Leadership Development Workshops

Investing in the leadership skills of your organization’s current and future leaders can significantly increase your chances for success in today’s ever-changing environment. That’s why we’ve developed an extensive line-up of leadership development workshops suitable for current leaders at all levels and individual contributors who have demonstrated leadership potential.

 Our leadership development workshops are organized into three distinct series of trainings, as follows:

–Leadership Development: Principles and Practices
–Leadership Development: Unleash Your Potential!
–Leadership Development: The Leadership Challenge

Our workshops are offered both virtually and in person. And, for most organizations based in Massachusetts, the Commonwealth’s Workforce Training Fund (WTF) Express program now offers funding that will reimburse you for your entire cost of enrollment in any or all of our workshops!

 Here are additional details on each of these workshop series.

Leadership Development: Principles and Practices

Our Leadership Development: Principles and Practices program offers an integrated curriculum consisting of 8 workshops that focus on essential leadership skills. The program is intended for associates working at all levels within an organization, from individual contributors to senior executives. Individual workshops in our Leadership Development series include:

Managing Time Effectively—This workshop introduces several established time management strategies, allowing participants to identify key work priorities and create a personalized time management system to help them work more efficiently and effectively.

Effective Communications—This workshop discusses key communication skills and techniques and helps participants strengthen skills for communicating information and ideas, as well as giving and receiving feedback.

Delegating for Results—This workshop presents and discusses essential delegation skills that can be applied in interactions with direct reports, colleagues, customers and clients, and even leaders.

Effective Coaching Skills—This workshop emphasizes the importance of effective questioning techniques to raise awareness and foster responsibility and gives participants the opportunity to develop coaching action plans to help ensure their coaching success.

Problem-Solving and Decision-Making—This workshop introduces participants to the structure of an effective problem-solving process and gives them an opportunity to evaluate and solve a personal, real-world problem using that process.

Dealing with Conflict— Offers an in-depth exploration of essential conflict management techniques, builds participants’ comfort in using different conflict styles, and frames conflict situations as unique opportunities to improve outcomes.  

The Ideal Team Player—Based on Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Ideal Team Player, this workshop focuses on how participants can develop humility, hunger, and emotional intelligence (humble, hungry, smart), the essential skills of an Ideal Team Player.

Building Effective Teams—Based on Patrick Lencioni’s classic fable, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, this workshop introduces the essential framework for creating and sustaining effective teams and how participants can personally contribute to team effectiveness.

Leadership Development: Unleash Your Potential!

Our Unleash Your Potential (UP) Leadership Development program is primarily intended for individual contributors within an organization who have demonstrated the potential to take on leadership roles in the near future. Each workshop in this series focuses on providing participants with a strategic-level perspective on the essential qualities of successful organizations to help them think about their role as a future leader and create a framework for their personal leadership values. Individual workshops in our UP Leadership Development workshop series include:

Strengths-Based Development—Based on the completion of the Gallup Strengths-Based assessment prior to our training session, this workshop allows participants to identify and evaluate their leadership strengths and to discuss ways in which they can tailor their own and others’ efforts to maximize the use of those strengths.

Building Great Companies—Participants will learn how to identify and evaluate their company's purpose, values, and vision and the ways in which they can have an impact on their company's long-term success.

The Role of Motivation—Based on the concepts presented in the best-selling book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Dan Pink, this workshop addresses approaches and ideas on how to maximize our motivation and engagement in our work as well as how to motivate those we lead.

Building and Sustaining Effective Partnerships—This provides an introduction to essential business development styles and techniques to equip business leaders with the know-how to re-evaluate their approach to building trusted partnership relationships with their most valued customers and clients.

Effecting Change—Participants will learn a multistep process for initiating and managing positive change within their company and how to deal constructively with unanticipated change.

Optimizing My Performance— Participants in this workshop[identify and evaluate their own performance according to five key aspects of effectiveness and discuss specific steps that they can take to achieve even greater levels of effectiveness.

Leadership Development: The Leadership Challenge

This series of 6 workshops is built on the leadership concepts presented in the book The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations by James Kouzes and Barry Posner. The individual workshops in “The Leadership Challenge” series include:

 The Leadership Challenge: An Introduction—This workshop introduces participants to the core concepts of this book. It also provides them with an opportunity to complete the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI), a simple self-assessment designed to help participants understand their leadership profile and develop a personal leadership development plan to build on the findings of their LPI self-assessment.

 The Leadership Challenge, Practice #1: Model the Way—“Modeling the Way,” the first essential leadership practice, is about charting a course for your team and getting them to join you in “the journey.” Key skills discussed in this workshop include: 1) understanding your values; 2) searching for alignment between your values and those of others; and 3) doing what you say you’ll do.

 The Leadership Challenge, Practice #2: Inspire a Shared Vision—“Inspiring a Shared Vision,” the second essential leadership practice, is about creating a vision for your team that will empower them forward. Specific steps to inspire a shared vision discussed in this workshop include: 1) believing in future possibilities; 2) sharing your vision of the future and getting others to share; and 3) working to create a common vision.

 The Leadership Challenge, Practice #3: Challenge the Process—“Challenging the Process,” the third essential leadership practice, is about seeking ways to improve the way you work by questioning the status quo. This involves: 1) evaluating your current practices and looking for ways to innovate; 2) seeking outside perspectives to find new ways to get things done; and 3) experimenting and learning from mistakes.

The Leadership Challenge, Practice #4: Enable Others to Act— “Enabling Others to Act,” the fourth essential leadership practice, is about creating a foundation that enables people to do what they do best. To enable others to act, you need to: 1) get to know the people you work with; 2) provide them with the resources they need to succeed; and 3) demonstrate trust by letting them make their own decisions.

The Leadership Challenge, Practice #5: Encourage the Heart— “Encouraging the Heart,” the fifth and final essential leadership practice, is about finding ways to let people know the value of their contributions. Key skills for encouraging the heart include: 1) recognizing individual achievements; 2) showcasing accomplishments of team members; and 3) bringing team members together to celebrate.