"You Are The Best Facilitator I've Ever Seen!"

Why do our Core Team facilitators receive this comment so often from corporate CEOs, non-profit board members and heads of government agencies? We call it The PDI Difference:

Practical!

Our facilitators focus on results. We work with you to understand your key objectives and we carefully design the agenda and our facilitation methods to achieve your outcomes.

Dynamic!

Our facilitators receive rave reviews for their energetic facilitation style. Their dynamic style energizes the topic and engages the participants.

Interactive!

Our facilitators use interactive techniques to create buy-in. They engage people in constructive interaction to yield creative solutions that meet the critical needs of all participants.

To be invited to join our Core Team, facilitators must have the skills and experience that establish them as among the best in the industry. Here are just a few of their accolades and accomplishments:

Three are Certified Master Facilitators - the highest designation in the industry!
They are authors of The Facilitator Newsletter, The Secrets of Facilitation and Right Risk
They are leaders in regional facilitator networks

Collectively, they have trained thousands of facilitators throughout the US and around the world
One was awarded the Facilitator of the Year in 2003
Founder, the National Facilitator Database

To review brief biographies of our facilitators, simply click on their name to the left.

How Are We Different?

We set a higher standard for facilitation! The graphic below illustrates the difference between the Core Team from Leadership Strategies and traditional facilitators. In summary, we are:

Much more dynamic,
More results-focused,
More flexible with the process, and
More involved in creating solutions that work for you.

The result? You will have a unified team that is energetically committed to action, a process that comprehensively addresses the business need at hand and clear direction on how to implement deliverables and achieve results.

Creating Solutions - Rather than refraining from making suggestions we use specific techniques to offer participants unexplored solutions.

Ensuring Process Effectiveness - Rather than dictating the process, we solicit group involvement to ensure all critical issues are addressed.

Focus on Results - Rather than viewing the facilitated session interaction as the "end-all", we maintain a strict focus on the organizational objective and the buy-in required to achieve it.

Active Engagement - Rather than simply allowing the group to self-direct by assuming a "referee" type role, we fuel productive interaction by actively engaging participants, challenging assumptions, identifying conflicting views and building consensus.

OUR FACILITATION EXPERTISE

When choosing a facilitator, make sure the facilitator knows what a Leadership Strategies facilitator knows.

(These techniques and more are taught in The Effective Facilitator - our flagship facilitation training class.)

OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES

In addition to possessing extensive experience in a variety of industries, including information technology, business management, education, consulting, human resources, training and customer service, our team members embody our methodology, model our techniques and best practices, and live by our guiding principles.

We believe in:

Therefore we will:

Thorough preparation as the key to ensuring a successful project

Ensure that we have a full understanding of project objectives, deliverables, and agendas, prior to engagement by

interviewing all required prior to the engagement
debriefing with project sponsor at key points during and at the conclusion of the engagement

Maintaining superior client relationships

Be 100% engaged with clients during engagement

be available to answer questions during and immediately after session
check-in frequently and listen carefully to ensure we are meeting client needs

Demonstrate our caring, competence and commitment
Take responsibility for our mistakes

Maintaining a high standard of personal integrity and character

Conduct ourselves professionally in our office and at client sites
Project a positive attitude in all that we say and do
Ensure quality by paying attention to detail
Model what we teach

Honoring our stewardship with each client

Take responsibility for personal improvement and skill development
Spend client's money the way we would want it spent if it was our money
Remember that our time is the client's money and make every billable hour productive

Respecting and honoring each other

Foster an environment of teamwork
Value our diversity and celebrate our individual differences within our team and the organization

OUR HISTORY

A committed volunteer for church, civic and professional organizations, our company founder, Michael Wilkinson, consistently noted the waste of time and resources experienced due to lack of focus and leadership direction. He began to spend his spare time - while away from his full time job as a member of one of the nation's largest consulting firms, facilitating strategic planning retreats and professional development training sessions for the organizations he belonged to. Week-end successes soon led to requests for facilitation assistance from other organizations. Over time a week-end vocation evolved into a corporation. In 1992 we formed Leadership Strategies - The Facilitation Company. Since then, we have grown to 25 employees and core contractors, and a pool of over 150 Facilitators through our National Facilitator Database (NFDB). Over 14 years of successfully guiding Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, associations, and IT organizations, has made us a national leader in Professional Facilitation Services and Facilitation Training, and the largest provider of facilitation training in the east coast, with operations in Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. We are nationally recognized as:

Strategic planners for CDC and other government agencies
Founder and manager of the National Facilitator Database
Recipient of the 2003 Facilitator of the Year Award
Board members of the National Institute for Facilitation
Facilitator of choice for United Way agencies

OUR COMMITMENT TO COMMUNITY

Conceived out of a desire to serve we have built a staff of professionals with a true passion for facilitation and a genuine desire to serve others. We are pleased to be among thousands of companies who give back to their community. We have worked with numerous community-based and non-profit organizations in discounted or 50/50 donated service arrangements.

Some of the organizations benefiting from these arrangements include:

Atlanta Empowerment Zone
Atlanta Metropolitan Community Fund
Unity Churches of the Mid-Atlantic States
Atlanta Regional Commission
Georgia Academy for Children & Youth

United Way
Atlanta Public Schools
Families First
Solutions South Dekalb