1.Team Building
The overall goal of most team-building is to increase the levels of trust and cooperation between team members. A related goal can also be to increase team member skills. One particularly effective team building program we offer is entitled:
“The Several Habits of Highly Effective Teams”
This is a customized team development workshop, designed to bring a manager and staff closer together, as well as and resolve key issues faced by the team. The process often includes:
- A needs analysis and identification of team-specific issues
- Reviewing skills/practices of successful teams
- Identifying key lessons learned
- Enabling peer-to-peer professional feedback
- Sharing style and personal information
- Guiding team level problem solving, etc.
Other team building approaches and programs are also available. Please inquire.
2.Employee Skills Training
Every organization wants employees who have a positive attitude, are good communicators, and who are committed, engaged, and customer focused. Given senior management support, many of these attributes can be taught to staff at all levels and adopted through the right approach to training. Our programs are dynamic, interactive, require participants to practice new skills; and typically involve senior management playing some agreed upon role.
3.Supervisory Skills Training
In many ways, first line supervisors are the most important position in the organization. They influence morale, retention, performance, quality, customer service, cost containment, and many other metrics by which organizations measure success. Yet, most firms do not do a good job of preparing supervisors to be coaches, and to care more about the performance and well-being of their team than about their own personal achievement. As someone once stated: “It is your team that gets you promoted; not your boss”. Our programs focus on helping supervisors learn the key practical skills of managing others (e.g. coaching, giving feedback, setting goals, building teamwork, recognition, running effective meetings, etc.), while also being exposed to higher level concepts of leadership, project planning, managing change, and modeling the right attitudes.
4.Management and Leadership Development
Succession planning, and having the right leadership “bench-strength” (i.e. leaders in the pipeline) is a challenge for many organizations. One related area of weakness is understanding the difference between “managing” and “leading”. While both sets of behaviors and skills are important, most organizations cultivate and promote good “management”, while ignoring or under-developing good “leadership”. Our programs emphasize the distinction, while guiding participants to skill development in both areas. Managers must be good coaches, build strong teams, have good planning and organizing skills, etc. Leaders must be good communicators, align teams, recognize long term opportunities, and be good at empowering and motivating others.
5.Executive Coaching
Even world class athletes have a coach. And in most cases, the coaches are not better than the athletes’ themselves at the game. Rather, the value of the coach is in the outside and objective pair of eyes; and in the ability to ask powerful questions to help the coachee reach new levels of performance. That model applies exactly to executive coaching. The coach’s role is to be a confidential resource who can ask the tough questions, have the executive reflect on his/her behavior, and co-develop strategies to become more effective and satisfied.
6.Keynote Talks and Presentations
We conduct dynamic, informative and interactive presentations, 1-3 hours in length. Sample topics include:
- The Difference between Management and Leadership
- Managing Yourself; Influencing Others
- Creating the High Morale Workplace
- Making Empowerment a Reality
- Creating Customer Loyalty
- The Several Habits of Highly Successful Professionals
- Becoming a ‘Learning Organization’
- Making Mergers Successful
- Consulting Skills for Internal Staff Groups
- Developing a ‘Workplace Covenant’
- Workforce Engagement – Making it Happen in Your Organization
- Making Meetings Magnificent
7.Lunch and Learn Presentations
Many organizations struggle to find the time and resources to offer their supervisors and managers the training they know they need. So what is the answer? 90 minute doses of high impact training, over the lunch hour, delivered at your site, for groups of 10 up to 30, for a competitive fee. This is our “Lunch and Learn” approach, and it is a good fit for organizations that just can’t seem to release their people for longer periods. Custom topics are possible, as are the more ‘prepared’ topics listed above in Keynote Presentations.
© Seth Silver, Rochester, NY, 14618. 1999.
Call 585-330-7853 today to meet Seth and start to revitalize your organization.