Leader Training and Custom Programs

I offer a range of training programs and services related to presence-based coaching and leadership development. The common ground in all of these offers is:

• the inseparability of professional success from who you are as a person
• the integration of presence, self-awareness, and multiple intelligences into a proven approach to human development
• working through the body as the basis for skillful action
• building the capacity for self-generation
  
• integration of language with authenticity and presence in order to produce results.

Training is sometimes offered at conferences and public venues, and can be tailored to the needs of your organization.  A representative sampling follows.

The Art of Personal Resilience: Sustaining Yourself as a Leader

Team-Building (for Coaching Clients)

Coaching Skills for Leaders

Coordinating Action

Building Leadership Presence

The Art of Personal Resilience: Sustaining Yourself as a Leader

A key to any effective system change is for leaders to be able to sustain their sense of possibility, perspective and optimism. Resilient leaders have a remarkable capacity to:

• Consistently articulate new ways of doing things.
• Model these possibilities in the face of daily buffeting.
• Choose effective strategies to deal with complex and conflicting priorities.
• Maintain focus, rooted in a purposeful commitment to change.
• Draw sustenance from a range of practices to develop resilience and a capacity for balance and fulfillment.

Given the demanding pace and fragmentation of today’s professional world, resilience and sustainability are an issue in any change process. This workshop addresses this key challenge explicitly and directly. Attending leaders will acquire tools, perspectives, and strategies to sustain themselves as agents of change.

This program is currently offered as a three day open enrollment retreat in March 2009, or as a one, two, or three day in-house training. Download a description or inquire about a custom version for your organization.

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Team-Building (for Executive Coaching Clients)

Everything a leader does has an impact on the team and organization. Because of this, coaching a leader towards new behaviors and competencies is inherently a system change process.

I am available to work with the leadership teams of my executive coaching clients. This work can encompass a variety of elements, and often includes:

• Engagement of the whole team with the leader’s intended behavioral changes,
• 360 review and other feedback tools,
• Relationship building and communication skills training,
• Tools for productive efficient meetings and coordination of action,
  
• Clarification of roles and decision processes critical to team success,
• Development of a Balanced Scorecard to align and focus organizational efforts.

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Coaching Skills for Leaders

Geared towards people with both leadership and development responsibility for others, the workshop explores coaching as one element of a multi-faced and complex relationship. The workshop describes seven distinct roles for coaching others to their potential, and differentiates them from other, also important roles as manager. We provide practical tips for managing the power differential in a supervisory/coaching relationship.

During the workshop, we will explore the interrelationships between three distinct lines of artful questioning in facilitating insight, goal clarity, and impetus for action. We also address the importance of the quality of presence of the leader in building trust and enabling development to happen.

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Coordinating Action

Coordinating action is a critical skillset for teams and organizations. The effective delivery of requests, declines, and promises is an essential leadership act required both of team leaders and members. Doing so skillfully leads to clear commitments, engagement, and trust.

Using real business issues as grist for the mill, participants practice proven tools for coordinating action, including making and declining requests, building a centered presence, and skills for  co-designing accountability in peer and supervisory relationships. On-going practices and reading support continued application.

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Leadership Presence

Leadership presence is essential to building trust, inviting followership, inspiring and motivating others, and embodying our deepest values and aspirations. Presence is a critical quality for effective leaders, and underpins emotional intelligence, often described as one of the most important predictors of a leader's success. While leadership presence is often described as a relational attribute (and clearly has an impact in our relationships) it is really a reflection of an inner state.

This inner state can be developed. This highly interactive and experiential program provides pragmatic tools for cultivating and managing our inner state, and for extending towards others.

This work is about character, values, and integrity. As such, developing our presence must be seen as a rewarding investment in ourselves, rather than as a set of tools for motivating others to do what we want.

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I am available to consult and provide customized training for organizations interested in implementing coaching as a development process. Consultation can include help in deciding where coaching can be productively included in an overall approach to learning and development, and where it shouldn’t. We can also design custom coach training, integration of coaching with 360 review tools, and performance feedback processes.

Contact me to discuss your needs.