Slides

Lecture

Facilitated Dialogues

Character (those mental and moral qualities distinctive to each of us as individuals) and integrity (the quality of being honest, upright, and whole and undivided in regard to one&rsquo;s beliefs and principles) are foundational starting points for any principled, respectable leader. Perhaps more than we know or care to admit, character and integrity give shape and meaning to our reputation...the reputation that precedes us everywhere we go.
What are the hallmarks of your character? Your integrity? Join us and find out.
You're making an impression on others, so you might as well make it intentionally.

Steve Buchholz

Peter DeMarco

Walter Nusbaum

Joe Brouillette

William David Rigdon

Greg Methvin

Gary Moreau

Dawn Leath

Greg Holden

Dalton Jantzen

Carlos V. Duno

JR. Forasteros

Michael Wood

Blake Leath

Pam Venné

Live Online

In Person

Blended Learning

Character

Leadership

Culture

Cultivation Series

From the Latin valere (meaning to be of strong worth), values are "the beliefs, principles, or standards which, when held in high regard, influence judgment and shape subsequent behavior."
What are your values? Your colleagues'? Your customers'? Your organization's? To what extent are everyone's values aligned, working together, and acted upon consistently?&nbsp;
&ldquo;If you want to know what someone&rsquo;s values are, look at his calendar and his checkbook. Since time and money are two of our most finite resources, they sometimes bottleneck the most noble ambitions.&rdquo;
Join us for Values&nbsp;to explore espoused vs. actual and to leave feeling more purposeful and aligned than ever before.

Susan Thoma

Raquel Romero

Sylvia LaVoie

Kimberly Kyle House

Jean Grossman

Values

Who are you, why, where are you going...and to what end?
The question "Who am I" is one we each ask in due time, but forming one's identity is contingent on so many factors, nature and nurture often blotting out any understanding of alternatives. To the extent one chooses to be knowingly and explicitly purposeful about creating the person s/he wants to become whilst leveraging her/his talents and plowing them into a purpose greater than oneself, fulfillment is inclined to follow.
Henry David Thoreau wrote, &ldquo;The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,&rdquo; but Ralph Waldo Emerson's antidote to this was is, in part, vocation: &ldquo;The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.&rdquo;
If we are fortunate, we are afforded a nice, long time to explore numerous chapters in our own Book of Life, but whether brief or an extended stay, each step may be our last, so please join us as we guide you on a journey toward self-discovery, the primary intent being to name one's heart's song and to live a life saturated in service.

Talents, Identity, Purpose & Meaning

Trust is the lubricant of life, without which friction and fire are sure to follow.&nbsp;
Through four major categories comprised of the top 26 determinants of trust, our primer on the subject equips participants to become more witting leaders capable of creating connection and contribution within relationships defined by goodwill.
Remember, 0 Trust x Anything = 0, so learn trust and expand your potential envelope.

Trust

Communication

Pew Research Center recently conducted a study to discover what adults considered the most important skill for kids to have. Options included science, math, teamwork, art, writing, reading, and more. Across the board though, respondents picked one clear winner: communication skills.
The implication is clear. You can be brilliant in many different areas, but without the ability to communicate, your knowledge and expertise are lost on those around you. The same goes for teamwork. It&rsquo;s impossible to be a great teammate without effective communication skills.
What are these critical communication skills? Why do they matter so much? And what does developing them mean in your own personal and professional lives?
This session covers the Big 12 most important communication skills plus the four habits of highly successful communicators. Our team will guide participants through opportunities to improve every interaction, from understanding the right way to communicate in any situation to more masterful abilities like gauging situations correctly and learning, almost magically, how to know what people are thinking before they even tell you.
The reason adults responding in the Pew study want kids to develop communication skills is simple: Life's challenging, there are ample problems to solve, and communication is the only way to solve them. And this fact is doubly true in corporate life. Large global companies participating in a separate communications study estimated an average of more than $60 million [each] lost in the prior year due to communication missteps and misunderstandings.
How much are your poor communication skills costing you?
Leadership communication skills are important because when we communicate well we gain time and money. Focus on developing the right skills, and your chances at success will skyrocket.

Clay Morgan

Michelle Simms

Patty Harrison

For many, the days of gathering around the water cooler at the office suddenly disappeared in 2020 as organizations were forced to trade in bustling buildings for quarantine life. Vast numbers of employees worldwide withdrew to remote locations and experienced isolated routines punctuated by video calls.
When normalcy returns and we once again come face-to-face and shoulder-to-shoulder en masse, the challenge of creating significant human connection remains. Even if we like our private hidey-holes, we still desire meaningful interactions over the frenetic, often hollow encounters so common these days.
Participating in fulfilling work with and alongside others is a key toward building community. And all the more when we move beyond the transactional nature of harried and siloed teams toward true engagement in pursuit of a common vision.

Amanda Forasteros

Ashley Acker

Connection, Community & Engagement

Creating inclusive environments is critical for leaders driving success in the modern workplace. Our program walks through cases, approaches, exercises and definitions that empower managers with the knowledge needed to foster inclusive environments. Studies have shown that diverse organizations are more innovative and profitable and the business impact of a diversity-related crisis can be crippling. Work with us to build collaborative teams that perform at the highest levels.
The diversity conversation will continue to evolve and leaders will be faced with creating inclusive workplaces for people across the spectrum in the way they identify themselves. For organizations starting this journey, we recommend our introduction volume for your entire company. The first step toward building an inclusive environment requires a company-wide commitment and this volume demonstrates that commitment and introduces a shared intent and vocabulary.
For leaders and managers, we recommend all four volumes. The course includes core curriculum for each volume and is updated yearly to include relevant updates, new scenarios, and fresh practice exercises for leaders to continue their journey of inclusivity. One volume each quarter has driven strong results for our clients and we look forward to customizing a plan that makes sense for your organization.

Jen Cho

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Principles, Issues & Applications for Today's Evolving World

We're all familiar with Bruce Tuckman's revolutionary 1965 articulation of Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing [and now Adjourning!] phases of team development, but within the experience of teaming (and even collaborating), sometimes the primacy and very essence of authentic unity can get lost in the shuffle.
In the greatest of teams, we see genuine esprit de corps (which we think is an apt description, as it certainly evokes what we're talking about: spirit through unity and unity of spirit).
Perhaps by way of a rather unconventional example (but shared nonetheless because hundreds of millions of people have seen it), recall the movie scene in 1999's Braveheart when Mel Gibson's historical figure rallies an enormous yet ragtag group of volunteers by prancing to and fro on his trusty steed while shouting the words:
<blockquote>
&ldquo;I am William Wallace, and I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. You have come to fight as free men. And free man you are! What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight? Aye! Fight and you may die; run and you will live...at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives&mdash;but they will never take our FREEDOM!&rdquo;
</blockquote>
The hairs that rise on the back of one's neck indicate that unity is in the house.
To aspire toward teamwork without understanding, pursuing, and ultimately engendering spirited unity is to miss the benevolent ghost in the machine, for it is indeed possible to be a team without possessing unity, much like it's possible to drive to work each morning without consciously thinking about it.
Don't miss out on true potential by failing to cultivate unity.
When fully harnessed, we predict you'll agree with one prior participant who shared his perspective on unity as "the actual differentiator between teams I was on that felt memorably magical versus teams I was on that simply succeeded."
That's it exactly. We couldn't agree more.

Unity

What sort of soil are you preparing and tilling for employees to grow from? Have you thought about culture: what it is, what it means, how it's formed or changed or improved, or its consequences?
Culture is where we thrive or die, so this exploration on the topic is rich and robust, covering such issues as the seven elements anthropologists agree inform culture the most, four types of workplace cultures, and an exposition on and evaluation of your own organization's cultural health.&nbsp;
You won't want to miss this ride; it's one of our most popular and always leads to spirited dialogue.

Brian Cesare

Dave Arnott

Growth, growth, growth. Every organization grows or dies, whether treading water to avoid drowning or reaching at arms' lengths with hands palmed to swim forward toward new, better, more competitive and healthier shores on the other side.
In our own sojourn through human, leader, and organization growth, we examine six seasons and 14 sub-seasons common to virtually every sizeable entity that's survived five or more years. To see with new eyes where your organization's been, where it likely is now, and how one might orchestrate change going forward in order to grow well into the future, please join us and contribute to this popular solution.

Jay Leigh

Phil Davis

Growth

Strategy

Change

Printed Workbook(s)

Savable PDF Workbook(s)

For something so essential, &ldquo;strategy&rdquo; is often misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misapplied, and given the complex challenges facing contemporary organizations&mdash;and entire societies&mdash;we must grow more and better strategists.
Tackling three simple yet sweeping questions,&nbsp;Strategy&nbsp;answers: (1)&nbsp;What is strategy, and why aren't more leaders better strategists?&nbsp;(2)&nbsp;While strategy is foundational in exemplary organizations, why are so many others missing it altogether?&nbsp;(3)&nbsp;How can I apply strategy in palpable, pragmatic ways to the benefit of those around me?
Fun content, intuitive models, research-based solutions, and sticky storytelling make&nbsp;Strategy&nbsp;an easy, stimulating, and immensely credible approach toward developing strong creators and strategists for our evolving world of work.

Knute Sorenson

Growing from Leader to Visionary, Creator, and Architect of Strategy

This past year more than ever, leaders have had to define and drive solutions to problems and environmental circumstances with no playbook or guide. How do you produce when all the things you need to deliver are challenged by new obstacles?
The word creative can also be a noun&mdash;a person who chooses to think differently every day. For those who have selected professions outside their natural skill set, being asked to be creative can incite panic and lead to a lot of wasted time staring at the screen.
Mark Twain famously said, &ldquo;There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely, but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.&rdquo;
This module will walk you through a process to create your kaleidoscope of creativity. We will walk you through a process to help you look at the knowledge you have at your disposal differently. Our process will help leaders leverage their individual work experience, knowledge, network, and resources to deliver creative and innovative solutions to new and challenging problems.
We guide you through defining the problems or layers of challenges you are facing, provide ways to provide alternate perspectives, understand the controls, and explore variables that impact your situation. Our process will guide research to fill in gaps and identify the best ideas from the brainstorming that results from this process. Lastly, we provide tips on presenting your creativity.
Leadership requires creativity. We look forward to exploring the innovation within you.

Creativity

Kaleidoscopic, Panoramic, Interdisciplinary Thinking & Doing