Learning Bursts
Essential training in a condensed format.
Today’s fast-paced work environment requires you to find efficient ways develop your career skills. Our 30 to 120 minute trainings are designed to provide you with fundamental tools and techniques in a shorter time.
Click on the + sign for more details on the available Learning Bursts below.
Influential Communication
Distinctive Leadership
Liberating Structures
Masterful Presentations
Courageous Conversation
Project Planning and Execution
Neuroscience and Stress Management
How to Build a Better Team
How to Mastermind
Change Management
The 6 Ps of Preparation
Starting with Impact
Herding Cats
The Secret of the Starting Question
Influential Communication
Influential and Inspirational Communication
This course is a high-level review designed for leaders to strengthen their ability to communicate effectively with a wide variety of stakeholders. Whether the leader has positional authority or must influence without authority, the skills in this course will enable them to better develop verbal and non-verbal messages that influence and inspire others.
- A review of the model of communication which shows intent vs. interpretation
- Accompanied a framework for practical application in communication inside and outside of work.
- The session will provide a breakout session to practice and apply what is learned
Distinctive Leadership
Distinctive Leadership: Inspiring Others to Exceptional Performance
This course will equip you with the insights and tools you need to address different mindsets that will help you produce impact on a personal level, for greater team impact, and from an enterprise perspective. Content is focused on use of the 4 mindsets:
- Growth mindset– Advanced learning is to try new things and expect to fail. Failure creates growth.
- Inclusive mindset– How can we create a business benefit by thinking about inclusivity and multiple points of view?
- Collaboration mindset– Why am I doing things myself when I can get help from others?
- Enterprise mindset– What does it look like when we challenge the enterprise to go beyond?
Liberating Structures
Leveraging Liberating Structures for Creative Problem Solving
In this experiential workshop, you’ll receive an overview and gain hands-on experience of Liberating Structures, a field-tested, results-focused collection of engagement structures which includes everyone in shaping the future.
Workshop Objectives:
- Increase understanding of Liberating Structures as a collection of problem-solving and engagement techniques.
- Gain hands-on experience of two of the 33+ Liberating Structures, including an exploration of how to apply them in your own work.
Masterful Presentations
Masterful Presentations – Insights, Not Data!
In this course, you’ll learn how to create visual support for your message.
Core Content:
- Insights, not Data!
- Bringing the data to life and making it’s hidden information accessible to your audience.
- Avoid visual noise.
- Finding and removing distractions from your message.
- Virtual is VISUAL.
- Maximizing the visual processing power of the brain to improve comprehension.
- Images, graphs and icons, “Oh, my”
- Choosing the right visual format that best supports your message.
Courageous Conversation
Courageous Conversations
This course will equip you with the insights and tools you need to address expectation gaps, establish boundaries, implement meaningful accountability, reveal problems, and resolve issues and intervene effectively. The approaches employed include:
- Brief introduction by senior leadership to kick things off
- Platform Polling
- Small Group Scenario discussion (Virtual Breakout Rooms)
- We will set up the Zoom for this event.
- An additional moderator will be assisting the lead facilitator since this will likely be a large group.
Project Planning and Execution
Project Planning and Execution
Effectively developing a clear, realistic project plan is critical to the degree of project success. The plan starts building collaboration and teamwork, so every team member understands their project role. A key advantage of the plan is to establish accountability and delegates responsibility to complete assigned tasks.
This course provides a pragmatic approach to effectively organizing a project answering the questions: What, Who, When, Where and How.
- What are the major project phases, actions and deliverables?
- Who is responsible for each tasks?
- When is each task required to be completed?
- Where will the project deliverables be stored?
- How will the project be managed and reported to management?
Neuroscience and Stress Management
Neuroscience and Stress Management
When we are stressed, the emotional part of our brain highjacks our thinking brain. We are wired to fight, flight, or flee. In this burst you will gain a basic understanding of how your brain reacts to stress and learn techniques to manage your stress reactions. You’ll be exposed four stress management strategies, and five mindfulness techniques so you can create your own plan to manage stressful situations effectively.
How to Build a Better Team
How to Build a Better Team
Building better teams requires knowledge and skills about team dynamics. In this course leaders learn how to cultivate the five key qualities of the Better Teams™ Model and Tuckman’s Phases of a Team to assess and develop your teams. Learners walk away with several tools, activities, and resources they can use immediately to build teams that are happy and high-performing.
How to Mastermind
How to Mastermind
A Mastermind Group is a carefully selected peer group who meets on a regular basis with the intent to help each other grow by:
- Supporting and encouraging each other,
- Giving and receiving tough feedback, and,
- Sharing resources and advice.
In this learning burst, you will learn the benefits of masterminding and how to structure a successful mastermind session. You will also experience a mini-mastermind so you will be able to go implement these within your own team or organization.
Change Management
Change Management
Change and uncertainty are our new normal. Leaders need to understand how their team members work through change so they can coach them appropriately. In this learning burst, you will learn about the Four Phases of Change, how to identify which phase a person is in, and how to support them to move into the next phase. The phases include Denial, Resistance, Exploration and Commitment. You will learn one simple activity to help your team for each area of the model.
The 6 Ps of Preparation
The 6 Ps of Preparation
Presented by Leadership Strategies
It would surprise many people to learn how much better meetings could be if meeting leaders just took the time to prepare. As a result of this session, participants will:
- The 6 Ps of Preparation: an effective, efficient, and comprehensive method to prepare for meetings and important group sessions.
- Know the critical questions to ask in preparation.
- Be able to use purpose and product to eliminate unnecessary meetings.
Duration: Customized for your organization – 30, 60, 90, or 120 minutes.
Starting with Impact
Starting with Impact
Presented by Leadership Strategies
The start of any group session is critical. Many participants mentally drop out if the meeting leader doesn’t capture their hearts and minds in the first few minutes. As a result of this session, participants will:
- Understand the four keys to starting a meeting or group session with impact.
- Know the key strategy for getting participants excited about participating.
- Have strategies for empowering and involving people right from the beginning.
Duration: Customized for your organization – 60, 90, or 120 minutes.
Herding Cats
Herding Cats: Keeping a Group Focused
Presented by Leadership Strategies
Trying to keep the participants in a meeting focused and productive can sometimes feel like herding cats. As a result of this session, participants will:
- Be able to use four key strategies for keeping a group focused and productive during meetings and group sessions.
Duration: 60 minutes.
The Secret of the Starting Question
The Secret of the Starting Question
Presented by Leadership Strategies
Have you ever asked a question and gotten complete silence? Most meeting leaders don’t know, that more than likely, they got silence because of the way they asked the question. As a result of this session, participants will:
- Be able to employ the secret of the starting question to help them ask better questions to virtually ensure they never get that dreaded silence.
Duration: Customized for your organization – 60, 90, or 120 minutes.
Learning Bursts are an opportunity to gain a short introduction to a concept. However, to get the complete benefits of a full course, consider these options:
The Effective Facilitator
Our flagship course consists of 4 days of in-person or online training. It covers the 10 principles of facilitation, more than 100 techniques, and includes 6 exercises culminating a video-taped practice session.
You’ll gain the tools and techniques to: create a vision that motivates people to action, engage groups in developing solutions and generate ownership that leads to results. You’ll also learn a comprehensive approach top facilitators use to prepare for success, get a session started, focus the group, understand the power of the pen, gather information, manage dysfunction, build consensus, maintain high energy, close the session, and construct customized agendas.
Discover How To:
- Get groups to develop and agree upon workable, realistic plans or solutions to issues.
- Create a vision that motivates people to action.
- Engage groups in developing solutions and generate ownership that leads to results.
- Utilize a comprehensive approach used by top facilitators– from getting a session started, to focusing the group, to managing dysfunction, to closing the session.
- And much more!
*PMI Registered Education Provider (R.E.P) Activity: Up to 24 PDUs
Learn More and Register Contact Us about a Private Class
The Facilitative Leader
The Facilitative Leader is for individuals who want to improve their leadership skills and move to the next level in their organization. Create an action plan that uses facilitation principles to engage and inspire others to drive results. The course can be done consecutively in 3-4 days or in ½ day modules listed below and can event be delivered virtually in 2-hour segments over time and is also available in a virtual format. You can select all or just a few, depending on your needs:
- The 3 Levels of Leadership
- Facilitating Communication
- Facilitating and Coaching others
- Facilitation Success in Your Team
- Facilitating Consensus
- Strategic planning and thinking
- Leading Masterful Meetings 1
- Leading Masterful Meetings 2
Facilitating Masterful Meetings
Facilitating Masterful Meetings is a convenient two-day course designed to help you improve your daily meetings with smart (and practical) meeting facilitation skills and techniques. This course also expands on how to create a meeting “revolution” inside your organization to help others stop the common problems perpetuated in most meetings – late starts, unproductive time misused, discussions without purpose, and group dysfunction – all culprits of wasted resources and money. You will walk away with a transformed vision of effective meetings plus the necessary tools to equip you in your everyday meetings.
Learn More and Register Contact Us about a Private Class
The Facilitative Consultant
Are you an internal or external consultant, or do you use a consultative style in your work? The Facilitative Consultant is a dynamic, interactive course that builds critical skills by using a highly-interactive case study approach. This course outlines a comprehensive framework for all stages of the consulting process from defining client needs to running a project to reviewing results. The Facilitative Consultant focuses on relationship management, allowing you to increase your credibility and trust with clients, enhance your communication effectiveness and better manage expectations. This team-based course offers you the opportunity to solve a real-life client problem by applying your new skills.
Learn More and Register Contact Us about a Private Class
The Engaging Trainer
Designed for trainers and instructors, this three-day course equips you with a full toolbox of strategies for engaging participants in dynamic and interactive training segments. Trainers and instructors will be able to design and employ an approach that engages ANY audience and makes training really stick. Special Feature: Bring a module from your own class to get feedback and recommendations for transforming it using the techniques from The Engaging Trainer! (can be done in shorter customized versions)
