In This Issue For Facilitators: Are You a Masterful Meeting Participant? For Leaders: Immature Leaders Go Off Like Milk For Consultants and IT Professionals: Reviewing Process Redesigns: A Lesson from the Field For Strategic Planners: Making Sure the Plan is Actionable Client Success Story: PSC Inc. The PDI Difference Spotlight: National Facilitator Database Would you like to get published? This Issue's Special: 10% off Strategic Planning Assessment Review Tired of focusing time and effort on your strategic plan - only to have it end up as a paperweight or doorstop? When was the last time you actually read - and implemented - the steps in your strategic plan? Ensure that your plan still makes sense given current market conditions. Call Leadership Strategies and ask for a Strategic Plan Assessment. We'll review the 20 Essentials of a Successful Strategic Plan, provide a written analysis of its strengths, and identify key areas for improvement. You must mention the March/April newsletter to receive this 10% discount! Upcoming Classes The Effective Facilitator 4-Day Apr 24-27 Atlanta May 8-11 Washington DC Streamlined 3-Day Mar 6-8 Chicago Mar 20-22 Los Angeles Mar 27-29 Atlantav Apr 3-5 Dallas May 15-17 Atlanta May 23-25 Denver Advanced Facilitation* May 18-19 Atlanta Facilitating IT Sessions* Apr 28 Atlanta Facilitator Certification* Mar 30-31 Atlanta Facilitation For Trainers Jun 26-28 Atlanta Masterful Meetings Jun 19-20 Atlanta The Effective Consultant May 15-17 Chicago Strategic Planning Aug 14-15 Atlanta From Management to Leadership Oct 16-18 Atlanta Secrets to Facilitating Strategy for Governments & Non Profits Nov 7-9 Atlanta See the entire Public Class Schedule * Prerequisite Required 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! Leadership Strategies is proud to present two new courses for 2006! Masterful Meetings and Facilitation for Trainers have been developed to meet our client's increased demand for specialized training. When developing your strategic plan, would it be helpful if the plan resulted in practical strategies designed to achieve specific measurable outcomes key to your success? If your answer is yes, check out the "Making Sure the Plan is Actionable" article. In “Immature Leaders Go Off Like Milk”, Estienne DeBeer provides insights on what it means to be a mature leader in today’s workplace and demonstrates how mature leaders know when to lead, when to follow and when to get out of the way. For consultants and IT professionals, reviewing process flows can be a painful process and especially mind-numbing when several are done in a row. I recently had the pleasure of working with a local affiliate of a leading non-profit organization. The "Reviewing Process Designs" article explores how to keep the review team engaged during the process and how to ensure you walk away with a quality result. If you’ve ever been charged with leveraging your company’s presence in the marketplace you’ll want to read Rhone Lee’s article in the client success section: “Designing a Workable Strategic Plan”. Rhone shares how PSC shifted its corporate thinking to maintain their cutting edge in defining new markets for their products. Seeking to improve your facilitation skills? Leadership Strategies is offering a 10% discount to MACN and MAFN members who register for The Effective Facilitator course offered in Washington DC May 8-11th. Give us a call and find out how we can do the same for your organization. As always our hope is that this newsletter will provide you with some real jewels you can adopt immediately in advancing your leadership and facilitation. Michael Michael Wilkinson Managing Director, LSI Best Practice Tip for this Issue: Understanding Dysfunctional Behavior Dysfunctional behavior takes many forms in a facilitated session. Anything from simple lack of participation to violation of the ground rules can signal dysfunction, and must be addressed quickly and decisively by the facilitator. Skilled facilitators recognize that dysfunctional behavior is a symptom that masks the real issue, which is typically a problem with the information generated by the session (the content), the way in which the session is being run (the process), or some outside factor (unrelated to the session). Dysfunctional behavior tends to escalate over time, so the best strategy for addressing dysfunctional behavior is to prevent it in the first place. To learn more about managing dysfunctional behavior, register for The Effective Facilitator course! For more details, call (800) 824- 2850. For Facilitators: Are You a Masterful Meeting Participant? Are you a masterful meeting participant? In my recently released book, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, I offer the following definition of a masterful meeting: >A masterful meeting is a well-prepared, skillfully- executed, results-oriented meeting with a timely start, a decisive close, and a clear follow-up plan. Just as the meeting leader has a specific role in creating masterful meetings, meeting participants have a specific role as well. To determine if you are a masterful meeting participant, answer the following questions based on how you behave ... Click here to continue For Leaders: Immature Leaders Go Off Like Milk You find them in all spheres of society – in cubicles, on the shop floor, on the sports field, in the marching crowd of protesters, as huge as in the CEO-chair, yet as small as on the nursery school playground. They are the minority group of people impacting on the majority of society – whether positive or negative – but they are of one breed: the leaders. However, the real leaders – those who make it to be examples in the business bestsellers – have one particular commonality that is easy to spot... Click here to continue For Consultants and IT Professionals: Reviewing Process Redesigns: A Lesson from the Field I recently had the pleasure of working with a local affiliate of a leading non-profit organization seeking to create a sustained, long-term transformation in the way it operated. Process redesign was a key element to the work. However, reviewing process flows can be a painful process and especially mind-numbing when... Click here to continue For Strategic Planners: Making Sure the Plan is Actionable All too often strategic planning processes are high- level, pie-in-the-sky exercises that don’t result in specific strategies that are tied closely to important, measurable outcomes. When developing your strategic plan, we believe it is important for the plan to produce practical strategies designed to achieve specific measurable outcomes key to your success. The first step in making the plan actionable is... Click here to continue Client Success Story: PSC Inc. - Designing a Workable Strategic Plan Picture this. Your corporation brings a new CEO on board. The Board of Directors wants to know how this will affect the company’s bottom line. All eyes look toward you to create a strategic venue that successfully launches this new venture and leverages your company’s presence in the marketplace... Click here to continue The PDI Difference PDI stands for Practical/Dynamic/Interactive. It's what sets Leadership Strategies above the rest. The PDI Difference can be seen in every aspect of what we do. Practical Methods that Produce Results: We use proven methods and techniques in both our training classes and our facilitated sessions. Each and every session is carefully planned and executed with precision to ensure consistent results that apply to real-life situations - and produce measurable results. Dynamic Energy that Keeps You Engaged: Our facilitators operate on "Level 3" energy so participants are engaged from beginning to end. No doodling in our sessions! We also use a wide variety of techniques to keep the interest high and be sure everyone contributes their best ideas. Interactive - Proven Methods for Successful Integration and Application: In our facilitated sessions, our trained facilitators set people up in teams to enhance collaboration and ideas that work from every angle. In our training sessions, it's "practice, practice, practice" so participants learn by doing it themselves, by critiquing others in the class, and receiving immediate feedback from the instructor. Learn more about The PDI Difference Spotlight: National Facilitator Database Are you looking for a facilitator for an upcoming session, and don't have a clue where to start? Or, maybe you're a facilitator with great skills and experience looking for clients. In either case, we can help. The National Facilitator Database does both. For details, click here. NFDB.com is managed by Leadership Strategies. If you have any questions or would like to speak with one of our Client Relationship Managers, you can call 800-824-2850. Or, click here to email your questions. 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.

:: email us :: visit our site phone: 800-824-2850