile corporate fraud cases. There are hundreds more that don't make the evening news. It's a growing trend that's costing Americans their jobs, hopes, dreams, and billions of dollars. It's ruining the reputation of the companies involved and costing investors a ton of money.

Return on your investment:
This seminar will help you understand:

• business ethics and why it's important to be educated on it;
• how rights, obligations, justice, fairness, truth, and honesty apply to business ethics;
• the rights and obligations that exist between employers and employees;
• the rights and obligations that exist between businesses and customers;
• the values that make for an ethical culture;
• strategies for inculcating these values in your organization;
• how to conduct effective internal audits;
• what to do when legal/ethical violations are found;
• how to rebuild credibility after public disclosure;
• the role of HR, management and non-management staff in maintaining an ethical work environment.

Who should participate: HR professionals, compliance officers, accountants, actuaries, mid-to-upper level management, corporate executives, and government officials.

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Approaches to Achieving Greater Self-Awareness®

What I See in You that You Need to Know

Why is self-awareness critical? Because what you don’t know is a limitation on your personal and professional development. Discovering that fresh bit of information can help you identify a personal deficiency that’s been your Achilles heel or access an untapped potential that can bring untold success!

Think of this seminar as a mirror for finding out more about who you truly are and how you affect other people. Involves role-plays and experiential learning.

Participants will

• Learn to uncover untapped potential
• Learn to uncover “blind spots”
• Learn where they need self-improvement
• Learn a variety of individual styles, preferences, and personality differences
• Learn how they come across to other people
• Understand their “ladder of inference” – how they make decisions
• Understand how background and environment shape awareness
• Learn something new about team members or other participants
• Learn new techniques for coping with different styles

Who should participate: For all levels of employees, management, leadership, and other individuals who want to achieve a higher level of self-awareness.

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Time Management

What You Need to Do when 24 Hours isn’t Enough!

It’s not infrequent that people wish for more hours in the day to get things done. Often they’re forced to make tough choices and for some, their health and families are typically at the receiving end of those decisions.

Among numerous other factors that may be beyond your control, how you manage your time is something you can get a handle on. The good news is that there are proven methods that work for some of the busiest people in the world!

Participants will

• Understand the impact of effective time management on personal and organizational success
• Understand the nexus between effective time management and achieving their objectives
• Understand the importance of planning and goal setting
• Learn and test techniques for managing time effectively
• Improve understanding of personal time management tendencies
• Identify “time wasters” and ways to make improvements
• Learn how to organize their workspace to enhance efficiency
• Learn specific techniques for managing mail, email, and the telephone
• Receive tools and learn exercises to improve time management
• Based on better understanding of their time wasters, develop a Corrective Action Plan to help them get back on track

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Balancing for Success

Creative Ways to Achieve Work-Life Balance

If burn out, absenteeism, tardiness, stress, low productivity, poor or deteriorating performance, lack of focus, low commitment, errors, low morale, low energy, constant complaints, ongoing conflicts, and high turnover are plaguing your workplace, it’s likely there are significant work-life balance issues that need to be addressed. The sooner you look beyond the surface to see how your organization can achieve balance, the brighter your chances of continued success.

Participants will

• Understand work-life (W-L) balance
• Understand the nexus between W-L balance and attendance, performance, retention, and organizational success
• Learn who pays for W-L imbalance
• Apply learning in assessing cost of work-life issues to their organization
• Understand legal and ethical obligations in managing balance
• Learn how to find opportunities for better balance
• Learn how greater balance improves individual and organizational success
• Learn creative approaches to achieving better W-L balance
• Learn how to restructure organization to achieve greater balance
• In addition to restructuring, select approaches that can alleviate current work-life issues in their organization

Who should participate: All levels of management, HR/benefits professionals, and anyone who desires to achieve better balance between personal and professional life.

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Fishing for Rare Species

How to Successfully Recruit for Hard-to-fill Positions

There is usually a hard-to-fill position in every organization. In some industries, some segments are entirely composed of hard-to-fill positions. First instinct is to find a solid placement firm or a reputable headhunter, pay top dollars and hope it delivers.

We only ask that you take this seminar before you call that firm. Afterwards, you can apply your savings to filling more hard-to-fill positions and, of course, participating in more of our seminars!

Participants will

• Understand the role of leadership in recruiting for hard-to-fill positions
• Learn how to strategize for hard-to-fill positions
• Learn what works and what doesn’t
• Learn out-of-the-box, cost-effective measures to attract qualified candidates
• Learn how to create a web of options to attract and retain the right candidate
• Understand how internal equity, market forces, and rarity of talent should factor into the right decision
• Understand criteria for selecting a search firm for hard-to-fill positions
• Learn how to get the best effort out of the search firm
• Learn how to develop a pipeline for difficult to fill positions
• Learn how to defy the norm in attracting candidates for these positions

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Turning the Stone

Interview Skills that can Prevent a Costly Mistake

Your organization spends millions of dollars doing thorough background checks on every candidate before she or he is hired. You know the investment is paying off because a good number of candidates are turned down due to their background information. Yet, despite your best efforts, you discover there are active employees with criminal convictions in their background. This is true in most organizations.

Fact I: Savvy interviewers are your first and best line of defense. You can weed out more unqualified candidates and significantly reduce your background check expense if you are skilled at probing and uncovering people’s past and doing so legally.
Fact II: Your organization can’t possibly implement all available levels of background checks for every potential employee. Therefore, learning to effectively elicit and explore red flags during an interview is a critical skill.

Participants will

• Learn how to probe background/relevant experience safely
• Learn how to follow a trail of interest to reach the desired answer
• Understand the importance of behavioral interviewing
• Understand the significance of a well structured interview team
• Learn how to apply “appreciative inquiry” in eliciting detailed responses
• Learn how to spot and probe red flags
• Learn steps to follow up on less than satisfactory responses
• Understand dos and don’ts in an interview
• Learn techniques in using nonverbal cues to elicit a response

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First Impression Counts the Most!

Resume Preparation and Interviewing Skills

Have you ever heard the saying that you never get a second chance to make a first impression? It’s particularly true when you’re seeking a job.
This seminar accomplishes three goals that will help you to be successful in your job search:
(a) you learn how to write a great resume;
(b) you receive a list of resources to facilitate your job search; and
(c) you learn how to successfully interview for a job.

The seminar attempts to answer the following questions:

What does a great resume look like?

• What should be included or excluded?
• How do I write one?
• Is one resume enough?
• What’s the most effective way to submit my resume?
• Where do I begin my job search?
• Do I need to pay someone to assist me?
• What should I know about an organization before I apply?
• How do I prepare for an interview?
• What questions am I likely to answer?
• How do I know I gave the “right” response?
• What should I voluntarily disclose during my interview?
• How do you conduct yourself during an interview?
• How do I position myself as a choice candidate?
• Is it necessary to follow up after an interview?
• Why should I negotiate a job offer?
• In negotiating an offer, what should I ask for?
• Is it necessary to have more than one offer in hand?

Who should participate: Students (high school and college), employees facing a layoff, and other job seekers.

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Navigating the Corporate Planet®

Actions and Behaviors that Lead to Professional Success
[The part not covered in high school, college, or B-school]

Ever wonder why the smartest kid in your class never quite had as successful a career?
Or
why the candidate with the most promising resume fell out of favor with key decision makers six months into the job?
Or
why the most talented, hardworking, and consistent member of your team was passed over for a promotion?
Or
why you feel stuck in your job?

Among several other possible answers, it might be that they or you never learned the fundamentals of corporate culture. To survive the vicissitudes of the corporate planet, you have to have the right “suit”. To excel, you have to understand the culture and use it to your advantage. We show you how.

Participants will

• Review the professional life cycle – from job seeking or venturing to achieving personal and professional goals
• Discuss corporate culture and their development
• Examine employee types and typical outcomes for each type
• Examine the impact of workplace conflict on career development
• Discuss the impact of workplace dating on career
• Examine what it means to “dress for success”
• Examine emotional intelligence in achieving professional excellence
• Learn how to function effectively in a diverse work environment
• Learn the impact of relationship building on personal and professional development
• Discuss the roles of coaches and mentors in achieving professional success
• Discuss the impact of supervisors on professional growth and development
• Learn how to leverage change [promotions, mergers, layoffs, rightsizings, etc.] in building career
• Plan for success – identify strengths and opportunity areas and start a development plan

Who should participate: New employees or employees who want to understand how to succeed in the corporate world and students.

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10 Key Principles for Effectively Leading Self and Others®

Those who cannot successfully lead themselves are not fit to lead others. The qualities we seek to elicit in others must first be manifest in us as role models.  To bring out the best in others, we must first understand what we’re best in the world at, and how we can useit to better ourselves, the people around us, and the organizations we serve.

This seminar is for leaders who want to

• Understand and effectively utilize their potential
• Understand their deficiencies and learn how to overcome them
• Learn how to maximize their value to their organization
• Learn how to align their personal vision with their organization’s mission
• Develop a priority scale based on how they see their future
• Learn how to manage challenges, obstacles, and opposition
• Learn how to cultivate support and loyalty
• Become a better coach and mentor
• Bring out the best in themselves and in others
• Enable others to develop their leadership capability
• Receive tools for staying focused and organized

 

Who should participate: This seminar offers pearls of wisdom that are actionable and rewarding to all levels of leadership in business, nonprofit, religious, and governmental organizations.

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Leading Right: Knowing and Doing the Right Thing in Difficult Situations

Lessons in developing leadership backbone

This seminar is for every leader who wants to hone his or her decision-making skills.
You will learn skills for handling difficult questions such as the ones below:

• You hire a friend but her/his performance is below expectation. How do you handle?
• A supervisor and his direct report on your team are secretly dating. Company policy prohibits dating between staff and supervisors. The office is awash with gossip. What do you do?
• One of your staff members develops a mental problem. How do you handle?
• Your direct report tells you that your VP is sexually harassing her. What do you do?
• You have a staff member who’s constantly late because s/he is being abused by her/his spouse. How do you handle?
• You promised a raise to a stressed team, but when the time came, the organization backed out. How do you handle?
• You find evidence of racial discrimination at work. However, key people in the organization are involved. As a supervisor, what do you do?
• You discover that a long term friend and coworker is defrauding the organization. What do you do?
• You discover that your boss has a drug addiction problem but he vehemently denies it. However, it’s having an obvious impact on his productivity. He’d be fired if the organization finds out. What do you do?
• A Moslem team member insists on taking several short breaks to pray every Friday. The breaks however are adversely impacting coverage and customer service. How do you handle?

Who should participate: Supervisors, managers, HR/OD professionals, and other individuals who desire to be in management or leadership roles.