Emotional intelligence
Happiness at work
Self-management
Talent
Time management
Turn your stress into energy
How is it that we communicate on a daily basis, often in quite challenging situations and with difficult people and yet we still find ourselves communicating poorly even to our own standards? We don’t seem to be able to say what we want to say, don’t get our message across, we hurt other people’s feelings and we lose their attention. Shouldn’t we have gotten it by now?
No worries, in our own practice we have discovered that people can become much more satisfied with their overall level of communication just by being conscious of 3 guiding principles on a daily basis: 1) you have your own preferred communication style, 2) other people have their own preferred communication style, 3) specific situations require specific communication styles.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. And yet, it is our experience that even the toughest of them all start beating around the bush, coming up with excuses, minimizing their message and breaking into a cold sweat when they need to deliver a tough message. In this 90’ session we’ve gathered the best tips and tricks from more than 30 years of combined experience of training in delivering tough messages. Together we have witnessed literally thousands of people deliver tough messages during role-plays with business actors. And at least as interesting, we have also asked thousands of people what their experiences are at the receiving end of the tough message. We’ve also had the opportunity to test and evaluate numerous tips and techniques with our participants in these lab-like situations. All the great and not so great things we’ve seen, we’ll share with you during this session.
Ever wondered why some messages stick and others don’t? If you’re hoping the answer is ‘because they’re true’, we’ve got to disappoint you. Urban legends travel the world and valuable health information based on facts often fail to reach the public.
If you’ve got an idea that you’d rather see live a long and fructuous life rather than dead, than this session is for you!
We will reveal the evidence-based research findings on the anatomy of ideas that ‘stick’ and explain sure-fire methods for making them even stickier. And what’s even better, we will share the most impactful tips and techniques with you that our trainers have gathered over more than 30 years of combined experience in delivering courses on presentations skills.
Whether you’re a project manager, sales person, teacher, manager, assistant or desperate parent of 3 teenagers, there are times you cannot move forward without getting others on board.
In this session you’ll learn 6 evidence-based influencing strategies. It’s important to keep in mind though that this session does not handle argumentation, management or politics. But it will get you further in daily life using psychological and often counter-intuitive principles that are not restricted to specific professions, personalities or cultures.
Ever experienced the thrill of learning a new language? It is nothing less than entering a new world and engaging with people in totally different and unexpected ways. Well, if this makes you smile with a hint of pleasant memories, you will be amazed at discovering the most beautiful language of all: the body language.
Mastering body language takes the habit of daily practice, but this 90’ session will get you started with the basic vocabulary, grammar and most common expressions.
Ah the complexity of feedback! Love and hate best describes most people’s attitude towards feedback. We know it works and yet we question if it does all the time. Good feedback, meaning the right timing, the right amount, the right message in the right tone can be transformational, inspiring, ass-kicking (but in a good way) and healing. But the wrong kind can destroy self-esteem and relationships faster than you can say ‘That’s not what I wanted to say’.
The goal of this 90’ session is to help you create the conditions in which feedback becomes normal for the giver as well as the receiver.
There are at least 2 good reasons for learning how to tell a good story. First, it will make you the world’s best mom and dad, uncle or aunt (this has an expiration date though). Second, for conveying corporate messages, it is extremely effective because our brains love the storytelling format. People forget good presentations and good speeches no matter how much work, love and your assistant’s sweat you put into it. But they never forget a good story.
This session provides you with the tools and exercises you are looking for to find your own stories and authentic storytelling style.
It’s never been more true than today: you need good people in order to achieve good business results. That’s why a leader’s ability to develop others has become one of the top 3 most commonly required competencies for managers today. Leaders are expected to keep their employees employable. Employability today means 4 things. You have good self-awareness, you have some degree of expertise, you have good technical and behavioral skills and you demonstrate a respectable degree of perspective on the job you’re doing and the business you are in. So the question you need to be asking yourself as manager today is a challenging one: ‘How employable will someone be after 5 years of working in my team?’. In this 90’ session managers will learn how to create the conditions for employability and develop others.
As a leader one your key roles is being a coach: helping your team members to become better at what they’re doing, learn new skills, solve problems, make better decisions and visible progress.
For most managers the above has sneaked or barged into their job description over the last few years. Surprisingly many of them can’t remember being asked about these super human powers during their job interview. And even of those young enough to recall, most never received any formal education in this field.
Now this may sound daunting. But if you arm yourself with the proven GROW technique and develop the right supporting habits, you will soon find yourself slipping into your role as coach. And be warned, you will find yourself enjoying it and finding highly rewarding, both on a personal as business level.
Was your last performance review or appraisal inspiring, thought-provoking and defining? It’s a question our trainers always ask their participants during training. And the number of them raising their hands? Let’s just put it this way: that could be better. Much better. And the research (Hay Insight, Watson Wyatt) confirms our sample results: only 29% feel their companies do a good job of identifying and rewarding top performers; only 27% feel there is a clear link between performance and pay; only 24% feel their companies manage poor performers so their work improves. Is it something managers need to do better? Or should their employees take more responsibility? Or is it something on a higher level? In this 90’ session we will focus on 3 things that are within the control of the manager and the employee: the role of the manager, the role of the employee and the daily, weekly and yearly habits that build up towards success.
Good personal development plans are exciting to design, to get started with and to implement. The action plan owner feels that he’s only a few attainable steps away from a goal that’s important to him. The future is looking bright. And the journey is worth it. But when our trainers ask participants with what they’ve had the most success in life: a) cooking from a recipe, 2) a start to run program or c) a personal development plan for building competencies at work, there always seems to be an inside joke that we’re not getting. In most organizations personal actions plans are just another formality stuffed away for 11,5 months in dusty virtual drawers. In this session participants will discover the secret of successful action planning, allowing them to improve any given competency with visible success in a period of three months. They will learn how to select goals that matter and are worth their efforts. And it gets better: they will discover 3 methods for developing competencies that actually don’t take up much of their time.
Get everything you want. Faster than you ever thought possible.
Good news folks! This one’s pretty straightforward: there are 6 proven ways to foster creativity in your team and organization and 6 ways to kill it. Brick on the head. Stone dead.
So there are 12 things that you can do to discover creative bright spots, create innovation spots and avoid full stops. These 12 evidence-based principles should set you up for success and get you a long way.
Are you one of those people who will fiercely debate with our trainers on the question if creativity can be learnt? Well, be our guest. Evidence-based research proves that you can’t turn someone into an artistic genius, but you can train almost anyone to come up with creative ideas at work.
Anyone who’s willing to develop a few simple habits and test out 1 or 2 MED’s can significantly improve his capacity to create. Curious already? Well just imagine what you’re capable of assuming you know just a little more than you do now, you master 1 or 2 extra techniques for getting the most out of what’s in your own head and picking other people’s brains and you’ve developed one new habit that helps you to see the world differently and be more explorative. It works like a charm for just about anyone.
Let’s be frank here for just a moment. Yes, with a little luck and just a few extra hours you can do all of the work that needs to be done in your department. Not to mention better. Sure you can, but we’re not getting into this argument with you.
That’s not why the company picked you to become a manager. Your role is now to accomplish far more than you could possibly hope to accomplish by yourself and develop others whilst you’re at it.
So if the reward is so high, why are so many managers not doing it? We think the answer’s simple. Because no one taught them how. Just like coaching, it requires some specific skills and techniques. But equipped with them, it’s certainly doable and very effective. And when you get the taste of it, you’ll never stop doing it!
‘My way or the high way’ hasn’t been the recommended leadership approach since the eighties. Instead, research and practice has proven that the most effective leaders are those whom can adapt their style to the needs of the person and the situation involved. In this respect, the situational leadership model continues to provide managers with practical guidelines on how to adapt their style effectively.
However the main challenge remains bringing the model in practice. This 90’ session will provide you with a realistic approach. After all, you do have a couple of other things to do besides adapting yourself to every person and situation like a superhuman yogi.
If it’s a real change, it’s going to get tough at some point. That’s a given. Otherwise it’s just a small adjustment or a situation that people can still try to ignore. So how to change things when change is hard? How to make the ‘switch’ from an old situation to a new? Are the pessimists right: are change projects doomed to fail? Not at all, people demonstrate enormous capability of making that switch on a daily basis all around us. They give up their bachelor life and move into settled life. They have babies and transform into responsible adults seemingly overnight. They become managers and suddenly understand what bottom and top line means.
In this 90’ session you will discover that successful changes follow a pattern. This pattern is based on the decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change.
It is really difficult to find out how to motivate someone. How to push their buttons. For one, people will give you mixed signals on what motivates them, give you dubious answers and often don’t have a clue themselves.
But luckily it is a lot easier to find out what’s really important to them. And we are motivated by what we find important. People will give you dozens of clues on what’s important to them in the choices they make, the answers they give you and often they’ll just tell you when you ask them.
This 90’ session will help you to understand motivation and how it works, give you 5 basic principles to remember and set you up for success.
Not all of your managers are managers because of their exceptional people management skills. Fact. That’s the reality in most organizations.
In today’s changing world developing employees and being able to capitalize on their strengths, are crucial management skills. Fact. That’s the reality for all organizations.
In this 90’ session we focus on the most important habits and activities of the people manager.
Research has proved that EQ is as important to professional success than IQ or even experience. In today’s world, it’s not longer enough to be good at what you do. Being able to work with others whilst getting the job done is increasingly more important in our interactive and intertwined working reality.
The good news is that the same research has also proven that EQ is a skill, meaning it can be learned.
This session provides you with the habits and MED’s that you need in order to increase your EQ significantly.
You can be happy no matter what. It’s not only the title of a book we recommend you to read. It’s also the key message of this session. Your situation might not always be sunny, but experts agree we can all learn how to bring more meaning and satisfaction into our lives and work.
In this session you will discover the most effective habits and MED’s to increase your positive moods and capitalize on what you’ve got going for you.
If there’s one common concern for employees regardless of profession or background, it’s there employability. Employability is a person’s capability of gaining and maintaining employment. And yet the research suggests that less than 30% of all employees is actively investing in their own employability.
So let’s start with investing in the most important asses that you’ve got: you. In this session you will discover the 4 areas that define your employability and 8 investments you can make in yourself per area.
World class golfer Tiger Woods admits that he was never good at hitting the ball out of the sand. So that basically left him with two choices during his training: focusing on closing the gap and training on hitting the ball out of the sand or focusing on becoming great in what he was already good at: making the ball land where he wanted it to so it never made the sand in the first place. He discovered that the second option gave him far more pleasure and by developing this talent he became one the world’s best golf players.
This example pretty much sums up the basic idea behind and the goals of this 90’ session: helping you to identify your talents and turn them into actual strengths.
Can you guess the one single most statement from participants that drive our time management trainers mad? ‘I already knew that’. Sure you did! Then why don’t you do it for *** sake?! Does this sound familiar, then this 90’ session is for you.
And no worries, you’re just human. There is just no way that you can apply all the time management techniques that you’ve collected in your life time whilst maintaining your sanity and enjoying your job at the same time. That’s why we’ve downsized your To Do list to 3 simple habits and MED’s: one yearly, one monthly and one daily.
What can you best compare your life with? To the ways of the sprinter (concentrated moments of effort and performance alternating sufficient moments of rest and relaxation) or to those of the marathon runner (sequence of activities that demand a certain energy, but insufficiently alternated with moments of rest and relaxation throughout the day)? When it comes to managing your energy effectively, we can learn a lot from the sprinter. When you make long hours without enough breaks in between, this will inevitably drain your energy. Take care of the basic source that enables you to work: your energy. Energy has 4 levels (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) and every level can systematically grow and be renewed. During this session you will discover how you can manage your energy more effectively by applying the same principles that top athletes use to optimize their energy level, but tailored to your professional life.
