Our Topics Library is arranged in alphabetical order and is coded with a
"W" for Workshops and a "K" for Keynote Topics.
Accountability
From our experience, a lack of accountability is one of the most significant factors leading to poor performance. Accountability, just like Difficult Conversations, is not easy and requires practice and consistency. One of the things we’ve found with accountability is that when you don’t hold people accountable, others notice and this erodes your credibility and impact as a leader. Great leaders can’t be great leaders without accountability skills. W K
Authentic Leader
Authenticity is the concept of showing up consistently with all groups. While some use the “this is me, like it or not” approach, that isn’t what we mean as it relates to leadership. The Authentic Leader is open minded, consistent, and has a strong rapport with their people because their people know what to expect and how the leader will respond in most given situations. W K
Autonomy
One of our favorite concepts that can be super risky in the wrong hands. Consider this, when does “autonomy” become neglect? Too often consultants don’t know or understand this risk associated with autonomy. W K
Beliefs vs Values
How do organizational beliefs and values differ? In our experience, decoupling the two is an important step towards gaining organizational (and personal) clarity. Successful organizations often use values as guiding principles for the work they do. The beliefs, whether spoke or unspoken, risk the efficacy of those values and threaten how people follow their leaders. Clarity is key when it comes to beliefs and values. W K
Bias
Through better understanding our conscious and unconscious beliefs and reasoning mechanisms, we can improve our impact and effectiveness as leaders. W
Burnout Is Real
Learn how to recognize, evaluate, and respond to the various burnout threats in the workplace. W K
Communication
Our forever challenge! Whether that is personal or professional, communication is an ongoing challenge for all of us. However, there are enough tools and information available to improve how we communicate and lead to more desirable outcomes. Just like all other skills, we can develop our communication effectiveness. W K
Culture of Fear
Our goal is a culture of joy, but for too many work environments fear rules the roost. Learn how to tackle this and begin cutting a path towards joy, trust and prosperity. W K
Culture Shift
Learn about the steps to take to shift culture in a direction that will help you with your initiatives. W K
Change Management
Change is a constant part of life. We often claim that change is hard or that people don’t like change but we would argue that how we handle change is what leads to the hardships and challenges people experience during change. Learn how to improve how people experience change and the steps leaders can take to make it more effective. W K
Creating Habits That Serve You
There has been a lot of work and research on habits. Unfortunately, depending where you look you may get the wrong idea of what is necessary to build habits. If you find that you are reading “habit” books, but still struggling, you are likely looking in the wrong spot. Habit formation is much more complicated, and despite the formulaic approach many tote, it may not be one that works for you. W
Dealing With Difficult People
Understanding and knowing how to work with people different from yourself shouldn’t really be all that difficult. Through better understanding ourselves and others as well as understanding motivation and behavior, we can “meet people where they are.” This is not about pandering, but building the awareness and capacity to connect with even the most different people. W K
Decision Making
Input, data, and assumptions; how do we make sense out of all these pieces of information during the decision making process? How do each of these items help or hurt us in our leadership roles? W
Diamonds In The Rough
This is a look at where our hidden gems may be hiding. Unfortunately, too often we under-appreciate those that don’t look, sound, or resemble us or our expectations. We help uncover those gems by helping people examine many of their beliefs and assumptions about their workforce. W K
Difficult Conversations
Is there a one size fits all approach to having difficult conversations? No, but like other skills we can develop this through learning more about how people behave, what people need and want, and how we can lay the foundation in advance that makes every difficult conversation that much easier. W
Emotional Intelligence
Likely one of the most impactful self-development concepts, Emotional Intelligence is the secret sauce that differentiates high performers from the rest. Understanding how emotions affect our mood, behavior, and practices is the first step in minimizing the likelihood of being emotionally highjacked. As compared to those with lower levels of emotional intelligence, leaders with higher levels experience more support, commitment, and higher performance from their staff. W K
Empathy
When we can connect with others, we are better able to help, lead, and support them. Empathy is an important skill that will build bridges with others. However, it can also be a risky practice because in high emotion and high stress environments we can take on too much of others’ emotional burdens. W K
Employee Engagement
What do engaged employees look like? Happy, committed, and intentional are just a few of the attributes. Engaged employees invest in themselves and their organization and bring others along with them. Our easy to follow 4 “i” framework explores how we can cultivate a high engagement organization. We also spend time talking about the risks of mismanaging what we perceive as “engaged teams” and how disastrous they can be. W
Exploring your Why
Understanding self-motivation is a difficult concept, but central to our workshop on Motivation, we must understand our purpose, or our why. The concept of why is the starting and end point to how we see ourselves in this busy, complicated world. The stronger the sense of our why, the more our lived experiences align with our values leading to higher levels of peace, joy and fulfillment. W K
Feedback = Love
One of the most difficult parts to being a leader is the feedback and accountability part of leadership. Few excel at this and this is, potentially, one of the most common deficiencies in organizations because it is just tough and often exhausting. However, we can learn more about feedback skills and behaviors and its role in helping our people thrive. W K
Goal Setting
Similar to habits, some of us do a great job establishing and meeting goals. However, most struggle with this and this can be observed in both work performance and in annual evaluations. Building stronger, more accurate, and attainable goals is a skill that can be developed and used to increase personal and professional performance. W
Growth vs Fixed Mindset
Are you open to new experiences, new ideas, and new information? This session explores the difference between growth and fixed mindsets and how we fluctuate between the two as we navigate the world. Increasing our awareness surrounding our beliefs and assumptions will open up new paths and new opportunities for both personal and professional experiences. W K
Human Behavior & Personalities
How does personality influence our behavior? With significant research on personality traits, we have many tools to understand and even predict how people may behave. This is an extremely powerful concept to understand if you want to maximize not only your people’s performance, but also the joy they find in their work. W K
Human Flourishing
Joy, happiness, laughter, and love are central needs for all of us to prosper, so how come we don’t talk about such things in the workplace? High performing teams recognize and embrace these needs and work to integrate them into their culture. W K
Human Performance In The Workplace
Missing your goals or targets? Our Peak Performance Model takes the guesswork out of analyzing performance deficiencies, and helps leaders identify appropriate, impactful and sustainable solutions. W K
Leadership
Leading others is such a broad category. Our goal is to develop high performing, consistent, and approachable leaders through a wide variety of tools and approaches. W K
Life Balance (NOT work-life balance)
Probably more aptly named just Balance, work is merely a part of our overall existence and doesn’t have to define who we are (which is ok if it is something you truly love). But, for many, work is only one component to living a fulfilling life. What further complicates this is that for many they feel external pressures from others (leaders, colleagues, loved ones) to comply with unnecessary/unspoken/unofficial expectations. As part of this process we explore individual versus group assumptions and how to navigate them. W K
Managing Anxiety in Organizations
Individually we experience anxiety because we are uncertain of what is coming in the future. The same can be said for organizations and teams. Organizational anxiety can present itself in many different ways and there are a number of sources that fuel this destructive energy. Without proper care and response this can derail even the healthiest organizational cultures. W K
Micromanagement
For the longest time we have regarded micromanagement as a negative management practice, and for good reason. It is time that we revisit this and learn what good micromanagement looks like and how it can be so powerful in quickly building capacity and effectiveness with new hires. W K
Misfits
A nod to Adam Grant! Adam’s 2019 podcast on The Creative Power of Misfits is one of our all-time favorite episode. This highlights one of the quiet divides in the workforce that marginalizes our potential high performers whom just don’t fit the organization’s or leadership’s tastes. Similar to the concept of diamonds in the rough, being aware of the potential and the abilities of our people is essential in building a balanced, diverse, and high performing workplace. W K
Motivation
Probably one of the most discussed concepts, yet least understood in the workplace. It’s time to broaden and improve our understanding of what motivates people. Our Dashboard model is built upon the most current motivation research and prepares people to empower others through understanding how we cultivate (and diminish) motivation in others. W K
Organizational Resilience
Learn how to build resilience within your organization so that you can keep your teams moving forward and on target. W
Personal Relationships, Communication, Marriage
Just as the workplace can benefit from development activities, so too can relationships with friends and loved ones. Let us help you explore how to build relationship and communication capacity to grow together with your loved ones. W K
Psychological Safety
As a society we have made significant strides in developing safety-first cultures. However, this has historically been in regards to physical risks and threats, not risks associated with poor treatment, hostile work environments, out-of-touch leaders, and ego and fear driven decisions. The need for “psychological safety” is high and this concept is central to any healthy vibrant organizational culture. W K
Safety Investigation and Analysis
With a focus on human behavior and decision making, we examine how safety incidents, accidents and near misses can become anchored within even the healthiest cultures. We explore solutions and recommendations to reclaiming an optimal safety culture. W K
Sales: Connecting with Clients, Customers and Prospects
Are you interested in increasing sales, customer service, or growing your client base? Learn how to improve your ability to engage people by understanding behaviors, tendencies, and personalities so that you can improve meeting the needs of all these groups. W
Self Leadership
For many years leadership focused on the role of the leader influencing others, with little attention given to the leader’s relationship with themself. As we continue to grow in our roles, and as people immersed in personal and professional communities, there is tremendous value in prioritizing our own self-development resulting in taking steps to further develop ourselves. W K
Silent Teams
When your teams go silent, you need help and the sooner the better. Silent teams are turning inward and withdrawing from environmental/organizational stressors. The immediate consequences can be turnover, diminished productivity, non-desirable behaviors, diminishing customer relations, etc. W K
Trust
What came first, a lack of trust or unhealthy organizations? It really doesn’t matter what came first; what matters is what are we going to do about the lack of trust in the organization to start to rebuild and heal the damage caused. W
Vulnerability
Vulnerability does not equal weakness. In fact, it is the strong that can be vulnerable. Learning how to manage vulnerability and opening up to others is an important step in building rapport and relationships. W K
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