Professional Development Training: Professional Skill Development

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally, understanding the logical connection between ideas. It is the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking, and is about being an active learner rather than a passive recipient of information. Critical thinkers rigorously question ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. They always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments, and findings represent the entire picture and are open to finding that they do not. Critical thinkers will identify, analyze, and solve problems systematically rather than by just intuition or instinct. This program will provide leaders with tools for structuring and streamlining how they analyze, solve problems, and make decisions. Participants will focus on using a critical thinking process with current business situations to focus on improved results.

Leadership development expands the capacity of individuals to perform in leadership roles within organizations.

Learn how to apply the Design Thinking methodology to create user-focused strategies for problem solving and solutions.

Our programs are designed to enable businesses to truly embed coaching as a discipline, encouraging team members to contribute the increased discretionary effort that every organization desires. We make sure our programs are shaped around some of the fundamental elements necessary for success. Those elements include:

• Understanding the relationship that coaches need to develop with their coaches to enable successful coaching and skills development.
• Finding the motivational ‘X’ factor that unlocks the individual's potential.
• Understanding the McGeechan 7 principles adopted by top coaches working with individuals and teams.
• Introducing the processes and techniques for coaches to use.
• Enabling your coaches to develop their own coaching toolbox so they can apply the right tool at the right time for an individual need.
• Ensuring your coaches are able to coach formally and informally, both in one-to-ones or on-the-spot.
• Checking for success and asking how it's feeling: this is just as important as embedding the skill.
• Finally, ensuring your staff are open to coaching and being coached. Feedback should come from anyone at any time, and this helps keeps performance levels high.

In today’s world, executives need to be able to think strategically and manage global issues with ease. This team leadership session will help leaders focus on critical leadership competencies, become more strategic in their thinking, improve their communication effectiveness, and build trust to help develop stronger relationships. This program explores what it takes to be an effective senior leader in today’s global economy, how to balance both functional and divisional roles and responsibilities, and how to build trust and foster a positive culture throughout the organization. Detailed working sessions will focus on issues specific to your company, especially around building strategic thinking and improving communication. Your consultant will also help the group focus on developing actionable solutions for moving forward.

Making presentations is a critical management skill, but one people most often fear. Participants will learn how to prepare for and deliver powerful presentations. The critical elements of effectively getting a point across to others are always the same: understanding your message, preparation, adapting to your audience, and keeping people involved and interested. Participants will leave this session understanding key concepts of how adults process information, and how to use these concepts for more effective presentations.

Executive coaching is designed to accelerate the performance of your business executives, senior managers and new management appointees. Our executive coaching supports and encourages your business’s leaders in a safe, exclusive environment where they are encouraged and developed to realize their potential and achieve their career goals along with grow the strength for business.

This course is designed to help an individual understand how to collect data to determine ROI so they can confirm the business case outcomes to their clients.

Leading virtual teams is a complex blend of skill, knowledge and technology. While many organizations choose to focus primarily on the technology, the reality is that 90% of a virtual teams success is dependent on dynamics rather than just tools. Virtual teams have the same challenges as face-to-face teams with the additional constraint of overcoming time and geography challenges. It is the leader’s responsibility to quickly, accurately and confidently diagnose the environment and take deliberate action to keep productivity on track. This requires a clear understanding of both team dynamics and the virtual environment. This fast-paced hard-hitting program is based on current research and industry best practices. It is designed to provide leaders with critical tools to help manage their virtual communities and to maximize results. Key topics include: principles and players, clarity of purpose, norms and relationships, communication, performance management, managing integration and change, team tools, resolving conflict, and leveraging.

It’s our belief that an organization is only as good as the effectiveness of its people. Recruiting, rewarding and retaining first class leaders and managers is vital to the growth and success of your business. Achieving your goals, even in challenging economic times, is the ultimate leadership challenge. But it’s doable. You can achieve them by developing a more skillful, situational, inclusive, supportive and flexible management style. We will work with you to establish the current skill base of the managers in your organization. We’ll also discuss which of the issues you’re facing need to be addressed through managers and the wider business. We’ll identify any learning needs and underlying skill gaps, and then deliver our recommended development program outline to you.  Post support and mentoring is used as a follow on.

Define functional and role-based leadership development programs across an organization to build the competencies most critical to the success of the business, customized to the company’s vision and strategic business plans.

In order to be effective with both internal and external clients, leaders need to be able to help others get to the root cause of their problems instead of just addressing observable symptoms. Explore ways to keep your clients focused on the big picture, and explore techniques for managing their changing deliverables. Consultants learn to meet the specific needs of their clients as well as manage the overall relationship.

Do you need to structure and streamline how you solve problems and make decisions? Use this innovative model to make sure you're on target. Filter out inappropriate solutions and gain "buy-in" every time. This program initially assesses current problem-solving styles, and then uses a unique matrix to uncover the most beneficial solutions. This process highlights the interdependencies of others involved in the decisions that we implement. Participants focus on ways to close the gap between actual and expected performance and then use this process with current business situations to focus on results and benefits.

This course is designed to help team leaders to methodically intake requests from stakeholders working in both Agile and/or PMI environments so they can consistently deliver the business value outcomes requested by their stakeholders.  They learn as a team on how to use common language and concepts.  When a team is agile, a project comes together seamlessly and with less conflict.

Strategic Planning is a disciplined effort that produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, who it serves, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. This program will help leaders set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organization’s direction in response to a changing environment.

This program is aimed at developing the communication skills to be able to communicate with the different personality types. For example; for a Technical person to be able to communicate with a non-technical audience and vice versa. The Effective Communication Program is aimed to help overcome a current or ongoing business challenge by understanding how to communicate more effectively.  “IT” isn’t just your networking group these days. More of your business units are involved in future infrastructure and network planning. This requires open lines of communication between your people.  This course will help coach the individual to become a more effective communicator with any type of personality and understand how to better present to a broader audience.   In this program, you will learn, apply and practice the essential skills needed to be perceived by others as effective communicators.

Storytelling is the process painting a picture with words, so that the listener understands and can see what the story is telling them in relation to the subject being discussed. It is useful in business when selling an idea, a concept a product or service to a leader, manager, member of staff or a customer.  The concept is the same. It is a skill that requires practice to become an expert in execution. The Story should always have the 4 Ps included. The People, Place, Plot and Purpose all are central to the word painting and ensuring the listener understands what the story is showing.

This half-day course is designed for end users, managers, directors and executive level personnel to give them a better understanding of how to use Webex tools.