When you plan your next annual employee development day, consider including one or more of these sessions into your agenda.
Each of these workshops:
- Are suitable for all employees. Check out my leadership topics if that’s the audience.
- Can be delivered in a time slot that fits with your requirements, typically about an hour.
- Focus on behavior change. Employees don’t care about theory and concepts. They want practical application.
- Are interactive. This promotes learning because it engages learners.
After delivering thousands of these during the past 24+ years, I’m comfortable saying these are easily the most popular professional development topics I deliver.
Boost: Get the Most Out of Each Day
Time management is about doing the right things and doing them efficiently. Identify your most important values and goals, do the tasks that support them, and overcome the obstacles that keep you from staying on track. Learn how to say “No,” beat procrastination, and deal with daily interruptions. Experience the victory of achieving your goals.
Clear Connections: Understanding Through Better Communication
Communication succeeds when the message you intend is what the receiver understands. This rarely happens because senders and receivers don’t fulfill essential responsibilities. There are also many barriers that you need to anticipate and overcome. Learn how to master each step in the communication process so that you better understand and are better understood.
Eye Rolls and Shoulder Shrugs: Get Nonverbal Communication Right
Whether you are in the office, at home, or on the highway; there’s a lot of communication happening, even when nobody is talking. Body language is a common way to convey meaning. Unfortunately, it’s also commonly misunderstood. In this session you’ll learn how to send the right messages with your body language and also what you should do when you notice others’ nonverbals.
Ride the Change Wave: Navigate Workplace Transitions
Our lives are a whirlwind of change. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just make everything stand still until you can catch your breath? We know that’s not possible. What you can do is to be purposeful in how you respond to changes so that you stay productive, keep your stress levels in check, and maybe even discover the opportunities created by the change so you can take advantage of them.
Bounce: Be Resilient
Life is full of setbacks. Your computer crashes. You don’t get a promotion you wanted. You wake up with a cold on a busy day. Resilience is your ability to deal with the inevitable bumps in the road. The trick is to learn how to bend without breaking so that when bad stuff does happen you won’t be knocked off your game as hard or for as long.
Work It Out: Resolving Team Conflict
You can’t have a workplace filled with employees who all have different goals, styles, and preferences and not expect some conflict. Disagreements and irritations are almost certain. The best employees are able to work through their differences in a manner that’s direct, honest, and respectful. In this session you’ll learn what you can do when coworkers get on your nerves and you want things to be different.
Decisiveness: Make Better Decisions Faster
Each day is filled with decisions. To do it well, you need to recognize that decision-making is a process and be able to skillfully do each step. There are two things working against you: Risk aversion and cognitive traps. Learn what these are and how to successively navigate your way through them so that you can become a better decision maker.
Chill: Stay Cool In Stressful Situations
Work can be stressful. That doesn’t mean you need to be stressed. There are strategies for managing stress: Change your thinking, solve the problem, and use coping skills. In this session, you’ll learn to identify your stress triggers, common reactions, and preferred stress management strategies. You will also walk away with a specific plan for how you’ll better deal with life’s daily stressors.
Bridge the Gap: Capitalize on Generational Differences
There are plenty of differences that exist within your work group that can lead to problems or opportunities. You’ve probably heard someone say that generational differences are a major source of the problems. Instead of focusing on each generation’s perceived deficits, the trick is to blend the unique characteristics each generation contributes. Learn what these are and how to use them to create a stronger, more effective team.
Team Players: Be That Person Others Want on Their Teams
We know there are people we like to work with and those we don’t. We may even go so far as to label people as team players (or not). Big labels aren’t helpful. Knowing and practicing specific behaviors is helpful. In this session you’ll learn the characteristics of an effective team member so you can decide what you might do to be a better collaborator.
Influence: Lead Without the Title
Leadership isn’t about having a title, it’s about making things happen when you need the help of others. If you don’t have the title “boss,” people don’t have to say yes to your requests, unless they want to. You can have more influence at work by using a few strategies that will help others want to follow your lead. After this session, you’ll be ready to make a stronger impact in your workplace.
Invest in Your Employees
Anything listed on this page can be combined or customized to fit your needs. If there’s a specific topic you don’t see, just ask. If what you want has to do with personal or leadership effectiveness, chances are we can deliver it for you.
Also, the format can change too. If you’re interested in seeing the behavior change but want to explore how to achieve it through a webinar format or online learning options, let us know.
While these sessions work well for large groups, they work just as well for a single team or department. Consider adding it on to or replacing altogether an upcoming staff meeting.
Reach out to let us know what you are looking for and we’ll send a proposal. We typically need to know:
- When, where and how many employees
- What kind of work the participants do
- What your goals are for the training, i.e, what behaviors do you want employees to change.