Speaking

We are frequent presenters at trade show events, both as keynote speakers and breakout sessions. Paul and David are engaging presenters – drawing from real-world experience and through having facilitated hundreds of workshops on communication, team engagement and leadership.

 
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Speaking Engagement Sample Topics


 

Communications & Leadership

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+How to talk to almost anyone about almost anything

In this presentation participants will learn skills that ensure that their message resonates with the listener – leading to open dialogue, improved relationships and better outcomes. Influential people use these communication skills to create a safe environment to talk about challenging issues. Skilled leaders begin with facts, then they share conclusions.

Learning Objectives

  • Differentiating between the stories in your head and the factual information to support your own point of view

  • Recognizing emotions

  • Clarifying information as needed

  • Tactfully shows employees empathy and respect

  • Being open to others’ opinions

+Learn to listen! Stop Talking and Let the Message Resonate

We spend 80 percent of our waking hours communicating, and 45 percent of that time listening. While listening is a large part of our daily routine, research confirms that most individuals are inept listeners. Yet, listening is a key to effective communication. Participants will learn and practice easy to remember listening skills that will make them GREAT leaders.

Learning objectives:

  • Understanding the Sender/Receiver Communication Model

  • 6 Interruptions to Listening – (includes optional assessment)

  • Practical steps to become a leader who truly listens

  • Asking powerful questions that confirm and clarify information as needed

  • Making decisions based on what you heard

+Unaddressed Performance Problems Never Solved Anything

Unresolved workplace drama could be costing your organization millions of dollars. Research shows when people see accountability as “someone else’s job” they waste time and resources and diminish morale. It’s been estimated that employees waste $1500 and an eight-hour workday for every accountability discussion they avoid. These costs skyrocket when you consider that 95% of an organization’s workforce struggles to hold their colleagues accountable.

Learning Objectives:

  • Holding staff accountable for performance standards

  • Creating a culture that’s safe for dialogue

  • Describing the performance gaps

  • Making change motivating and easy

  • Developing a meaningful action plan

  • Gaining commitment

  • Staying on track

+Stopping the Fake Work

How many countless working hours do you spend working hard only to realize that your efforts don’t focus on what was most vital to the organization. Hard work is not the same as real work – the work that propels us toward achieving our strategic goals and success. Fake work consumes valuable time without strengthening the short-or long-term survival of the organization. Fake work drains company resources without improving its bottom line, it steals conviction, care, and positive morale from employees. How do we turn fake work into real work?

Learning Objectives:

  • Define elements of a vision

  • Discove the elements of alignment

  • Apply the elements of execution

  • Complete an action plan for improvement

 

+Without Mutual Trust We’ll Never Achieve Our Goals

Do you feel safe being open and honest with your leaders and colleagues? Because of the lack of transparency, hidden agendas, political maneuvering, people don’t intrinsically trust others. Trust is the essence that deepens relationships and drives results. Attendees learn how to proactively build trust with co-workers – deepening relationships and achieving organizational goals.

Learning Objectives:

  • The 4 components of self-trust

  • The value of the trust bank

  • 13 ways to build relational trust

  • The impact of organizational trust

  • Characteristics of a climate of trust – openness and honesty and does not penalize responsible dissent

+The Trifecta of Trust

Envision a world where people are open and honest, follow through on commitments and focus on mutual goals. Without each of these elements our relationships and/or results may topple like a top the stops spinning. In this session, we will guide leaders in how to create a culture of trust – the foundation of relationships.

Learning Objectives:

  • Creating safety by fostering openness and honesty without reprisal

  • Holding yourself and others accountable

  • Creating mutual purpose Applying these principles in your day-to-day relationships

+Don’t Stress Out: Be Emotionally Resilient

How do you cope during crisis? Emotional resilience is dealing effectively with pressure and recovering quickly from setbacks – even under adversity. It’s a skill that can be learned but requires optimism and persistence. During this workshop, we’ll employ a combination of neuroscience and practical examples to help participants better understand stress triggers. You will walk away with tools to help focus on what you can control and how to let go of many of the stresses that sidetrack you.

Learning Objectives

  • The importance of Emotional Resiliency in the workplace

  • Distinguish between too little, optimal, and too much stress

  • Identify associated behaviors with stress in the workplace

  • Identify what is within your control, and develop alternative approaches to accomplishing goals

+Problems Don’t Occur Just Because People Are Lazy

The best leaders know that behaviors drive results and leaders can influence behavior. With a thorough diagnosis, leaders can better overcome persistent and resistant problems. This requires that they understand how motivation and ability impact behaviors – creating sustainable change.

Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the role of motivation and ability in influencing behavior

  • Consider the impact of individual, social and organizational factors in influencing behavior

  • The benefits of applying a multifaceted solution to impact behavior. A single solution isn’t enough.

+The Work of Leaders for Maximim Impact

Learn the best practices for effective leadership from three-hundred experts in over 150 organizations and prominent scholars. Using one unified model of leadership—Vision, Alignment, and Execution— leaders understand their own leadership styles and how their tendencies influence their effectiveness in specific leadership situations.

Learning objectives:

  • A simple, compelling model of leadership

  • Personalized insights to leverage strengths and overcome challenges

  • A clear path for improvement

  • Craft a Vision through exploration, boldness, and testing assumptions

  • Build Alignment through clarity, dialog, and inspiration

  • Champion Execution through momentum, structure, and feedback

+What Do Mirror Neurons and Macaque Monkeys Have To Do With LEADERSHIP?

We’ve long known that people will do what you DO, not what you SAY. There’s intriguing and emerging research on why this is the case. Great leaders will recognize this important fact and ensure that they demonstrate the very behaviors they expect from others. Monkeys or humans – our brains neurons fire in similar ways. Come learn more!

Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the importance of ‘walking the talk’

  • We all mirror the behaviors we see – think of the implications!

  • Identify key behaviors you WANT and DON’T WANT others to mirror

  • The leader’s obligation to break the ‘Don’t Play Nice’ cycle


 

Management & Team Building

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+Job Sculpt! A key To Making You 150% Happier In Your Life Overall

Studies show that people whose work is out of alignment with their motivators are much more likely to be depressed, anxious, and have damaged relationships. Those who work in alignment with their motivators produce higher-quality work, have greater output, earn higher incomes, and are 150% happier in life overall. Effective leaders will enable individuals to develop the knowledge and skills to engage, empower and energize their careers.

Learning Objectives:

  • Identifying and understanding key performance motivators

  • Creating job sculpting strategies to help do more of what they love and less of what frustrates them

  • Aligning and assigning work based on skill level and area of interest

  • Overcoming motivational bias

+Silent Judgment: Turn Bias into Influence

Is the organization where you work inclusive or intolerant? Is your work environment accepting or prejudiced? Is your leader an ally or a bigot or both? These judgments about bias have profound impacts on organizations, work teams, and individual employees. And yet few of us even realize when they are being made, because they are silent judgments. They’re not debated or even discussed.

Learning Objectives:

  • The four silent judgments

  • Providing tips on overcoming/addressing our biases

  • Illustrating what leaders can do to encourage open discussions at an organizational level

+Let It Go! DELEGATE

Delegation is not just a way to ‘clear your plate’ of unwanted tasks. Skilled leaders know that delegation is an important strategy in developing skills in others. Attendees will learn about three modes of delegation and how to hold a delegation conversation that sets the stage for organization and personal success.

Learning Objectives:

  • Identify obstacles and benefits to delegation

  • Apply the appropriate mode of delegation based on the delegate’s skill level, the project and the situation

  • Designs, implements, and communicates leadership development opportunities for staff at all levels of the organization

  • In this session, identify specific projects and delegates for those projects

+Leadership & Fruit Salad

Too often, we find ourselves on teams where a few team members work extremely well together and then there is one team member that is just “different”. How we handle these relationships tells quite a bit about who we are as leaders. We’ve seen some bosses treat the one differently, uninvite to team meetings and otherwise alienate them. We’ve seen others who have chosen to get to know the one and find ways to use the one differently. In our fruit salad analogy, take the tomato and make some other dish – like bruschetta.

Learning objectives:

  • In this session, we’ll learn:

  • The value of diversity and compatibility

  • Learn about the tools and assessments we can use to help us understand our teams better

  • To look more broadly about the resources available to us and use them more effectively

+Being a Stellar Manager

Participants deepen their understanding of themselves, their direct reports, and their own managers. Learn how their management style influences their approach to decision-making, time management, and problem solving. This leads to concrete strategies to help them adapt to the styles of their direct reports, enabling them to bring out the best in their people.

Learning objectives:

  • Understanding your personal management style as it relates to directing, delegating, motivating and developing others

 

+Cohesive Teams: The Foundation of Stable Organizations

Cohesive teams members understand the five behaviors that make teams fully effective: Building Trust, Mastering Conflict, Achieving Commitment, Embracing Accountability, and Focusing on Results. Individual team members learn about their own personality style and the styles of their team members and how their style contributes to the team’s overall success. A productive, high-functioning team: Makes better, faster decisions Taps into the skills and opinions of all members Avoids wasting time and energy on politics, confusion and destructive conflict Avoids wasting time talking about the wrong issues and revisiting the same topics over and over again because of a lack of buy-in Creates a competitive advantage

Learning objectives:

  • Understand the Lencioni Five Behaviors model and why each behavior is critical for cohesive teams See how TRUST is the foundation of a cohesive team and of the rest of the behaviors

+‘Out of Sight’ Is Not Out of Mind! How to be a good virtual team member

Working VIRTUALLY puts a whole new spin on being a good team member. Advances in technology are disrupting the market, globalization is forcing a new approach of working, and the teams of the future have never seen this level of challenge. In essence, organizations need to develop strategies for teams to work together virtually.

Learning objectives:

  • Learn the characteristics that make-up a good virtual team member: Self-Management Communicating Understanding diversity Managing conflict Using the right tools to connect

+How Everything DiSC Workplace Transforms Company Culture

This simple yet powerful model describes four basic styles: D, i, S, and C, and serves as the foundation for the Everything DiSC® application Suite. Participants receive personalized insights that deepen their understanding of self and others, making workplace interactions more enjoyable and effective. The result is a more engaged and collaborative workforce that can spark meaningful culture improvement in your organization.

Learning objectives:

  • Discovering Your DiSC® Style

  • How to understand other’s styles

  • How to build better relationships

+Everything Disc Agile EQ Elevates Emotional Intelligence and Transforms Teams

Agile EQ is a personalized learning experience that teaches participants to read the emotional and interpersonal needs of a situation and respond accordingly. By combining the personalized insights of DiSC® with active emotional intelligence development, participants discover an agile approach to workplace interactions and learn to navigate outside their comfort zone, empowering them to meet the demands of any situation. In this half-day training, participants will discover their EQ strengths, recognize their EQ potential, and commit to customized strategies for building agility. The result is an emotionally intelligent workforce that can support your thriving agile culture.

Learning objectives:

  • Discovering your DiSC Style

  • Understanding your EQ strengths

  • Recognizing your EQ potential

  • Committing to customized strategies for building agility

+Embracing Productive Conflict! Say what?!

Workplace conflict is inevitable. Everything DiSC® Productive Conflict helps learners improve self-awareness around conflict behaviors. Rather than focus on a step-by step process for conflict resolution, Everything DiSC Productive Conflict helps learners curb destructive behaviors so that conflict can become more productive, ultimately improving workplace results and relationships. By increasing self-awareness around conflict behaviors, Everything DiSC Productive Conflict helps learners effectively respond to the uncomfortable and unavoidable challenges of workplace conflict.

Learning objectives:

  • Explore the destructive and productive conflict behaviors of each DiSC® style

  • Understand how to manage their response to conflict situations

  • Discover communication strategies when engaging in productive conflict with colleagues

+Live Stress Free By Gettings Things Done!

This session helps individuals increase their focus on the most meaningful work, organize information, prioritize commitments, create mental space for innovation and achieve stress-free productivity. It’s productivity with purpose, or in other words – getting more of the right stuff done. The skills applied consistently to the right tasks and projects create more stress-free, productive moments improving Individual and Team Effectiveness. It also helps individuals understand when they should do the task(s) themselves, hand them off to others, or put them off to another day.

Learning objectives

  • Learn how to capture, clarify, and organize incomming requests. Give greater focus and energy to the highest priorities

 

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