The unwritten rules of polite conversation require that we avoid
conflict – avoid diving below the conversational surface for fear of
discomfort. Transformational leaders break these rules in pursuit of a
deeper layer of meaning, of synergy, of relationship, of effectiveness.
Participants will explore the value of doing so and will co-create
strategies for working through discomfort and conflict.
Motivation 101: No More Pulling Teeth
Motivation is the fuel that powers all personal effectiveness. Carrots and sticks can get the job done in the short-term, but the kind of motivation that produces long-term success (not to mention healthy relationships) starts on the inside. Working with motivational dilemmas presented from within the group, participants will learn and co-create tools to apply in a wide variety of motivational contexts.
Feeding the Good Wolf: Achievement via Attitude
Our culture’s default approach to change is to identify what’s wrong – to hammer on problems and weaknesses. But those who focus on the negative create their own suffering. Why? Because our reality is a product of what we pay attention to. We can shift our productivity by shifting our attitude. This workshop offers practical tools for enhancing effectiveness by focusing more on what’s working and what’s possible than on what’s wrong.
Coaching: Paving the Road to Success
By synthesizing wisdom from multiple fields, coaching forges the most effective known path for creating sustainable learning and behavior change. In this workshop, you’ll experience how effective coaching evokes excellence by building a bridge from our best intentions to powerful behavior – simply, a bridge to success. For anyone serious about optimizing their potential, coaching can strengthen commitment and shore up the resources to make good on that commitment, helping people reach their goals more efficiently.
Coping with Change in Turbulent Times
The only constant in life is change. And nothing presents a greater challenge to individual and organizational effectiveness. But it’s not change that people resist, it’s being changed. We don’t need to be victims of change. We can learn practical strategies to help us flow with change – to use it to create better organizations and more motivated and productive employees. This highly interactive session shows managers and employees alike how to create a healthy, sustainable and effective workplace.
I can’t recommend Steve highly enough. I left the seminar invigorated!
Steve had absolute command of the subject at hand
and managed the session most adeptly.
Once sharing time and space with him – you will not care for it to end too soon.
~David F. Hull, Jr., Chairman & CEO
Contact me for prices and availability on all workshop offerings
Prices are based on duration of seminar and amount of customization requested
(see also what others say about my presentation style and abilities)
Seminars on
Individual and Organizational Effectiveness
Based on my experience in a multiplicity of venues and sectors (corporate, nonprofit, government, education, and community), I offer workshops in a diverse range of leadership topics (see below).
Workshop series for managers - the best road to success
By far the best way to insure sustainable, long-term learningin "training" is to engage over a course of time, with numerous opportunities to practice the concepts and tools learned – in real-world settings – and receive feedback on how those experiments are working.
All three of these powerful, multiple-month experiences offer leaders a bottomless toolbox to last their entire careers. Participants leave each program fundamentally different from when they started – due to the scope and depth of topics considered, the proven validity of the underlying concepts, and the time to digest, practice, personalize and integrate the insights and behaviors learned.
Stand-alone workshops
I offer workshops on the following topics, all of which can be customized, combined, and hybridized to meet your needs. Prices depend on duration of workshop and amount of customization required. Discounts are available for nonprofits, government agencies, and community organizations. Please contact me for more information.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is widely regarded to be more important in determining success – however it’s defined – than expertise, IQ, or hard work. The effective leader diligently cultivates her self-awareness, self-management, interpersonal awareness, and relationship management. Participants will explore these components, evaluate themselves, and choose areas for individual focus.
Perspective-Taking
The essence of the developmental shift needed in the world today – the shift that will transform all relationships, from intimate to international – is the ability to take the perspective of the other. This session will explore the prerequisites for doing so, as well as specific strategies to make good on the intention to free ourselves, one conversation at a time, from the bondage of our own always-limited worldview.
Organizational Culture
Like water to a fish, culture is the medium we swim in. Culture shapes us – our thoughts, our values, our behavior – in ways that are often hard to discern. Great leaders cultivate understanding of culture, promote its sustenance when appropriate, and advocate for change when necessary. Participants will explore how to work effectively with the profound, yet often invisible, influence that cultural beliefs and norms wield on all of us.
Renewal and self-care
The leader who isn’t diligently engaged in holistic self-care is not optimally effective. Leaders must strive to be the best they can be – physically, mentally, and spiritually – before they can lead individuals and teams to excellence. In this workshop, participants will create self-care plans to sustainably boost their fitness to lead.
Strength-based Development
In assessing situations or people, we tend to search for problems, then seek solutions. The problem with looking for problems is this: learning theory says whatever we focus on expands. So a problem focus expands the problems we face. Focusing instead on strengths, possibilities, and opportunities has been proven to build effectiveness and positive motivation over the long term.
Making the Leadership Choice
Courage comes not from eliminating fear but from facing into it. Leadership requires each of us to cultivate the resources that both support and challenge us to consistently make the courageous leadership choice. Participants will dive together into these resources. We see this as a critical step to donning the mantle of transformational leadership.
Follow-up coaching - individual and small-group
As important as workshop learning can be, it easily fades over time without follow-up structures to embed the learning in the leader's worldview and habits. Leadership development can be made many times more effective by adding follow-up professional coaching to stand-alone workshops. But regardless of whether you'd like me involved in that follow-up, I'll work with you to develop vehicles to help your leaders retain and build on what they've learned.
Our culture’s default approach to change is to identify what’s wrong – to hammer on problems and weaknesses. But those who focus on the negative create their own suffering. Why? Because our reality is a product of what we pay attention to. We can shift our productivity by shifting our attitude. This workshop offers practical tools for enhancing effectiveness by focusing more on what’s working and what’s possible than on what’s wrong.
