Popular Programs
All our deliveries are highly customized to meet your specific goals and parameters. Most programs can be delivered in person or virtually.
Improv for Leaders
Performing with Flexibility and Creative Courage
We are all improvising all the time. None of us wakes up to find a script for the day sitting on our bedside table. We must figure out how to respond, connect, make choices as we go along. As the world moves faster and becomes less predictable, this ability becomes harder, and good improv skills become more important to maximizing your strategic impact. In this module, you will experience the principles of improv, including:
Exercise your awareness so you recognize opportunities to develop your team and your business
Celebrate risk-taking to expand your ability to innovate, deal with change, and step into new roles
Unleash your creative genius so you can solve problems and design solutions quickly and effectively
Build collaborative momentum by supporting and building on others’ ideas
Improv is the Gym
Exercising Your Leadership, Communication, Creativity, and Collaboration
Organizations are preaching the value of high emotional intelligence, creativity, and communication skills. What used to be seen as “touchy-feely” or “soft”, are now recognized as indispensable. But creativity, empathy, flexibility, awareness, risk-taking and courage are not bodies of knowledge. They are skills that must be practiced, muscles that must be exercised. That is why cutting-edge companies of all kinds, are turning to the world of improvisational theatre for their training and development needs in these areas. Improv is the gym.
Improvisers make up scenes, songs, whole plays, on-the-spot, in front of paying audiences demanding to be entertained. They are masters of instant collaborative creativity, and they have developed a unique set of activities and principles to enable anyone to grow those abilities. In this activity-based program, we will explore how to apply improv to organizational development in order to:
Exercise empathy and awareness
Celebrate risk-taking to expand people’s ability to innovate, deal with change, and step into new roles
Unleash creative genius so your people can solve problems and design solutions quickly and effectively
Build collaborative momentum by supporting others, building trust and maximizing your influence.
Story Circle
Using Personal Storytelling to Unleash Wisdom and Creatively Solve Problems
A story circle is a facilitated conversation designed to surface the wisdom that lies within each of us. Focused on a specific topic, the discussion moves from hearing each participant's personal story to the insights we can apply to the challenges we're facing today. In one of these sessions, participants will:
Tap into the learning from their individual experiences
Identify and apply themes and lessons that organically emerge
Increase connection as a team
Develop a practical strategy and tactics to address identified problems
The Power of Story
Using Story to Influence, Inspire and Deepen Connection
As the most cutting-edge business cultures are recognizing, storytelling skills are not just a “nice-to-have” in today’s world. Rather, this oldest of communication tools taps into the fundamental way our brain makes meaning and helps us understand new concepts, engage deeply, tap into our passion, and connect with others. In this active, practical session, you will not just learn the power of story as a knowledge-sharing, culture-building and problem-solving tool. You will also practice using storytelling tools and structures to strengthen your own storytelling skills immediately. Specifically, you will:
Learn tools for structuring and styling a story
Apply the 6 secrets for making stories compelling and memorable
Tap your inner storyteller and learn to harvest great stories everywhere
Practice creating meaningful stories that link to a business message or object
The Act of Innovation
Exercising and Motivating Creativity
Creativity takes courage. It also takes playfulness. It takes trust. Creative people don’t try to be creative: they are simply curious, and open to moments of inspiration when they hit. They are always willing to try a new way. They are masters of “failing forward,” and able to accept and learn from outcomes, expected and unexpected. Participants not only exercise their own individual creativity and risk-taking, but explore how to support others in doing so. They will think as leaders about:
Creating motivating environments
The benefits of taking risks
Distinguishing creative mistakes and growth from systemic issues and performance gaps
Developing a culture of authentic, open communication and support
How to create trust and foster courage.
Design thinking and process improvement techniques to support the above
Align Your Team
Work Session to Ramp Up, Pivot, or Realign for Results
Savvy leaders recognize that change today is not an event but a constant process. When you assume responsibility for a new team, how do you quickly align the work with the strategy/vision? How do you pivot at high speed when conditions change? To remain agile, you need a simple, reliable process for taking stock of your team’s current reality and priorities, conveying a new vision or challenge, and realigning the work to get there. In this practical working session you and your team will:
Refocus on the customer and the highest leverage drivers of results
Re-align work priorities & team goals
Simplify and eliminate work based on insight into highest ROI
Build shared understanding and team commitment
Create the “dashboard” you need to manage execution going forward
*Session involves intact team. Specific content and timeline configured based on pre-conversation with the leader.
Perform with Presence
A Presentation Skills Intensive
Whether you’re an experienced presenter wanting to fine-tune your skills, a beginning presenter with a bad case of nerves, or fall somewhere in between, Presentation Skills Intensive is for you!
Participants will learn and practice skills and tools for delivering polished, compelling presentations, Through a series of highly-interactive activities and individual coaching, participants will:
Plan, develop, and deliver multiple presentations
Receive useful peer and facilitator feedback
Learn how to assess and engage an audience
Develop techniques to align their verbals, vocals and visuals with their message
Design presentations through the principles of framing and storytelling
Identify “best practice” strategies for using paper and electronic materials to support their message
Expand their performance range and strategies in formal and informal communication contexts.
Listening 3.0
Working this Super-skill for Increased Sales and Relationship Building
We all know that listening is important for our success as salespeople and leaders, but what does it really mean to listen well? How can we expand our awareness so we listen for nuance and capture not just information but needs, values, emotions? How can we exercise our listening “muscle” so that we notice more, understand more deeply and engage with more curiosity? In this interactive session, we will:
Test our listening skills
Distinguish "listening as an partner" from "listening as a competitor”
Expand our tolerance for silence and exploration
Practice multi-dimensional listening
Explore listening as a relationship-building and problem-solving tool
The Power of Empathy and Emotion
The Four Essential Skills of the Emotionally Intelligent Leader
Leaders at all levels of an organization these days must build relationships with diverse colleagues and reports, resolve conflict, adapt constantly to change and continually grow and develop their own professional skills. How best to manage this? Through exercising their emotional intelligence. Leaders must be smart and knowledgeable, of course. But that is not enough. Increasingly, research is showing what we know intuitively - that the most successful, inspiring, motivating leaders have not just high IQ’s but high EQ’s. This highly interactive session offers practical experience that:
Introduces the 4 essential emotional intelligence skills
Self-awareness
Self-management
Awareness of others
Social Skills
Exercises and develops these skills
Practices applying emotional intelligence in real-life difficult scenarios
Leading with Power
Using Status, Authority and Influence for Good
Have you ever shared a wonderful idea only to have it ignored? Do you ever feel tension in the air and suspect you might be caught in a power struggle? Do you want to have influence at a higher level? Would you like to be able to shift the group climate to be more collaborative and productive? A conscious awareness of the dynamics of status and power can help you inspire trust, have your ideas heard and taken seriously, minimize unhealthy conflict , and create environments where people feel engaged and respected. In this module, we will:
Learn the non-verbal vocabulary of status, authority and power
Expand awareness of your habitual status behaviors and where they help and hurt your cause
Understand what positive status moves look like
Practice applying status fluency to communicate with confidence, and difficult situations
Walk the Talk
Build Trust by Living Your Values
People who live their values and keep their word exhibit integrity and thus become more effective, whether they are mobilizing teams, “pitching” an idea, or interviewing for a position with greater responsibility. Yet we all have blind spots which can unintentionally undermine our credibility. How can you clarify your values, so others know what you stand for and why they can count on you to deliver? Through interactive strategies of improv and storytelling, you will:
Understand what matters to you
Clarify your desired reputation and how it builds on your core values and leadership experience
Understand where courage and self-awareness are needed to deliver on your promises
Practice the art of making clear commitments and managing expectations to build credibility and trust
Growing Performance Through Coaching
Coaching Skills for Managers and Peers
Providing opportunities for individuals to discover and realize their own goals is a powerful gift. This introduction to coaching highlights the critical skills and mindsets needed to support others in identifying their objectives, strengths, and options. This workshop:
Highlights what coaching is and distinguishes it from other leadership and management support
Builds trust and listening muscles Identifies "powerful questions" for building awareness, expanding options, and achieving goals
Introduces a simple framework for guiding coaching conversations
Role Play Coaches
You tell us your challenging people and scenarios, and we bring them to life on-the-spot
These highly skilled and unique room coaches offer not only performance coaching, but skilled facilitation techniques and extensive role play experience. Our role play coaches are able to give performance feedback to participants, as well as play the part of individuals in any number of scenarios. They can switch between facilitator, performance coach, and role player as needed during the session. Sessions with these coaches allow participants to:
Practice real life scenarios
Receive personalized feedback and coaching
Experiment, practice and expand your performance range in a safe, low-stakes environment
Building Cultures of Inclusion
Connecting, Collaborating, and Creating Across Differences
Put two people in a room together and you will find dozens of differences between them - some immediately obvious, others only evident over time. In today’s business environment, the ability to connect effectively across differences is a foundational competency. And it requires not just cross-cultural or cross-generational knowledge, but also a set of skills and mindsets that allow people to build trust, exercise curiosity, open their minds to other points of view, and show up flexibly and creatively. This program is not a passive one, in which participants simply watch “correct” or “bad” versions of interactions. Rather, the group participates in exercises and scenarios meant to build their own skills and awareness in a wide variety of situations. In this highly-interactive, experiential program, participants will use the principles and techniques of the improvisational performer, as well as more traditional methods to:
Learn to put themselves in other people’s shoes
Exercise their listening and empathy
Expand their range of communication and conflict management skills
Deepen their understand of themselves, their assumptions and values.
Building a Resilient Workforce
Manage Stress and Bounce Back with Improv
There is no such thing as stasis in today’s workplace. As soon as one initiative is launched, the next is on the horizon. Landscapes are constantly shifting, colleagues cycle through at increasing rates, and constant innovation is assumed, and it seems that workloads are constantly increasing. How can anyone possibly survive intact?
In this interactive, practical and comforting interactive session you will learn how to build the resilience necessary to help yourselves and others thrive in our fast-paced, volatile, and high-stress environments. Through the lenses of applied improvisation, you will experience the benefits of philosophies and exercises that teach us how to:
Expand your personal resilience for your own well-being and those around you
Create supportive and motivating environments
Accept and build with what exists, rather than fighting or resisting reality
Engage optimistically with yourself and others
Learn a variety of tools and exercises for use back on the job
Facilitation Excellence
In partnership with Proteus International
Think back to your most impactful facilitator-led experiences. Was the topic brought to life by stories? Were there conversations that revealed something new or spurred you to try something new? That kind of impact isn’t accidental. We take a proven, skill-based approach to increasing your impact with groups. You’ll be better at guiding groups so people really learn, creating more engaged learners, and improving your connection with your audience. Our process offers a supportive “stretch” for anyone, from those leading groups for the first time to very experienced facilitators. We’ve defined what great facilitators do, so you can assess facilitator performance accurately and consistently and benchmark with world-class organizations. Our process supports facilitators at all levels: helping them see themselves clearly, building on their strengths with individualized feedback, and providing supportive coaching to expand their range and increase their impact. Improving a facilitator’s capabilities can lead to improved performance wherever people need to get results together. In this program, in partnership with Proteus International, participants will:
• Grow internal faculty
• Prepare a leader to deliver a key presentation
• Improve the outcomes of facilitated meetings
• Build executive presence
• Raise the standards for leader-led experiences