In This Issue For Leaders: Low Morale - The Toughest Challenge for a CEO For Facilitators: Facilitator or Speaker - There's A Difference? For Consultants and IT Professionals: Why Are You Better? For Strategic Planners: Prioritizing Strategies Client Success Story: The Atlanta Youth Academy Would you like to get published? Save $1150 on The Effective Facilitator Course To celebrate the opening of our newest training site, we're offering a "March Madness" special on The Effective Facilitator class scheduled for metro LA. Save $1150 when you and a friend register for the course by March 5, 2004. You must mention the Jan- Feb Newsletter to receive the special price. Click here for all the details. Upcoming Classes The Effective Facilitator Jan 12-14 Dallas Jan 26-28 Atlanta Feb 2-3 Seattle Feb 9-11 Washington DC Feb 23-25 Atlanta Mar 15-17 Chicago NEW! Mar 22-24 Metro LA Mar 29-31 Atlanta Apr 19-21 Dallas Apr 26-28 Atlanta Facilitating IT Sessions Apr 1 Atlanta Mar 18 Chicago Apr 22 Dallas Advanced Facilitation Mar 2-3 Atlanta The Effective Consultant Feb 2-4 Atlanta Mar 8-10 Dallas Strategic Planning Apr 5-6 Atlanta The 2004 Public Course Schedule is available! Click here to register online now for a public class or call us at 1.800.824.2850 about a private on-site class! Leadership Strategies is a national leader in meeting facilitation, facilitator training, consulting skills, leadership skills and soft skills training for information technology professionals.

Greetings! Welcome back to a wonderful new year! There's lots of news to report, so let's jump right in! The Maximizer: We are proud to announce that we have made some enhancements to our flagship course, The Effective Facilitator. Introducing The Maximizer, a new program designed to help you maximize all the skills you learned in the course. This twelve-month email service sends a monthly reminder of one of the 10 Principles of Facilitation directly to your Inbox. Plus, we include two additional special tips to round out the year. The ongoing reminders reinforce the key techniques you learned so they easily become second nature. Now every meeting you facilitate will be both productive and effective. The Maximizer is being added to The Effective Facilitator course beginning January 2004. If you've already taken the course and want to receive The Maximizer, you can sign up for the service too. For pricing and other questions, call us at 800-824-2850. NEW! West Coast Training Office For our friends out West, we're now offering The Effective Facilitator in metro LA. The first class is March 22-24. Save $1150 when you and a friend register by March 5. You must mention the Jan-Feb Newsletter to receive the special price. Click here for the details of the special. Call us at 800-824-2850 or click here for the full class schedule. "California Here We Come!" Training 2004 Conference and Expo The Training 2004 Training Conference and Expo focuses on the latest innovations in training and development, blended learning, OD, etc. It's scheduled for March 1-3 in Atlanta. We'll be in Booth #406. Stop by and meet the team! Best Practice Tip for this Issue: Adjust to Lull Times Lull times occur naturally throughout a session, particularly before and after lunch and at the end of the day. During lull times, try to schedule small group breakouts, team building activities, or other processes requiring movement. To keep the energy high, avoid lecture/monologues, reading, or individual exercises. For more ideas about how to keep your sessions lively, consider our three-day course The Effective Facilitator. Click here for more details or call 800-824-2850. For Leaders: Low Morale - The Toughest Challenge for a CEO Companies go through periods of high stress caused by growth, transition, or financial troubles. Stress leads to low morale, which is one of the most insidious problems to isolate and cure. The CEO must... Click here to continue For Facilitators: Facilitator or Speaker - There's A Difference? Facilitating a group session and addressing a group as a professional speaker are competencies applied to achieve different ends. Often clients are unclear... Click here to continue For Consultants and IT Professionals: Why Are You Better? Build your "Preference Value" to beat your competition. What is your Preference Value? That is, what makes you unique and better than your competition? Can you quickly articulate... Click here to continue For Strategic Planners: Prioritizing Strategies If you are a veteran of strategic planning, you know that most planning efforts result in more strategies than you can possibly implement at once. Most organizations would be fortunate to... Click here to continue Client Success Story: The Atlanta Youth Academy Founded in 1997, the Atlanta Youth Academy (AYA) has one core mission - "to provide quality, Christian education for... Click here to continue Would you like to get published? Do you have proven strategies on Facilitation, Leadership, IT/Consulting or Strategic Planning that you would like to share in an upcoming newsletter issue? We'd love to hear from you. Each article should be 750-1,000 words. Include your contact information and a 30- to 60-word byline. Click here to email your articles to us.

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