Comprehensive training for those who create your culture.
Effective leaders do two things well. First, they take their organization’s goals seriously and have an instinct for results. Second, they know how to build people and create a workplace culture that brings out the best in employees. LeadSmart is a thorough introduction to the mindset and tools that can create this kind of leader.
It doesn’t take a superhero personality to pull this off. When you have ordinary people committed to these leadership best practices, you’re in a good place to build a workplace culture where high productivity and high employee engagement become the norm. LeadSmart workshops are designed for:
Anyone in leadership no matter what the industry. Wherever people lead people.
Organizations that want to enable positive change by creating shared values, practices, and expectations
As an investment in promising future leaders
Group training is one of the best ways to get everyone in your organization oriented in a new direction. As your team engages the same content and discusses important issues together, they’re establishing common ground that will serve your organization moving forward. LeadSmart is built around considerable group interaction, small-group discussion, and real-world application. I train with a consulting mindset and attendees are actively challenged to think critically about themselves, their workplace, and how the content applies to their immediate situation.
Day 1 - The Leadership Mindset
All effective leadership starts with the leader. Do they understand the impact they have on others? Do they know how to use their organizational power responsibly? Do they understand their role in creating a positive and professional workplace? Are they approachable and can they lead through positive workplace relationships? Do they embrace their own professional growth as a leader? These are crucial questions and how a leader answers them will have a direct impact on their effectiveness.
The leader’s role in creating high morale
Self-awareness and personal growth for leaders
Managing your power differential
Growing your adaptive skills
The top 15 leadership skills
Building relationships through effective one-on-one meetings
Day 2 - Behavior Styles and the Art of Personal Growth
This workshop is fun, enlightening, and serious business. How often have differences in communication style, conflict style, response to stress, and other personal differences led to misunderstandings, eroded trust, and kept teams from working well together? This workshop will take a comprehensive look at the four basic behavior styles and the needs, wants, and expectations they each bring to the workplace. Aside from gaining insight into your co-workers, the greatest takeaway might just be developing a plan for your own growth.
Discovering the unique way you see the world and why it’s valuable
Understanding and appreciating how others see the world
Expanding your emotional awareness
Improving communication
Gaining insight into your stress reaction and conflict style
Creating your own action plan for growth
Day 3 - Tactical Leadership
Your long-term strategy as a leader is always the same: to help your employees do excellent work and build high morale at the same time. These are not mutually exclusive…but how do you do it? That’s the tactical question and the one we’ll answer in this workshop. You’d be surprised at how many everyday opportunities exist to engage and empower employees while you set high expectations for professionalism. Be the leader everyone wants to work for.
Understanding the power of your position
How to not blow up your org chart
Being an information curator
Managing employee complaints
Empowering your team through shared decision-making
Creating a culture of reliability
Combating favoritism and triangulation
Converting mistakes into team-building opportunities
Day 4 - Coaching Employee Performance
Research is clear: managers who approach their job as a “coach” instead of a “boss” are in a far better position to create a workplace that scores high in productivity and employee engagement. The litmus test of a good coach is the ability to give excellent corrective feedback. This is feedback that’s clear, direct, actionable, and leaves the employee with greater confidence in their ability to do their job and greater trust and respect for you, their supervisor. We’ll cover this and other essential performance management skills in this important leadership workshop.
Coach vs boss: understanding the big picture
What neuroscience teaches us about feedback
Employee recognition and appreciation: an essential leadership skill
Managing yourself in confrontation
The 12 steps of effective employee coaching
Giving excellent corrective feedback
Practice, lots of practice…
Day 5 - Effective Meetings and Changing Your Culture
Here are two useful insights. First, an organization’s meeting culture is a direct reflection of its overall culture, good or bad. Second, you can “reverse-engineer” a positive workplace culture by merely improving your meetings. This workshop begins with how to have really great meetings but then transitions to the larger topics of organizational change itself and how effective leadership makes this happen. Along the way, we’ll tie together the elements of the previous workshops so you know how they each contribute to long-term sustainability.
Establishing goals, agendas, and meeting structure
Growing your authority as a meeting facilitator
How to encourage high participation
Practical facilitation skills
Entropy and homeostasis: the keys to understanding organizational change
How to lead culture change in your organization
Creating your own sustainability pathway
Each workshop focuses on an essential area of organizational leadership. Custom options are available.
What’s Included
Onsite training
Each of these workshops includes approximately 7 hours of highly interactive, face-to-face training at your facility. Multi-day training is usually scheduled once a week but I can accommodate whatever you need.Workshop materials
Materials for each workshop will be sent ahead of time for you to print.Cohort study guide (optional)
One of the best ways to increase learning is through weekly cohort small-group discussions held in between the large-group sessions. Think brown bag lunch sessions or whatever is convenient for you. You organize the groups and I’ll provide the materials.My involvement throughout the process
I want to see you succeed so I’ll walk with you every step of the way to ensure that your training efforts are met with maximum results. Before the training begins I’ll help with promotion and sponsorship and after it’s over implementation and how you can continue to retool your leadership culture.
“Lee provided a series of leadership development classes for our supervisors and managers. The feedback was uniformly positive, and we found the material practical and relevant. The experience was highly engaging and had a good mix of content, questions, and group discussion. Lee is a dynamic facilitator and we would look forward to working with him again.”