Designing Effective Leadership through Significant Learning, Practice and Performance
Workshops and Organization Consultation
The following workshop presentations and consultation sessions are designed based on what previous participants have assessed to be important in their work. In planning for your training, we invite you to share what your organization would like emphasized based on company initiatives. Customized training modules are also available using those listed below or to design a curriculum that fits institutional initiatives not listed below.
Designing the Virtual Office
BW1. Changing How Your Company Operates: Designing the Virtual Office – Length: 1 or more hours
In the past, many organizations had employees work from home as an option. The pandemic forced this change for employee safety. This presentation examines what is working effectively and the advantages and needs to create positive work environments which have changed the way businesses operate. The workshop examines how office processes have been transformed to increase productivity, meet outcomes, and offers new opportunities to balance work and personal time; and what has been lost in the workplace due to the lack of face-to-face contact.
Designing Change Management
BW2. Designing Change for Success: The Science and Art of Change Management – Length: 3 hours
Making changes in an organization is more complex than most leaders imagine. Designing change using a backwards-design model and getting the buy-in from employees makes the success factor increase dramatically. This training will examine how employees react to change. By the end of the workshop, participants will have walked through the backwards-design model by using a sample change they would like to implement.
Designing Teams
BW3 and BW4 make an excellent combined training with a deeper dive into designing teams.
BW3. All for One and One for All, Building Inclusive Teams – Length: 1 hour
Could you imagine going to a buffet where day after day there are only one or two specialties? Is there really one food, that if you had to eat for the rest of your life, you would eat for 21 meals a week? Diversity is the key to sustainable continuous improvement by offering a greater variety of opportunities for employees and customers. This training explores ways participants can improve an organization by creating a more inclusive work environment and workforce, and a broader range of services and products to customers. Discover how your organization can grow by developing a greater inclusivity.
BW4. Developing the Team on which Everyone Wants to Play – Length: 1 hour
There is a synergy that successful teams have that make them the envy of others. Is it coincidence, luck, or magic that makes it happen? Of course not; it is design. Developing teams can be complex work and like any great relationship it takes the willingness of the members to make it happen. This training examines the elements of successful teams and what goes into their design – what leaders need to analyze for the scope of work and the kind of members that the team needs. The participants discuss what responsibilities members must demonstrate to make the team perform to the highest standards.
Designing Integrated Initiatives
BW5. Aligning Mission/Project Outcomes, Assessments, and Workflow – Length: 3 hours
This workshop integrates initiatives to align outcomes, assessments and workflow. Participants will examine this alignment to be sure that initiatives will be successful and meet the highest standards. They will also gain experience of how to write measurable work outcomes. As project designers, employees create an efficient workflow and assessments appropriately measure the outcomes through multiple means. This workshop will discuss integrated work design best practices.
Designing Employee Learning
BW6. Creating a Learning Framework: Developing Learning Activities and Techniques – Length: 2 hours
Participants will examine research-based learning models and current thinking about learning processes as they relate to teaching and learning in various formats. Understanding the learning characteristics of employees is key in providing the foundation as it reinforces the concept of learning how to learn. In a theory to practice approach, this presentation provides the descriptions of ways employees learn. Strategies to promote significant learning and application so employees retain information from which they are assessed to improve performance are shared. Descriptions of how to design in-person and online learning differences are presented.
Designing Effective Meetings
BW7. Meetings that Work! – Length: 1 or 2 hours
The key to effective meetings is to identify why they are significant to the attendees. The failure of meetings is that they are on the calendar and regularly scheduled to occur despite whether there are reasons to meet or not. This presentation discusses finding the purposes of meeting topics, creating an agenda that communicates the purpose of each item, and developing an action plan identifying leaders who will carry out the tasks on a timeline and report the progress or results.
Designing Thinking
BW8. Creating a Community of Innovative Thinking – Length: 1 hour
Organizations want employees who deliver innovative thinking. Since much of the work is task driven, how do employees develop these skills? This training examines the creation of an innovative culture through creative and critical thinking problem-solving activities. Participants will discover to develop mind inventions and how employees can analyze their work to advance the organization’s mission. In a world where change is constant, employees who can shift their thinking and develop improved thinking for innovative design necessary for an organization to achieve the goal of continuous process improvement and employee engagement.
BW9. What is? What If? Thinking Critically and Creatively – Length: 1 or 2 hours
Organizations need employees and leaders who have developed thinking in both the critical analysis and creative domains. Many people consider themselves strong in one of these domains. Being strong in both is what employers need. Having the ability to shift from critical to creative thinking and blending the two benefits the organization’s and employee’s successful to an ever-changing set of challenges.
BW10. Expanding Your Emotional Intelligence – Length 2 hours
Organizational leadership requires people who are in tune with their level of emotional intelligence. Participants will examine their strengths in this area and develop a plan to grow stronger in areas where there are gaps to improve their ability to lead within the organization.
Designing Employee Satisfaction
BW11. Understanding Employees: Introverts and Extraverts – Length: 1 hour
Think back to how you learned best in your post-secondary education. Which classes did you enjoy most? In reflecting upon the reasons, you enjoyed them, was it because of the content, the faculty, the learning activities or a combination? All of these elements apply to the workplace as well. In order for employees to be successful, there is a situational factor that is often overlooked and should be considered in the planning of the workplace design to capitalize on effectiveness for both introverted and extraverted employees. This presentation will look at advantages of having both introverts and extraverts in the workplace.
Designing a Work Communication Plan
BW12. Delivering Your Message through Clearly Constructed Communication – Length: 1 hour
After all has been said and done, there is usually a lot more said than done! In the communication landscape, there is so much noise that vies for employees’ attention. How do you make sure your employees are understanding the critical communication in your organization? This training gets to the point by examining oral and written communication that deliver results. Participants develop messaging that impacts employees by understanding the audience’s needs in crafting the communication.
Designing Materials Accessibility for Employees and Clients
BW13. Making Your Work Accessible – Length 1 hour
Accessibility for all employees and clients is critical for business success. You will discover how to make your documents and materials meet the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements. These skills are also important to teach employees to develop their own accessible materials in the workplace or virtual office.
Designing Mentorship Opportunities
BW14. Mentoring to Improve Professional Experiences – Length: 1 hour
Mentoring is an opportunity to improve employee performance. Taking the time to reflect, and learn from the quality experiences of others, is the key to build sustainability in an organization. As no employee knows everything, mentoring is one of the strongest forms of learning. When mentoring is done well, employees are engaged, develop a deeper respect for one another, grow their skill sets, and share the mission and vision of the organization. This training covers the elements to develop a mentoring program beneficial to the mentor and mentee. Upon completion of this workshop, participants will have the knowledge to fulfill both roles to make the mentoring experience successful.
Assessing Employee Performance
BW15. Assessing Employees through Rubrics – Length: 2 hours
Understanding types of assessments and strategies to use multiple measurements to assess the whole employee will make assessing performance more objective. This presentation includes developing backward- and forward-looking, authentic, and portfolio assessments. Included is an examination of the components of rubric development and the importance of feedback. Employees can use some of these strategies to self-assess. Finally, there is a discussion of how organizations can use individual assessment results. Time can be added to coach rubric development.
Assessing Leadership
BW16. Analyzing Leadership in Yourself and Others – Length 1 hour
Knowing your leadership style is critical in being able to lead others and build the type of organization beneficial to everyone. Leaders need to understand their own skill sets and the key elements to develop a strong leadership team. This training will guide you to identify the style of leadership in which you thrive and help you grow into a stronger leader. The workshop includes discussions of Six Sigma/Lean and the role IQ and Emotional Intelligence play in being the kind of leader that will inspire others to perform. Time can be extended to coach individual leadership style for use in the workplace.
Assessing the Office Environment
BW17. Office Assessment Techniques – Length: 1 hour
Engaging employees through measuring the effectiveness of the work environment is a way to retain employees and increase performance. Employers can use a variety of quick and easy strategies to measure employee performance. Participants will learn techniques that deliver valuable information to ensure that work engagement is progressing and increase communication.
Designing Self-Assessment Opportunities
BW18. Learning How to Learn – Length: 1 hour
One of the greatest failures of lifelong learning is when employees who have been through years of work continue to ask the question, “How am I doing?” Why don’t employees know how they are doing? Why can’t employees self-assess their progress in their performance. The answer is simple. We don’t teach them or provide opportunity to do so. This workshop provides the techniques for employees to self-assess their improvement on their career journey as they continue to learn how to learn.
communication improvement
BW19. Strengthening Your English Speaking, Reading and Writing – Length: Time Varies
This series of sessions will help individuals to develop stronger skills to communicate in the English language. A program will be designed to work with your current strengths and challenges to help participants. This is delivered in a series of one-on-one mentoring sessions.