Leadership Session Topics
I develop tailored programs that build core individual, team, and organizational leadership skills. Some key session descriptions are below, and each program - whether a multi-day leadership retreat, a half-day team skills simulation, a virtual workshop series, or something totally new - will be customized for your team or organization.
Individual Leadership
Leveraging Personality Type
Working with the TypeCoach online tool suite, we will cover core lessons on how people tend to collect and process information, make decisions, and communicate with others. Participants will learn to accurately recognize their own tendencies and gauge the preferences of others, practicing behaviors that enable them to improve their leadership skills by more effectively bridging a set of identifiable cognitive differences.
Understanding Power & Influence
Complex organizational power and influence dynamics (whether we understand them or not) deeply affect our professional lives. This session examines the nature of formal power, personal power, influence, and political skill and challenges some commonly-held beliefs about the derivation of power. Participants will develop new insights and skills to improve their own ability to achieve meaningful influence.
Mitigating Cognitive Bias
Humans regularly exhibit over 100 types of cognitive bias. These unconscious mental shortcuts are crucial to processing the billions of pieces of data coming into our brains –but can also lead to poor judgment, erroneous beliefs, and outsized impact on personal and team dynamics. By recognizing key cognitive biases and learning mitigation techniques, participants will improve their leadership and collaboration skills.
Producer-Manager Dilemma
This business-school-style case study session addresses the "producer-manager dilemma" that arises when time-strapped professionals must lead others, invest in strategy, and do bigger-picture work - while still being expected to produce day-to-day results. Practical take-aways focus on effectively managing these competing demands; the specific case study will vary based on participant seniority and expertise.
Leading People & Teams
Core Collaboration Skills.
This workshop puts participants in a team-based simulation that requires joint, consensus-based decision-making on an unfamiliar topic while operating under time pressure. In a combination of interactive lecture, small group exercises, and full group discussion, we explore and analyze what helps teams collaborate effectively to meet their strategic objectives, where teams (and individuals) often go wrong, and how to improve key teamwork skills.
Effective Delegation & Feedback
This session pairs lessons from neuroscience and psychology with established communication rubrics and best practices, often incorporating key aspects of of both personality type and common team dynamics. Participants will strengthen their practical delegation skills to better support the development of junior team members and will improve their ability to deliver direct, helpful, actionable feedback.
Inclusive Leadership
As diverse, cross-functional teams become the norm, leaders must recognize the skills they need to harness the value of that diversity. In this session, we address the leader’s role in effectively incorporating diverse experience and perspectives to help teams intentionally foster the belonging and inclusion that are crucial to team cohesion.
Motivation & Engagement Strategies
Leaders often mistakenly search for ”engaged employees” – but engagement is a function of the environment, not the worker. Participants will learn the social science behind, and best practices for, motivating others, creating an environment that supports engagement, and developing practical strategies to help team members deliver their best work.
Leading Organizations
Cross-Generational Leadership
Today’s workplace includes four (and sometimes five) distinct generational cohorts; each group has identifiable traits and preferences that were shaped by the key historical events of its time. The result is often confusion, miscommunication, and poor collaboration as fundamental - but different - perspectives and assumptions come into conflict. This session explores the underpinnings of cross-generational diversity, focusing on practical strategies to manage and lead the multi-generational workforce.
Creating a Culture of Sponsorship
This case study session examines the impact and potential of sponsorship at all levels of an organization. Participants will learn (a) how professionals can develop the traits and behaviors that help them be perceived as “sponsor-worthy”; (b) how senior leaders can engage in effective sponsoring behavior; and (c) how sponsors do (or do not) provide meaningful career acceleration opportunities for their protégées. We will then strategize about how organizations can support a culture of sponsorship that transcends “organically occurring” sponsor relationships.