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Which best describes your organization?

December 16, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Poll /by Trevor Jones

Our reader poll today asks: Which best describes your organization?

  • We are meticulous planners, and things always run smoothly 4.41%
  • We plan well but have an occasional crisis 48.74%
  • We try to plan, but crises tend to run our lives 34.59%
  • There’s no planning, and we’re in perpetual crisis 12.26%

Crisis of the day. Almost half of respondents report living from crisis to crisis. Many of these crises are likely avoidable either through better planning or more effective decision making. Pausing occasionally to look into the future and plan for possible scenarios can help you be ready to react when a crisis comes up or, better yet, figure out ways to minimize the likelihood of a crisis by making different decisions today. Many crises are also likely self-inflicted. Making decisions without fully playing out their ramifications in the future can result in these situations. A little bit of planning goes a long way. Sure, it’s hard to carve out time to do it but consider the tradeoff of not doing it is a crisis down the road that will consume much more time and energy than the planning itself would. A regular strategic pause and plan mindset can help you avoid crises and reduce the amount of stress your organization deals with every day.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Did you enjoy this post?  If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog.  It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!).  SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

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How do you handle making decisions during times of uncertainty?

December 9, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Poll /by Trevor Jones

Our reader poll today asks: How do you handle making decisions during times of uncertainty?

  • I wait until the uncertainty is resolved, then make my decision 0.80%
  • I proceed cautiously and gather as much info as I can before deciding 40.96%
  • I make a decision based on the best info I have, then adjust and react later 58.24%

A caution on caution. While the majority of respondents favor an act/learn/adjust approach to decision making, a substantive portion of you like to be cautious and gather as much info as you can before making a decision. Typically people do this with an eye toward reducing or eliminating risk. The more information you gather, the less risk you have, right? Not really. While that works in theory, you must realize that new sources of uncertainty and risk are being added to the system every day so your efforts to reduce it through information gathering are meaningless beyond a certain point. You can never eliminate all uncertainty. Consider trying the act/learn/adjust approach. Make smaller decisions faster and adjust them as the world plays itself out. Because the cost of inaction can be just as high as acting without proper information.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Did you enjoy this post?  If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog.  It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!).  SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

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Overcoming Obstacles to Creating a High-Performing Culture

December 8, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

stone obstacle

Learn about four of the most common obstacles to creating a high-performance culture and how to overcome them.

You’ll face many common obstacles on your path to building a high-performance culture. Legacy culture issues, associates who resist the new culture, and processes or behaviors that don’t yet exist are going to slow you down. You need to work through these counter-culture moments and issues if you’re looking to change the overall culture of the organization. The more aware you are of what these pitfalls are, the more quickly you’re going to be able to overcome them.

Legacy culture issues

One of the four most common pitfalls I see is the legacy culture. “This is the way we’ve always done things.” Read more

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How Smart Leaders Spot Ideas No-One Else Does

December 6, 2021/1 Comment/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Innovation, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

detective

Most disruptive ideas arise outside an industry. Leaders need a more open mindset to see early signals of change and respond to disruption.

Today’s post is by Kurt Matzler, co-author of Open Strategy: Mastering Disruption from Outside the C-Suite (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

In 1938, MIT student Claude Shannon solved one of the most complex problems of circuit design. Working on an early analog computer, he realized that an idea from an undergraduate philosophy course could solve the problem. Applying Boolean Algebra he laid the foundation of all electronic digital computers. As he put it: “It just happened that no one else was familiar with both fields at the same time”.

You may think that this was one of those lucky coincidences that change the world but almost never happen. You are wrong. In his book Seeing What Others Don’t, Gary Klein studied 120 of the most important inventions and discoveries in history: 82% of them emerged when people from different disciplines started to talk to each other and exchanged ideas.

Follow some simple rules and you may see what others don’t as well.

Start talking to strangers

At the beginning of the 20th century Vienna was a hotbed for new ideas. At the centre of this explosion of thoughts was the Wiener Kreis (Vienna circle), an interdisciplinary group of philosophers and scientists that met fortnightly.

While brilliant minds like Karl Popper, Ludwig von Wittgenstein, or Albert Einstein might have flourished as individuals, the gatherings are not to be underestimated. Eccentricities, disagreements, and rivalries marked these salons, but the insights had a profound impact on computing, astrophysics, cosmology, theory of science and philosophy. Even the godfather of management, Peter Drucker, benefitted from such “Abendgesellschaften” (evening gatherings) in his parent’s home in Vienna.

One obvious conclusion is to set up regular dinners with eccentrics. But a new set of online tools also facilitates the “meeting with strangers”. Harvard Professor Karim Lakhani studied hundreds crowdsourcing contests where companies post unsolvable problems and invite people to submit solutions. “The provision of a winning solution was positively related to increasing distance between the solver’s field of technical expertise and the focal field of the problem,” he explains. When tricky problems cannot be solved by the specialists, people with other backgrounds looking through other lenses and using other heuristics may find the solution. Talk to those people more often and you will start to seeing things differently.

Don’t trust the experts

Managing disruptions is difficult. A recent BCG-study found that 35% of the surveyed companies view digital technologies as disruptive to their business models and only 1/3 of all companies steer successfully through disruption.

One of the hardest things is to see what is coming. Incumbents get it wrong most of the time.

Specialists are the main culprits. Philipp E. Tetlock studied the accuracy of over 80,000 forecasts of political and economic experts. When they were convinced that something was fully or almost impossible, that future event occurred 15 percent of the time. When they were absolutely sure about a future event, it didn’t occur in more than a quarter of cases. When given a set of three future scenarios, experts were less accurate than someone randomly picking from these scenarios.

Experts often look at a problem through the lens of a single grand idea and “squeeze complex problems into the preferred cause-effect templates”. Instead of listening to specialized experts, tap into the collective wisdom of crowds.

In his book The Wisdom of Crowds James Surowiecki demonstrates that crowds beat experts if there is sufficient cognitive diversity, status and rank play no role, decentralized knowledge can be accessed, and if knowledge is aggregated efficiently.

There are many ways to achieve this. Surround yourself with people from different backgrounds, , talk to front-line employees and use tools like social networks, wikis, or strategy jams to give everyone a voice. The UK bank Barclays, for instance, invited 30,000 employees via a two-day online strategy jam, to bring them into a strategy conversation, along with senior leaders. The outcome was one of the UK’s most popular fintech products.

Try walking a mile in your enemy’s shoes

As we have limited information processing capabilities, managers rely on simplified mental models to make sense of the world. These frameworks or explanations of how a business works  influence how we process information and how we decide. Mental models can become rigid. So rigid that they inhibit change!

Take Polaroid’s downfall for example. In 1992 it was very well positioned to become a big player in digital photography. Patents, brand, even a prototype, everything was lined up. The only problem was the old business model. Polaroid’s managers loved the Razor and Blade model. When they saw the digital camera, they didn’t see its potential. There was no film. How can you make money without film? They could not overcome their mental model. 40 other brands were available, when Polaroid finally introduced a digital camera in 1996.

In military, war games are used to make decision-makers more vigilant, to broaden their range of alternatives, to spot early signals of change and recalibrate their mental frameworks accordingly, allowing for greater adaptation and nimbleness. Engage your managers in a similar exercise. Let them imagine a fictional competitor who develops a business model that totally disrupts your industry. What would such a business model be? Where are your vulnerabilities? This gives you totally new perspectives.

Seeing disruption as a threat rather than an opportunity has another benefit. Fear is a powerful motivator. Exercises like these have borne fruit for dozens of companies, such as BASF, Linde, and Lufthansa. These firms are now better prepared for disruption or have adopted entirely new business models.

Use analogies

Oliver Gassmann from Sankt Gallen University has studied more than 300 business model innovations. One of his most intriguing findings: 90% of them were mere new combinations of existing patterns, copied from other industries. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Just open up. Use analogies and ask yourself for example: What would Apple do in my industry?

Responding to disruption is not easy, but an open mindset increases the odds of success.

open strategyKurt Matzler is professor of strategic management at Innsbruck University and co-author of the book OPEN STRATEGY, https://openstrategy.info/

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

 

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What is your biggest obstacle to delegating more of what you do?

December 2, 2021/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Poll /by Trevor Jones

Our reader poll today asks: What is your biggest obstacle to delegating more of what you do?

  • No issues — I’m great at delegating 21.98%
  • I’m afraid they won’t do the task correctly 15.48%
  • I don’t have the resources to delegate to 34.52%
  • I don’t have time to teach them the task. It’s faster if I do it 19.28%
  • I enjoy my work and don’t want others to take it from me 4.48%
  • Something else prevents me from delegating 4.26%

Delegation challenges.While you may not have direct resources to delegate to, think creatively. Are there other teams that are better “natural owners” for some of the work you can delegate? Are there people in other parts of the organization looking for developmental special project opportunities? People don’t have to be in your direct line of responsibility for you to delegate to them. As far as your bigger challenges – fear of delegating and time to train people – those are issues you can overcome. Find the time. Do you have time to continue doing the work? It adds up over time and far outstrips the amount of time you’ll spend training someone on the skill. As far as overcoming fear, consider delegating small tasks first to build confidence and trust. For bigger tasks, delegate them in pieces and schedule regular progress checks. You’ll be surprised at how confident you’ll become in people once you get past the made up fears in your mind that are preventing you from delegating in the first place.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Did you enjoy this post?  If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog.  It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!).  SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

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Your Brain on Work: How Stress Hijacks Your Health and Happiness

December 2, 2021/0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Career, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

 

brain

Stress is part of our everyday lives. We can either control it or let it control us. The difference between those two situations is how we manage our “alarm” and our reactions to the daily stressors we face.

Today’s post is by Jon Wortmann, thoughtLEADERS instructor and author of Hijacked by Your Brain.

As the global head of sales hit the stage, he cracked. He looked out at the audience of colleagues and saw nothing but failure in his people. All his brain could focus on was their missed opportunities, laziness, and a collective bad year. Without thinking he said, “You are simply the worst team I have every worked with.”

For more than fifteen minutes he continued ranting before transitioning into an update of the quarter’s results. No one stopped him. When the CEO assessed the damage after the meeting, he fired his sales chief. At the exit interview, the head of sales didn’t even realize he had done something wrong. I wish it weren’t, but this is a true story.

When stress hijacks your brain, we get stuck on the short loop. The alarm, the tiny region called the amygdala which keeps us alert and out of danger, can misfire after exposure to too much stress. You lead. You manage. You innovate. You solve people problems. You save the day. To say you are exposed to stress is like saying London or Seattle get some rain.

Some days, you crash. Other days, your people call you a grumpy bear. Occasionally, after months of deadlines, events, and emergencies you melt down. Hopefully we don’t melt down on stage or in front of our teams, but it happens and we are not, in fact, crazy when we do.

The answer to stress at work is not actually as complicated as it might seem. While our brains still have some of the same regions as the dinosaurs, we also have evolved to the level of mental capacity where we can intentionally change the way we manage complex and complicated stimuli.

Stress is actually not a bad thing. When treated as a sign that something needs our attention, it can be monitored the way we measure marketing leads or key performance indicators. It can keep us sharp and teach us what we really care about. But to most of us, it feels bad. We avoid stress. We ignore stress. That’s when it bites us.

The first step is to making friends with your “alarm” is to recognize that we are always experiencing some level of stress. When you are sleeping, your alarm is still on. That’s why you wake up before your clock rings. When you get excited and feel jazzed, that’s still stress; it’s just pleasurable stress. When you stop suddenly, avoiding a biker you almost hit with your car, that’s your alarm keeping you out of trouble.

Second, separate the areas of your life where you feel stressed and those where you feel relaxed. To truly make stress valuable, we have to differentiate when it is running the show rather than our clear thinking determining how we behave. A simple exercise to do this is to measure your stress level during transitions of your day. Ten is the highest stress you ever feel, like when your child is hurt or you get rear ended. One is what it feels like to wake up from a good nap. You can’t have no stress because then you would be dead. Keep a simple list of the time and your stress level in the notes section of your phone. You will observe where and when you feel stress and that awareness is priceless.

Finally, with an acceptance that stress is a good thing and a record of stress in our lives, we can start to plan our days based on what we care about most. At work, to prevent melt downs, you have to have casual time to reflect or get to know colleagues. You have to have breaks in between meetings. If everything is pressure, eventually your brain will let you know it needs a break. Developing a rhythm at work where stress is always valuable takes time and perhaps a change of mindset, but I promise it is the core of what makes great work possible.

A quick concluding story to make the point. Three years ago I was traveling around the country speaking and coaching. I worked every day. I logged 40,000 miles a year on my car. I started measuring my stress and planning the amount of stress I would take on each day, and I am now 40 pounds lighter. I work harder than ever, but in a way that takes care of my brain and body as I do. We can all learn to make friends with stress; and, we are all capable of new levels of health and happiness at work.

Jon Wortmann Jon Wortmann is an expert in the areas of communication, leadership, and stress reduction. He’s the author of multiple books including Mastering Communication at Work: How to Lead, Manage, and Influence, The Three Commitments of Leadership: How Clarity, Stability, and Rhythm Create Great Leaders, and Hijacked by Your Brain: Discovering the Path to Freedom From Stress.

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

 

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How do you handle things when someone refuses to compromise and they harden their stance?

November 25, 2021/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Poll /by Trevor Jones

Our reader poll today asks: How do you handle things when someone refuses to compromise and they harden their stance?

  • I work around them. They’re not changing, and I need to get things done 36.87%
  • I offer more concessions to see if I can get them to move 4.58%
  • I get other people to pressure them to change their stance 5.30%
  • I accept their position and go work on more fruitful work 10.36%
  • I try to empathize and understand their concerns so I can soften their stance 42.89%

Avoid or Empathize? When faced with someone who refuses to compromise, it seems respondents choose one of two options – avoid the other person or empathize and try to change their position. For those of you whose first instinct is to avoid the person and work around them, consider trying to understand their position and soften it. There’s a reason they’re dug in. It might be a risk or an issue that you’re not considering and should be taken into account. If, however, they are clearly just being unreasonable and obstructionist, it’s probably time to move on and work around them. For those of you who do have a bias toward empathizing and trying to bring someone along, do decide when you’ll change approach and move forward rather than continue to delay your work. Sometimes all they’re doing is stalling for time and deliberately slowing you down.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Did you enjoy this post?  If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog.  It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!).  SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

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Defining High-Performance Culture

November 24, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

 

dictionary

The metrics you use to define ‘high performance’ will drive your team members’ behaviors. Make sure your definition leads to the behaviors you want.

To build a high-performance culture, you have to define what high performance is. What does high performance mean? How are you going to measure it? How much of your definition hinges on hard business metrics like sales, profitability, and growth, versus on qualitative metrics like morale, engagement, and customer satisfaction? The way you define and measure performance will dictate the practices you put in place to achieve it.

If you define performance by hard business metrics, you’ll get behaviors focused on driving those metrics. That won’t always get you the outcome you want in terms of building a high-performance culture. The focus ends up being on driving the number. And that can come at the expense of building a great culture.

If it’s defined by behaviors and soft metrics like engagement, retention, morale, and customer satisfaction, then you get those behaviors. The hard metrics like sales and profits should follow. Let’s look at a couple of examples of defining high performance. Read more

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How do you react when people don’t follow written instructions?

November 18, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Poll /by Trevor Jones

Our reader poll today asks: How do you react when people don’t follow written instructions?

  • No big deal, unless it causes a major issue or possible safety/security risk 9.18%
  • It irks me — it’s written down. But I don’t get too upset 30.57%
  • I get frustrated. Why did I bother to write it down for them in the first place? 45.63%
  • It makes me go nuts. It’s in black and white. They’re just being lazy 14.62%

Read the instructions! 60% of you get frustrated and beyond when people don’t follow written instructions (and another 31% of you are irked by it). It’s a big problem because of the errors, confusion, and inefficiency it causes when people don’t read instructions. So what can you do about it? First, make sure any instructions you provide are bare bones and as simple as possible. Second, explain the consequences of not following instructions (e.g., safety issues, financial losses, etc. that can be tied directly to that particular task). Third, send the instructions far enough in advance – if your directions arrive late, you might be causing people to rush and make mistakes. Fourth, try providing instructions in different formats to see what works best (e.g., email, presentation, pamphlets, videos, audio file, etc.). Finally, be sure you read instructions given to you carefully – you need to set the example.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Did you enjoy this post?  If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog.  It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!).  SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

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Assessing Your Current Culture

November 17, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

office group

One of the first steps you can take to create a high-performing culture is to assess what is and isn’t working in your current culture.

An assessment of your current culture gives you an understanding of the starting point for your journey toward building a high performance culture. This assessment includes evaluating what your current culture stands for, how people behave, and the incentives you have in place to drive behavior. Defining and explaining your culture can be difficult. It’s an intangible set of behaviors and a general feeling of what it’s like to be part of the organization. Identifying when people are or are not behaving in a manner consistent with your culture is an important element of assessing the culture you have. Let’s look at what goes into one of these cultural assessments. You need to ask yourself several questions. Read more

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Four Ways to Become a Complete Leader

November 15, 2021/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Stop beating yourself up for what you don’t do well—be a complete leader. Great leaders build processes that leverage their teammates’ strengths.

Today’s guest post is by Xavier Naville, author of The Lettuce Diaries: How a Frenchman Found Gold Growing Vegetables in China (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

The caller ID stated “Mike.” The phone was on the fourth ring. I held it in front of me, watching the screen, mouth dry, sitting at my desk, thinking, “Here it goes again. He’s going to speak Chinese and I won’t understand.”

Creative Food, the vegetable-processing company I had started in China the year before, was on the verge of bankruptcy. Every project I initiated had failed. All the foreign experts I had hired had left. My operations were in such bad shape that my own customers, who included big fast-food chains like KFC and Pizza Hut asked my new recruits why they had come aboard a ship that was sure to sink. On that day, once I finally answered the phone, I had to ask Mike to repeat himself several times. Read more

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How well connected do you stay with people from your school years (high school, university, advanced degree)?

November 11, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership, Poll /by Trevor Jones

Our reader poll today asks: How well connected do you stay with people from your school years (high school, university, advanced degree)?

  • Very: We’re in touch all the time 7.01%
  • Somewhat: We’ll get together occasionally, but it’s sporadic 22.32%
  • Not very: I’ll see them at a 5-year scheduled reunion interval 19.05%
  • Not at all: I am totally out of touch with them 51.62%

Missed connections. The vast majority of you hardly stay in touch with people from your school days (if at all). Consider these missed opportunities on a few levels. First, they’ve advanced their careers just like you have. They may be your next great employee, business partner, employer, or customer. These school relationships can quickly turn into business relationships because you already have a shared set of experiences and are somewhat known quantities to one another. They can also be powerful forces of social support. We all need friends to talk to, get support from, and support in return. Those relationships reduce stress and can boost enjoyment in life. There’s no shortage of ways to stay in touch (LinkedIn, Facebook, email, etc.). Reach out sometime. You might be surprised at how fulfilling those old relationships can be.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Did you enjoy this post?  If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog.  It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!).  SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

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Man Painting the Word Change on a Wall
Construction Cranes
Plant Growing in a Hand
High Performance Gears
Men Shaking Hands Closeup
Influence Definition
Sailboat at Sunset
Hanging light bulbs with glowing one isolated on dark blue background
Wagon Wheel
Executive Communications
Structured Problem Solving
Creating Leadership Maxims
Leading inside the Box
Deliberate Decision Making
Simple Strategic Planning
Storytelling for Leaders
Storytelling for Sales
Executive Presence
Principles of Chart Design
Time Management Mastery
Breakthrough Innovation
Leadership Resilience
Conflict Resolution
Leading through Change
Project Management Reality
Coaching for Impact
High Performing Teams
Everything is Negotiable
Leading with Influence
Building Personal Resilience
thoughtLEADERSHIP
Engagement Management
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eLearning Courses on TITAN

Structured Thought: Problem Solving
Puzzle Pieces
Structured Thought: Problem Solving

Clearly define a problem, scope all issues related to the problem, generate potential solutions, then analyze and select the best solution by using time-tested critical thinking methods and tools.

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Structured Thought and Communication
Group of Business People Meeting
Structured Thought and Communication

Craft clear and compelling recommendations that resonate with stakeholders. Get your ideas approved by using a proven method for delivering executive-level communications.

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Principles of Chart Design
Different Types of Line and Bar Charts
Principles of Chart Design

Create well-designed presentation charts that get your message across quickly and clearly to drive your audience to action. From data charts to concept charts, these methods help make your point.

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Engagement Management
Wagon Wheel
Engagement Management

Whether you’re an internal or external consultant or a project leader, learn proven methods, techniques, and processes to effectively lead consulting engagements that drive your client’s success.

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Strategic Business Planning
Cog Wheels
Strategic Business Planning

Use a straightforward and effective strategic planning process that shows how to craft a clear, compelling plan for your organization - not just one time, but on an ongoing basis year after year.

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Deliberate Decision Making
Deliberate Decision Making
Deliberate Decision Making

Make better, faster, and more effective decisions. Apply simple yet powerful decision making tools to define decision authority, manage risk, increase accountability, and drive execution.

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Everything is Negotiable
Men Shaking Hands
Everything is Negotiable

Become a better negotiator in all situations – from day to day interactions to hammering out large deals. Build the skills required to get what you want and strengthen relationships while you do.

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Breakthrough Innovation
Exploding Lightbulb
Breakthrough Innovation

Generate and select unique strategies that separate you from the competition. Construct bold and disruptive solutions then build and execute a plan for taking those strategies to market.

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Storytelling for Leaders
Man reading stories from a book
Storytelling for Leaders

Create business stories that inspire people, build connections with your audience, and ultimately advance your organization's goals by using a repeatable, straightforward method.

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Storytelling for Salespeople
Storytelling for Salespeople
Storytelling for Salespeople

Create and deliver stories that will take your sales efforts to the next level. Connect with and convince buyers in all situations using memorable stories. These stronger relationships drive more sales.

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Leading through Change
Leading through Change
Leading through Change

Lead your organization through the most challenging times using a proven change management process. Get people through the change and back to driving performance quickly and effectively.

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Building Leadership Resilience
Mountain Climbing Expedition
Building Leadership Resilience

Prepare your body and brain to be ready for and recover from your biggest challenges. Build approaches for overcoming stress, managing reactions to difficult events, and leading more effectively.

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Compelling Executive Presence
Compelling Executive Presence
Compelling Executive Presence

Build your ability to connect with your audience and convey your ideas in a clear and resonant way. Create meaningful connections between you and your audience to build buy-in.

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Coaching for Impact
Plant Growing in a Hand
Coaching for Impact: Foundation Course

Coach employees for performance and development more effectively by helping them identify and pursue their own solutions. Create the right environment and conditions to help them grow.

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Building Personal Resilience
Boat at Sunset
Building Personal Resilience

Build the habits and learn the behaviors required to manage stress, deal with adversity, and maintain your physical and mental wellbeing. Personal resilience is a key to your ongoing success.

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Time Management Mastery
Watches
Time Management Mastery

Learn techniques to manage your time, delegate, say “no,” and be more efficient. Balance your limited supply of time with the overwhelming demands that are placed on you every day.

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Books You MUST Read

The Elegant Pitch
One Piece of Paper by Mike Figliuolo
Lead Inside the Box
10 Stories Great Leaders Tell
Getting Ahead
Sell with a Story
Lead with a Story
Mastering Communication at Work
The Hook
Innovative Leadership Fieldbook
Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations
The Three Commitments of Leadership
The Littlest Green Beret
Storytelling in the Land of Oz
The Camino Way
The Power of Surge
Red Shoes Living book
The Inner Matrix book
The Elegant Pitch
One Piece of Paper by Mike Figliuolo
Lead Inside the Box
10 Stories Great Leaders Tell
Getting Ahead
Sell with a Story - Border
Lead with a Story
Leading from Your Best Self
Mastering Communication at Work
The Hook
Innovative Leadership Fieldbook
Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations
20120318 Three Commitments
Leadership Vertigo
The Littlest Green Beret
Storytelling in the Land of Oz
The Camino Way
Hijacked by Your Brain
Outthink the Competition
Driving Innovation from Within
The Power of Surge
Red Shoes Living
The Inner Matrix
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  • The Elegant Pitch
  • The Vision Code
  • The Power of Surge
  • Red Shoes Living
  • The Inner Matrix

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Categories

Our Course Offerings

Leadership Skills

Creating Your Leadership Maxims
Leading Inside the Box
Leading With Influence
Leading Through Change
Structured Problem Solving
Deliberate Decision Making
High Performing Teams
Simplified Strategic Planning
Strategic Business Planning
Coaching for Impact: Foundations
Coaching for Impact: Applications
Building Leadership Resilience
Engagement Management
Project Management Reality

Communication Skills

Communications: Foundations
Communications: Applications
Principles of Chart Design
Storytelling for Leaders
Storytelling for Salespeople
Compelling Executive Presence
Advanced Facilitation Skills

Individual Skills

Conflict Resolution
Everything is Negotiable
thoughtLEADERSHIP: Innovation
Building Personal Resilience
Time Management Mastery

Coaching & Consulting

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