Corporate Training Materials

Great companies value employee training and development. Take your team to the next level with corporate training materials that will improve vital business skills like communication and negotiation.

6
feb
2

Youngest Workers Need This

Posted by Corporate Training Materials, HR TrainingNo Comments

written by Lynne Waymon

A sense of community at work.  Yet, according to researcher Sara Konrath, they haven’t yet developed the skills that will help them build lasting relationships. She reports

“. . . a 40% drop in empathy among college students in the

past 20 years, as measured by standard psychological tests.”

What’s the evidence?

Konrath is with the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.  She collated data on this from 72 studies.  She attributes the decline in empathy to young people being so digitally-oriented that they haven’t developed experience in building face-to-face relationships.

“Taking on another person’s thoughts and identifying with their emotions are two habits at the core of empathy. Empathy is a delicate cocktail, blending assorted elements of inborn aptitude, social conditioning, personal history, and practice and motivation. The ability to empathize is like a muscle – it’s capable of growth.”

What does that mean for people in Training & Development?

That “soft skills,” often relegated to last place in the training calendar (and budget!) must come front and center.   It means that teaching practical relationship building skills can have a positive effect on your employee engagement scores and productivity.

Can people really be taught to empathize, engage, connect?

Yes. We’ve seen it happen with our clients, whose employees are in many different functional roles.   Relationships don’t just happen. The ability to trust, engage in give and take, appreciate each other, celebrate and commiserate together, ask good questions, listen, collaborate, and express liking and be likable . . . are all LEARNED skills.

What’s the next step?

Review your programs in Orientation, Mentoring, Diversity, Leadership, Business Development, and Professional Development.  Do they include the practical, how-to’s for connecting, conversing, and collaborating?  If so, congratulations!  If not, how can you include them?

Lynne Waymon is a co-founder and principal at Contacts Count LLC, the international training firm that specializes in teaching business and professional networking skills.  The firm’s clients during the last 25 years range from CPA firms to banks, from engineers to HR professionals, and from attorneys to Fortune 100 companies.  

Contacts Count’s training programs, keynotes, webinars, and train-the-trainer events help people put the tools of networking to work in the service of business goals.  Their Networking Competency Assessment measures skill in 8 competency areas.  Their newest book, Strategic Connections: The New Face of Networking in a Collaborative World is available in bulk from the publisher and by single copy at Amazon.com.

 HRDQ-U and Lynne Waymon are hosting a free webinar on February 7th at 2 pm ET. Save your seat!

 

 

 

    

 

19
oct
0
breakthrough creativity

New Webinar! Breakthrough Creativity: How to Use Your Talents for More Creative Leadership

Posted by Corporate Training Materials, HR TrainingNo Comments

We are excited to announce a new webinar!

Event Date: 1/24/2018 (2:00 pm EDT- 3:00 pm EDT)

Organizations that integrate creativity into their DNA achieve significant benefits, including better team performance, increased flexibility, greater retention rates, creative problem solving, and strategic decision making. And when it comes to leadership, creativity is the key to gaining a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

But just as there are multiple styles of intelligence, there are multiple styles of creativity that produce different yet equally valuable results. Variations in how individuals look at the world, gather information, and respond to challenges all have an impact on creative contributions. That’s why self-discovery is an important first step in realizing a leader’s creative potential.

Join creativity and leadership development expert Dr. Lynne Levesque for an hour-long exploration of creativity in the workplace. She’ll discuss how creative talents impact a leader’s performance, introduce eight creative talents, and offer a practical framework you can use to accelerate the growth of creative strengths in leaders and their teams.

Participants will learn

  • What it means to be creative as a leader—and why it’s critical to performance
  • The different ways leaders can be creative
  • How the eight creative talents work on a team
  • How to apply the eight creative talents to inventive problem solving, strategic decision making, and resilient change management

Save your seat! 

Dr. Lynne Levesque is a leadership and creativity consultant based in Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to launching her consulting and training practice, she was a vice president at Bank of America. Lynne also spent several years as a senior researcher at the Harvard Business School. She is the author of Breakthrough Creativity: Achieving Top Performance Using the Eight Creative Talents and the Breakthrough Creativity Profile, as well as several cases and articles. Lynne holds a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, an M.B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and an Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

2
oct
0
flexible leadership

New Webinar! Flexible Leadership: How Forward-Looking Leaders Adapt and Create Value

Posted by Corporate Training MaterialsNo Comments

We are excited to announce a new webinar!

Event Date: 12/6/2017 (2:00 pm EDT- 3:00 pm EDT)

Why do some companies triumph even when the rest of their competitors are struggling? In our work with some of the world’s best companies, we have found the greatest predictor of a company’s success is the strength of its leadership. The best leaders seem to have an almost supernatural ability to see into the future and adapt their behavior accordingly.

There’s a name for this superpower: Flexible Leadership.

Flexible Leadership defines effective leadership in today’s fast-changing and challenging environment. The Flexible Leadership model refers to the processes that determine the success of an organization- efficiency and reliability, agility, and talent management- and the ways leaders can, directly and indirectly, influence these processes. Leaders and managers can use it as a “mental map” to diagnose their situation and guide their short- and long-term choices. It’s also a useful framework for HR professionals to identify and develop future leaders.

This webinar will offer an in-depth look at the Flexible Leadership model and provide strategies leaders and other professionals can apply immediately to become more forward-thinking and adaptable stewards of their company.

Participants will learn 

  • Understand the leadership challenges that impact work performance and assess the importance of each one
  • Identify the leadership practices that are best suited to address each challenge and understand when and how to apply them
  • Help leaders increase their flexibility and be better able to deal with multiple challenges simultaneously while balancing the trade-offs among leadership practices
  • Use the Flexible Leadership model to enhance leadership development strategies

Save your seat! 

Rick Lepsinger is President of OnPoint Consulting. His career has focused on helping organizations and leaders identify and develop leaders, work better virtually, enhance cross functional team performance, and get from strategy to execution faster.  He conducts numerous seminars and workshops on succession management, leading from a distance, leading cross functional teams, and enhancing execution.  Rick has written numerous articles and is the author or co-author of several books. Click here for more information.

18
apr
0

New Webinar! Your Time Mastery Revolution: How to Cut 20+ Hours While Doubling New Client Growth

Posted by Corporate Training MaterialsNo Comments

We are excited to announce a new webinar!

Event Date: 05/10/2017 (2:00 pm EDT – 3:00 pm EDT)

You tried every time management trick in the book, but you still find yourself staring at the clock at 5 PM wondering, “Where did the time go?” And no matter how much you plan your week out on, you’re at a loss for how you didn’t finish that project by Friday.

It’s frustrating, but the good news is that you’re not alone.

In this one-hour webinar training expert Kelly Roach will teach its attendees who may be currently overwhelmed, frustrated, and at a standstill in their business growth to gain control of their time, how to eliminate 20 hours from their workweek while growing their income, how to conquer the productivity traps that are keeping them small, and how to double new client growth in the next 30 days.

Participants Will Learn

  • How to move from playing defense in your business to playing offense (and describing the daily activities that fall into both of those categories)
  • The simple 4 step process to remove 80% of the working hours that AREN’T contributing to the bottom line
  • Key mindset shifts to take you from short term thinking to long range vision when making key business decisions
  • Top ways to get more engagement and turn more leads into paying clients in just 30 days

Save your seat!

Kelly HeadShot

Kelly Roach is the founder of Kelly Roach Coaching, a rapid growth coaching and consulting company for business owners, entrepreneurs, and executive leaders. A few years ago Kelly was successful, but was yearning for more. She knew she was meant for something bigger, and wanted to create a business that allowed her to serve others, make a difference, and create unlimited income while doing it. After personally producing more than $30 million in sales in record time, Kelly charged to the top of a global Fortune 500 firm, netting 7 promotions in 8 years. That’s when she launched Kelly Roach International, to help businesses do the extraordinary by using innovative strategies to rapidly increase productivity and profits.

12
apr
0

The Surprising Way to Protect Yourself From Burnout

Posted by Corporate Training MaterialsNo Comments

By Michael Lee Stallard

In recent years the Mayo Clinic has been experimenting with programs that bring physicians together in groups to discuss issues related to their profession. The experiments have been promising in terms of reducing burnout.  This is important because more than half of physicians in the U.S. show at least one sign of burnout (burnout has been shown to contribute to medical errors).

The Mayo Clinic’s most recent program to bring physicians together is called “COMPASS” (Colleagues Meeting to Promote and Sustain Satisfaction).  COMPASS brings self-formed groups of 6-8 academic internal medicine physicians together for meals every two weeks.   Each participating physician receives $20 per meal.  The terms of COMPASS require participants to begin the meals with a 15-minute discussion on assigned issues related to the physician experience.  Assigned topics included work-life balance, medical mistakes, meaning at work and resiliency.

After comparing the results of a control group of 61 physicians and an intervention group of 64 physicians (i.e. the physicians who participated in COMPASS), the study’s authors, Colin P. West, MD, Ph.D, et al, concluded that study participants experienced statistically significant improvements in multiple domains of wellbeing and satisfaction.

Dr. West recently shared with me that at present approximately 1,100 of the Mayo Clinic’s 3,700 physicians and staff scientists participate in COMPASS.

Could something as simple as regularly having a meal together to discuss work experience-related issues help reduce burnout?  It seems too simple doesn’t it?  Although there several factors that contribute to burnout, there is good reason to believe connection practices such as having regular meals with colleagues is provides some degree of protection.

Wired to Connect

In my most recent book, Connection Culture, I lay out the scientific evidence that connection makes us smarter, happier, healthier and more productive.  Amy Banks, MD, author of an excellent recent book titled Wired to Connect, uses the acronym “C.A.R.E.” to summarize the relational benefits of connection.  Dr. Banks is a former instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is presently the director of advanced training at the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at the Wellesley Centers for Women.

C.A.R.E. summarizes four parts of the neural pathway for connection with each pathway representing an aspect of relationships. The four pathways are as follows:

  • Calm – Helps People Feel Clam (via the smart vagus nerve)
  • Accept – Helps people feel accepted via the brain’s dorsal anterior cingulate cortex.
  • Resonate – Helps people resonate with others via the brain’s mirroring system.
  • Energy – Helps give people energy via the brain’s dopamine reward pathway.

Using Dr. Bank’s C.A.R.E. acronym, it’s easy to see why physicians participating on the Mayo Clinic’s COMPASS program would report fewer signs of burnout.  The regular meals with colleagues meets their need for connection by helping them feel calm and accepted, helping them resonate in conversations with their colleagues and giving them greater energetic to tackle the considerable workload physicians have today, especially with the changing landscape of healthcare insurance reform and moving to electronic medical records.

Changing Cultures to Promote Connection

The decades old push for productivity in organizations has had some unintended consequences.  Squeezing out time to connect with colleagues over lunch makes people more vulnerable to disengagement, burnout, anxiety and depression.

Do your team, department and organization’s cultures promote connection over lunch or do you feel pressure to have lunch in your office and if you go to lunch you feel people look at you as if you’re a slacker?

It’s time for leaders to encourage people in the workplace to take time to connect.  Individuals and organizations perform better when they do.  I applaud the Mayo Clinic for its efforts to improve its culture with programs like COMPASS.  It’s another reason why the Mayo Clinic is rated the #1 hospital overall in the nation.

Michael Lee Stallard and HRDQ-U are hosting a webinar May 24th at 2pm ET. Save your seat here!

stallard photo 400 KBMichael Lee Stallard is President of E Pluribus Partners, a leadership training and consulting firm based in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a co-founder of ConnectionCulture.com. He speaks and teaches at a wide variety of organizations including Google, Johnson & Johnson, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, NASA, Qualcomm, Scotiabank, and the U.S. Treasury Department. Texas Christian University created the TCU Center for Connection Culture based on Michael’s work.

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