Leadership Training

This three-day workshop is a tool for your leadership development. It is designed to help you create and accomplish your personal best, and to help you lead others to get extraordinary things done.

Participants will learn

• Define your role as a manager and identify how that role differs from other roles you have had.
• Understand the management challenge and the new functions of management.
• Discover how you can prepare for and embrace the forces of change.
• Identify ways to get you and your workspace organized and get a jump on the next crisis.
• Identify your leadership profile and explore ways to use this knowledge to improve your success as a manager.
• Enhance your ability to communicate with others in meetings and through presentations.
• Create an action plan for managing your career success.

Coach, Role Model, Counselor, Supporter, Guide…do these words ring a bell? Being a coach involves being a role model, sometimes a counselor or supporter, and always a guide. Coaching is based on a partnership that involves giving both support and challenging opportunities to employees. Knowing how and when to coach is an essential skill that can benefit both you and your organization. This one-day workshop will help you become a better coach in all senses of the word.

How You Will Benefit:

• Understand how coaching can be used to develop your team.
• Develop the coaching skills that help improve individual performance.
• Demonstrate the behaviors and practices of an effective coach.
• Recognize employees’ strengths and give them the feedback they need to succeed.
• Identify employee problems and ways you can help to correct them.

A small marketing budget doesn’t mean you can’t meet your goals and business objectives – you just have to be more creative in your marketing tactics. This one-day workshop will show you how to get maximum exposure at minimum cost. Learn effective, low-cost, and non-cost strategies to improve sales, develop your company’s image, and build your bottom line.

How You Will Benefit:

• Recognize what we mean by the term “marketing.”
• Discover how to use low-cost publicity to get your name known.
• Know how to develop a marketing plan and a marketing campaign.
• Use your time rather than your money to market your company effectively.
• Understand how to perform a SWOT analysis.

This is a three-day overview of human resource issues facing today’s business owners and managers. You do not always have the expertise to deal with the many employee relationship issues you face, and yet you will be expected to make decisions that are both effective and legal. This workshop will walk you through the hiring process, from performing a skills inventory to conducting the interview; discuss orientation; and cover some issues that arise after the hiring process (such as diversity issues, compensation, and discipline).

Workshop topics:

• The latest trends in the human resource field and the changing role of the human resource professional.
• How to write job specifications and identify core competencies.
• Methods of finding, selecting, and keeping the best people using behavioral description interviewing techniques.
• How to get employees off to a good start.
• How to deal with compensation and benefits.
• How to maintain healthy employee relations.
• How to make performance appraisals a cooperative process.

It’s no secret. Employees who feel they are valued and recognized for the work they do are more motivated, responsible, and productive. This is a busy one-day workshop to help supervisors and managers create a more dynamic, loyal, and energized workplace. This program is designed specifically to help busy managers and supervisors understand what employees want and to provide them with a starting point for creating champions.

How You Will Benefit:

• Identify what motivation is
• Learn about common motivational theories and how to apply them
• Learn when to use the carrot, the whip, and the plant
• Discover how fear and desire affect employee motivation
• Explore ways to create a motivational climate and design a motivating job

This two-day workshop is designed to help you overcome many of the supervisory problems you will encounter in your first few weeks as a boss, whether you are a team leader, a project manager, or a unit coordinator. Dealing with the many problems a new supervisor encounters isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to lead to discouragement.

How You Will Benefit:

• Clarify roles and responsibilities of the new job.
• Adjust to the new role with confidence and an assurance you can handle the position.
• Develop your skills in listening, asking questions, resolving conflict, and giving feedback to employees.
• Develop a technique for making sure you give employees instructions that are clear and understood.
• Identify some techniques to deal with employee challenges, such as hostility, complaints, and laziness.
• Understand the importance of developing good relationships with employees and peers, so you are seen as fair and consistent.

In today’s changing workplace, many new supervisors are unsure of their roles and responsibilities. They have little experience dealing with the challenges of managing work through others. They haven’t had the opportunity to develop those critical skills of planning work, leading their group, and communicating with their employees, their colleagues, and their manager. This three-day workshop will give you just that opportunity.

How You Will Benefit:

• You will understand the scope and nature of the supervisory position.
• You will learn some ways to deal with the challenges of the role.
• You will recognize the responsibilities you have as a supervisor, to yourself, to your team, and to your organization.
• You will identify key techniques to help you plan and prioritize effectively
• You will acquire a basic understanding of and develop strategies for leadership, team building, communication, and motivation and what part they play in effective supervision.

People who can master the art of negotiation find they can save time, save money, develop a higher degree of satisfaction with outcomes at home and at work, and earn greater respect in the workplace.

Negotiating is a fundamental fact of life at any level. Whether you are working on a project or fulfilling support duties, this two day workshop will provide you with a basic comfort level to negotiate with both internal and external clients. This interactive workshop includes techniques to promote effective communications and gives you techniques for turning face-to-face confrontation into side-by-side problem solving.

How You Will Benefit:

• Understand how often we all negotiate and the benefits of good negotiation skills.
• Recognize the importance of preparing for the negotiation process, regardless of the circumstances.
• Identify the various negotiation styles and their advantages and disadvantages.
• Develop strategies for dealing with tough or unfair tactics.
• Gain skill in developing alternatives and recognizing options.
• Have the opportunity to practice the “how to” of these skills in a supportive environment.
• Understand basic negotiation principles, including BATNA, WATNA, WAP, and the ZOPA.

Delegation is often one of the hardest skills for a manager to master. However, the skill can be learned. This one-day workshop will explore many of the facets of delegation: when to delegate, and who to delegate to. We will also go through the delegation process step by step, to see where the pitfalls lie, and what we can do about getting around them.

How You Will Benefit:

• Clearly identify how delegation fits into your job and how it can make you more successful.
• Identify different ways of delegating tasks.
• Use an eight-step process for effective delegation.
• Give better instructions for better delegation results.
• Ask better questions and listen more effectively.
• Recognize common delegation pitfalls and how to avoid them.
• Test your delegation skills.

Your success as a manager can often depend on how well your team operates. How are their problem-solving skills? Are they enthusiastic and motivated to do their best? Do they work well together? There have been hundreds of studies demonstrating that human beings function better and learn better in groups. If you want to develop your team leadership skills and unleash the talent of your individual team members, this workshop is a practical look at current leadership practices that work.

How You Will Benefit:

• Identify different types of teams.
• Build teamwork by recognizing and tapping into the twelve characteristics of an effective team.
• Promote trust and rapport by exploring your team player style and how it impacts on group dynamics.
• Recognize the key elements that move a team from involvement to empowerment and how to give these elements to your team.
• Develop strategies for dealing with team conflict and common situations.
• Understand how action planning and analysis tools can help your team perform better.

Most companies carry too much inventory. “You can’t sell from an empty wagon,” is usually the reasoning. Being over-stocked means the company will likely not run out of anything. But what about the inventory that has celebrated a few birthdays in the warehouse? Has anyone stopped to calculate the true cost of worrying about “running out?”

The costs of maintaining excessive inventory usually far outweigh the true cost of not being able to quickly deliver a particular item to a customer once in a very long while. A balance must be struck between inventory levels and turnover. Good inventory managers know what stock moves at what rate. They carefully plan re-order levels to ensure that the chances of running out are minimized while the turnover rate is maximized.

How You Will Benefit:

By the end of today, you will be able to:

• Understand terms that are frequently used in warehouse management
• Identify the goals and objectives of inventory management, and measure your process against these goals
• Calculate safety stock, reorder points, and order quantities
• Evaluate inventory management systems
• Identify the parts of the inventory cycle
• Better maintain inventory accuracy

For managers in today’s business world, it’s essential to have a working knowledge of finance. We all play a role in our organization’s financial health, whether we realize it or not. If you don’t have training or a background in finance, you may be at a disadvantage as you sit around the management table. Understanding the cycle of finance will help you figure out where you fit into your company’s financial structure, and how to keep your department out of the red. This two-day workshop will help you prepare budgets and make decisions with confidence.

How You Will Benefit:

• Define basic financial terminology
• Prepare a budget of any type or size
• Get your budget approved
• Perform basic ratio analysis
• Make better financial decisions

It’s easy to forget the “manager” part of your “project manager” title amongst all the activity during a project. However, it is crucial that you hone your management skills as they are an important part of your success as a project manager. There are also some advanced project management techniques that you can master to help bring your projects to the next level. These are the two areas that we will focus on in this one-day workshop.

This workshop presumes that you have a thorough understanding of project management, including topics such as preparing a statement of work, setting project goals, scheduling, budgeting, managing project risks, and executing a project.

How You Will Benefit:

• Think critically when choosing a project team
• Make the best of an assigned project team
• Help teams move through various stages to become a high-functioning machine
• Maximize productivity at team meetings
• Reward and motivate your team
• Develop and execute a communication plan
• Communicate with sponsors and executives more effectively
• Identify problem team members and strategies for working with them

Project management isn’t just for construction engineers and military logistics experts anymore. Today, in addition to the regular duties of your job, you are often expected to take on extra assignments – and to get that additional job done well, done under budget, and done on time.

This workshop is intended for those who understand the conceptual phase of a project’s life cycle, including setting goals, creating a vision statement, and creating the Statement of Work. This one-day workshop will take you through the remaining three stages: planning, execution, and termination.

How You Will Benefit:

• Identify your project’s tasks and resources
• Order tasks using the Work Breakdown Structure
• Schedule tasks effectively
• Use basic planning tools such as a Gantt chart, PERT diagram, and network diagram
• Prepare a project budget
• Modify the project budget and schedule to meet targets
• Identify and manage risks
• Develop a change control process
• Execute and terminate a project

Project management isn’t just for construction engineers and military logistics experts anymore. Today, in addition to the regular duties of your job, you are often expected to take on extra assignments – and to get that additional job done well, done under budget, and done on time. This workshop is not intended to take you from a supervisory or administrative position to that of a project manager. However, this one-day workshop will familiarize you with the most common terms and the most current thinking about projects.

How You Will Benefit:

• Understand what is meant by a project and project management
• Identify benefits of projects
• Identify the phases of a project’s life cycle
• Enhance your ability to sell ideas and make presentations
• Prioritize projects
• Begin conceptualizing your project, including goals and vision statements
• Use a target chart and other planning tools
• Complete a Statement of Work

Project management isn’t just for construction engineers and military logistics experts anymore. Today, in addition to the regular duties of your job, you are often expected to take on extra assignments – and to get that additional job done well, done under budget, and done on time. This workshop is not intended to take you from a supervisory or administrative position to that of a project manager. However, these three days will familiarize you with the most common terms and the most current thinking about projects.

How You Will Benefit:

• Understand what is meant by a project.
• Recognize what steps must be taken to complete projects on time and on budget.
• Have a better ability to sell ideas and make presentations.
• Know simple techniques and tools for planning and tracking your project.
• Have methods for keeping the team focused and motivated.

Risk management has long been a key part of project management, but in recent years, it has become an increasingly important part of organizational best practices. Corporations have realized that effective risk management can not only reduce the negative impact of crises; it can provide real benefits and cost savings.

The risk management framework provided in this one-day workshop is flexible enough for any organization. You can apply it to a single project, a department, or use it as a basis for an enterprise-wide risk management program.

How You Will Benefit:

• Define risk and risk management
• Describe the COSO ERM cube and ISO 31000
• Establish a risk management context
• Describe the 7 R’s and 4 T’s that form the framework of risk management activities
• Design and complete a basic risk assessment
• Determine the appropriate response to risks and create a plan for those responses
• Describe the key components of reporting, monitoring, and evaluation of a risk management program

As project managers and leads, we all know how difficult it can be to accurately determine the duration of a project, yet that is exactly what is expected of us on a regular basis. This two-day workshop will not disclose the secret of creating an accurate schedule, because there isn’t one. However, it will provide the factors and fundamental elements that you should consider and address when creating any type of schedule.

Participants should complete the Intermediate Project Management workshop prior to this course, or have equivalent knowledge.

How You Will Benefit:

• Define and create a Work Breakdown Structure
• Identify and understand task relationships
• Estimate task durations and determine project duration
• Construct a network diagram
• Calculate the critical path of a project
• Use the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) to create estimates
• Plan for risks
• Create a communication plan
• Effectively allocate project resources
• Update and monitor the project schedule

Meetings come in all shapes and sizes, from the convention to a quick huddle in an office hallway. This one-day program will be concerned with small working meetings; with groups that have a job to do requiring the energy, commitment, and talents of those who participate.

How You Will Benefit:

• Understand the value of meetings as a management tool.
• Recognize the critical planning step that makes meeting time more effective.
• Identify process tools that can help create an open and safe forum for discussion.
• Develop and practice techniques for handling counterproductive behavior.

Supervisors represent an important force in the North American economy. You have the power to turn on or turn off the productivity of the people who work for you. You are the crucial interface between the employee on the shop floor or the service desk and the managers of the organization. You usually have more experience and more skill than the employees you supervise, because management tends to look for super people to fill those roles.

How You Will Benefit:

• Learn ways to prioritize, plan, and manage your time.
• Identify your primary leadership style and techniques for maximizing that style.
• Develop more flexibility to use other leadership styles.
• Search for ways to overcome communication barriers.
• Determine ways you can meet the needs of employees and co-workers through communication and coaching.
• Explore ways to engage in productive rather than toxic debate, and to make conflict a powerful force for creative, well-rounded solutions to problems.

As a manager, you’re probably used to dealing with many tough situations. But conversations about an employee’s personal appearance are a whole different ball game. It’s something that we often avoid talking about, or worse, make light of. This one-day workshop has two major themes: a framework for having tough conversations and some common tough conversations that come up. You’ll walk away prepared for any kind of challenging conversation.

How You Will Benefit:

• Identify the advantages to having tough conversations
• Describe the components to an effective behavior modification conversation
• Use your organization’s resources to help you deal with hygiene issues
• Overcome barriers that employees put up when discussing hygiene problems
• Resolve hygiene issues such as bad hair days, inappropriate piercings and body art, poor clothing choices, bad breath, body odor, excessive gas, and incontinence
• Nip poor hygiene habits in the bud and identify ways to encourage good hygiene at your workplace

Although it does take plenty of creativity to design an event that is memorable and meaningful, it also takes careful attention to detail, adaptability, effective delegating, and a lot of work. This two-day course will walk you through the process of event management, from the beginning stages of planning, to the final touches (like decorations, food, and music). While this course is specifically for corporate event planning, the elements here can also be applied to more personal event planning. Essentially, we’re creating an effective and well planned design that is ready for implementation and can be used over and over again.

Participants will learn

• Plan a complete corporate event, including an agenda, budget, goals, venue, audience, food, and whatever else your client needs
• Keep your event on budget
• Design an advertising and marketing plan that includes a comprehensive use of media, take-aways, and/or swag bags
• Determine whether partners, sponsors, and volunteers can help to make your event unforgettable
• Create an atmosphere of service that delegates will remember
• Select speakers and a master of ceremonies to add impact to your event
• Create a diversity plan
• Evaluate the process once it’s all wrapped up

This three-hour workshop is a tool for your leadership development. It is designed to help you create and accomplish your personal best, and to help you lead others to get extraordinary things done. What makes for a great leader? Is it something to do with inward characteristics, such as confidence and focus? Is it more about outward presence, including charm and compassion? Or is it about the ability to create a vision and get others to commit to it?

The answer is all of the above. By accepting the challenge to lead, you come to realize that the only limits are those you place on yourself. The emphasis of this workshop is on managing people.

How You Will Benefit:

• You will learn to identify your leadership profile and explore ways to use this knowledge to improve your success as a manager.
• You will be able to clarify your role and responsibilities in allocating work assignments.
• You will identify techniques to deal with employee challenges such as hostility, complaints, and laziness.
• You will develop motivation and feedback skills.

You will understand the importance of non-verbal responses in communication

Teams have become a principal building block of the strategy of successful organizations. Whether the focus is on service, quality, cost, value, speed, efficiency, performance, or other similar goals, teams are the central methodology of most organizations in the private, non-profit, and government sectors. With teams at the core of the corporate strategy, your success as an organization can often depend on how well you and other team members operate together. How are your problem-solving skills? Is the team enthusiastic and motivated to do its best? Do you work well together?

In most teams, the energies of individual members work at cross purposes. Individuals may work extraordinarily hard, but their efforts do not translate into team effort, and this results in wasted energy. By contrast, when a team becomes more aligned, a commonality of direction emerges and individual energies harmonize.

How You Will Benefit:

• You will learn valuable team development ideas from other participants in a highly-interactive environment
• You will understand the value of working as a team
• You will recognize the critical role communication skills will play in building and maintaining a team atmosphere
• You will learn your team player style and identify how it can be used effectively within a team
• You will identify the ways that team members can be involved and grow in a team setting

For managers in today’s business world, it’s essential to have a working knowledge of finance. We all play a role in our organization’s financial health, whether we realize it or not. If you don’t have training or a background in finances, you may be at a disadvantage as you sit around the management table. Understanding the cycle of finance will help you figure out where you fit into your company’s financial structure, and how to keep your department out of the red. This workshop will familiarize you with the key concepts of finance and accounting and help you prepare budgets with more confidence.

How You Will Benefit:

• You will understand basic financial terminology
• You will enhance your decision-making skills by integrating financial management concepts into your thinking
• You will be able to better control the flow of money through your department
• You will understand the budgeting process and forecasting techniques

Project management isn’t just for construction engineers and military logistics experts anymore. Today, in addition to the regular duties of your job, you are often expected to take on extra assignments and to get that additional job done well, done under budget, and done on time. This workshop is not intended to take you from a supervisory or administrative position to that of a project manager. However this session will familiarize you with the most common terms and the most current thinking about projects.

In this session, we will walk you through the nuts and bolts of project management, from setting priorities to controlling expenses and reporting on the results. You may still have to cope with the unexpected – but you’ll be better prepared.

How You Will Benefit:

• You will understand what is meant by a product
• You will recognize what steps must be taken to complete projects on time and in budget
• You will be equipped with methods for keeping your team focused and motivated

Project management isn’t just for construction engineers and military logistics experts anymore. Today, in addition to the regular duties of your job, you are often expected to take on extra assignments – and to get that additional job done well, done under budget, and done on time. This workshop is not intended to take you from a supervisory or administrative position to that of a project manager. However, this one-day workshop will familiarize you with the most common terms and the most current thinking about projects.

How You Will Benefit:

• Understand what is meant by a project and project management
• Identify benefits of projects
• Identify the phases of a project’s life cycle
• Enhance your ability to sell ideas and make presentations
• Prioritize projects
• Begin conceptualizing your project, including goals and vision statements
• Use a target chart and other planning tools
• Complete a Statement of Work

Although it does take plenty of creativity to design an event that is memorable and meaningful, it also takes careful attention to detail, adaptability, effective delegating, and a lot of work. This two-day course will walk you through the process of event management, from the beginning stages of planning, to the final touches (like decorations, food, and music). While this course is specifically for corporate event planning, the elements here can also be applied to more personal event planning. Essentially, we’re creating an effective and well planned design that is ready for implementation and can be used over and over again.

What Will Participants Learn?

• Plan a complete corporate event, including an agenda, budget, goals, venue, audience, food, and whatever else your client needs
• Keep your event on budget
• Design an advertising and marketing plan that includes a comprehensive use of media, take-aways, and/or swag bags
• Determine whether partners, sponsors, and volunteers can help to make your event unforgettable
• Create an atmosphere of service that delegates will remember
• Select speakers and a master of ceremonies to add impact to your event
• Create a diversity plan
• Evaluate the process once it’s all wrapped up

Supervisors represent an important force in the North American economy. You have the power to turn on or turn off the productivity of the people who work for you. You are the crucial interface between the employee on the shop floor or the service desk and the managers of the organization. You usually have more experience and more skill than the employees you supervise, because management tends to look for super people to fill those roles.

How You Will Benefit:

• Learn ways to prioritize, plan, and manage your time.
• Identify your primary leadership style and techniques for maximizing that style.
• Develop more flexibility to use other leadership styles.
• Search for ways to overcome communication barriers.
• Determine ways you can meet the needs of employees and co-workers through communication and coaching.
• Explore ways to engage in productive rather than toxic debate, and to make conflict a powerful force for creative, well-rounded solutions to problems.

Meetings come in all shapes and sizes, from the convention to a quick huddle in an office hallway. This one-day program will be concerned with small working meetings; with groups that have a job to do requiring the energy, commitment, and talents of those who participate.

How You Will Benefit:

• Understand the value of meetings as a management tool.
• Recognize the critical planning step that makes meeting time more effective.
• Identify process tools that can help create an open and safe forum for discussion.
• Develop and practice techniques for handling counterproductive behavior.

Project management isn’t just for construction engineers and military logistics experts anymore. Today, in addition to the regular duties of your job, you are often expected to take on extra assignments – and to get that additional job done well, done under budget, and done on time. This workshop is not intended to take you from a supervisory or administrative position to that of a project manager. However, these three days will familiarize you with the most common terms and the most current thinking about projects.

How You Will Benefit:

• Understand what is meant by a project.
• Recognize what steps must be taken to complete projects on time and on budget.
• Have a better ability to sell ideas and make presentations.
• Know simple techniques and tools for planning and tracking your project.
• Have methods for keeping the team focused and motivated.

As a manager, you’re probably used to dealing with many tough situations. But conversations about an employee’s personal appearance are a whole different ball game. It’s something that we often avoid talking about, or worse, make light of. This one-day workshop has two major themes: a framework for having tough conversations and some common tough conversations that come up. You’ll walk away prepared for any kind of challenging conversation.

How You Will Benefit:

• Identify the advantages to having tough conversations
• Describe the components to an effective behavior modification conversation
• Use your organization’s resources to help you deal with hygiene issues
• Overcome barriers that employees put up when discussing hygiene problems
• Resolve hygiene issues such as bad hair days, inappropriate piercings and body art, poor clothing choices, bad breath, body odor, excessive gas, and incontinence
• Nip poor hygiene habits in the bud and identify ways to encourage good hygiene at your workplace