People – The Critical Challenge!

First Strategies has been conducting training and development programs for clients for the last 15 years. Our goal is to develop leadership competencies and skills that produce management strengths and better outcomes for the organization. Our programs are custom-designed to support the individual group and organizational needs of that client. All classes engage participants in active learning and follow-up learning contracts are utilized to extend and deepen the learning process.

Brief summaries of the most requested training programs are presented below.

Please Understand Me – Building Effective Communications Skills

This workshop encourages participants to develop effective communications skills by exploring various aspects of communications including preferred styles of verbal and nonverbal communications, active listening skills, influencing skills, personality-based communication styles, etc. We will utilize the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to explore personality preferences and develop skills designed to enhance communications between different personality types within varied work settings. These techniques work whether you are interacting, meeting with co-workers or customers, talking to your boss, making client presentations, or providing technical support. Effective communications skills are essential to professional success.

Participants will learn:

• New ways of approaching and dealing with others.
• How to capitalize on your own and others' communications and personal strengths.
• How to communicate with people who are different from you.
• How to be an active listener, an empathic listener and how to draw out consequences.
• The common barriers to communications and how to minimize these barriers.
• Practical ways to improve productivity through enhanced communications skills.

Advanced Communications Skills

In this workshop, we build on the basic skills identified in the above-mentioned course. Then we explore more fully the mental models that automatically form when we are interacting with others, as well as the ladders of inference that drive our assumptions and decision-making process. We spend time exploring the Peter Senge method of balancing dialogues and discussion, as well as the use of reflection, inquiry and advocacy skills that can lead to shared meaning and enhanced understanding of another person's points of view. These are skills that are critical to building high performance work teams at all levels in the organization. We use games and role-plays extensively in this workshop to demonstrate and hone skill development in these areas.

Participants will learn:

• About mental models and how they shape our actions.
• How our brain performs ‘leaps of abstraction' and leads us through the ‘ladders of inference.'
• How we can overcome these tendencies by balancing advocacy and inquiry.
• How, by using dialogue and discussion, we can discover new views on old problems .

Change Leadership – Managing at the Speed of Change

This workshop helps participants understand their own personal reactions to change, explore the various stages of change and learn how to create personal action plans for moving through the change with a positive attitude. By using real world experiences of participants involved in current change initiatives, we help individuals recognize their own reactions and identify a personal path for resolving these issues using a fundamental change model. Part of the process of transition involves focusing on what is changing in the new system and why. Then we explore the system's old rules versus the new rules and changed expectations for performance. The ultimate objective of this course is to build change leadership skills at all levels of the organization. This course employs self-assessment tools and numerous individual and team exercises/games to drive home basic concepts. It also provides an excellent forum for identifying actual or potential levels of employee resistance to current change initiatives.

Participants will learn:

• How to deal with a changing corporate culture.
• The four stages of accepting change and how we can get ‘stuck' in resistance.
• How to build personal resilience during times of constant change.
• The right kind of communications to use in helping others to overcome resistance.
• Secrets for building alignment during major organizational change initiatives.
• How to become change leaders within the team, department or organization.

Time Management – When There is No Time

This is a course designed for all those people who work hard every day but never seem to catch up. This fast-paced workshop helps participants acquire effective time management skills and habits that enable them to accomplish the key daily tasks that provide the greatest return on their professional and personal time investment. Through a series of tools and exercises, we will explore time wasters and learn how to replace them with high performance work habits. We will incorporate the various time management tools, such as day timers, PDA's and computerized scheduling programs to ensure that all are being effectively utilized. We also include effective meeting management skills in this course.

Participants will learn:

• How successful people manage their time.
• How to acquire new skills and habits.
• How to prioritize commitments, daily tasks and notes effectively to increase personal and professional productivity.
• How to build effective short-term plans and long-term goals.
• How to conduct effective meetings.

Building Customer Service Strategies that are Second to None

This course explores the nature of customer service by identifying distinguishing factors that create exceptional customer service experiences. Then we focus on the role of the employee as a customer service agent. We also explore the difficulties of “emotional” labor for those continually engaged in customer service and how to move through these challenges. Using assessments, as well as training activities and a customer service game, this workshop equips any employee with the coping skills and practical strategies needed to respond effectively to a wide range of customer types and situations. This course also explores the basics of building effective rapport with both internal and external customers. Topics covered in this area may include basic business etiquette, as well as how to assess and appropriately respond to various client cultures and management levels.

Participants will learn:

• Defining customers and understanding client needs and satisfaction.
• Defining “moments of truth” in client interactions.
• Understanding “contact overload” and how to deal with stress.
• How to deal with difficult clients.
• What to do when you can't say “yes.”
• The Six “C's” of great customer service.
• Probing for and responding successfully to differences in the culture of the organization.

Teambuilding for Success

This course is designed just for managers who want to improve their effectiveness in working with employees and other managers on their team. This course focuses on surfacing, diagnosing and working through the issues that impede effective teamwork. Through a series of experiential learning exercises, we discuss the common barriers to teambuilding and discuss tools for building groups of employees into teams. Central to this topic are the issue of trust and the cycle of mistrust. This program focuses on alignment, conflict management and building shared values and includes exercises and activities for helping managers to focus on critical team issues and learn advanced communications skills for dealing effectively with these issues.

Participants will learn:

• Why and how to create “shared visions.”
• Understanding “ladders of inference” and balancing dialogue and discussion skills.
• To understand and utilize effectively the difference between leadership and management skills.
• Delegation skills for improving employee commitment to get the job done.
• Problem solving and creative thinking strategies for the team.
• Advanced goal setting and performance management skills.

Additional Training Programs

Thinkertoys and Other Ideas for Learning to Think Creatively

Using creative exercises, games and imagery, we explore alternate ways of thinking and organizing that help participants understand and develop their own creative potential and also find innovative solutions to difficult problems. We employ “ thinkertoys ,” as well as techniques for imagining, advanced levels of brainstorming and creative questioning to expand our ability to think creatively and solve problems in our work settings.

Building Trust and Driving Fear Out of the Workplace

This class explores why people are afraid to speak up with ideas and concerns. We then discuss and practice strategies that can be used for breaking the cycle of mistrust and strengthen workplace relationships. Participants learn that trust is more than a personal characteristic. It is a crucial leadership competency. We use a confidential assessment tool to help individuals evaluate the level of trust evident in their behavior towards other people. Then we help them assess their own decision to trust others. We also reference research done on the issue of driving fear out of the workplace.

High Performance Work Teams

Building high performance work teams involves a process of working with teams and team members to assist them in improving both their relationships and their operations so that their results are optimally effective for the organization. While this is often a customized process, the fundamental skills that are required to build an effective team include leadership, goal setting/management, conflict management, problem solving and work roles/responsibilities. We use a team effectiveness assessment tool to identify the team's current readiness. Then we allow the teams to process their group's strengths and weaknesses and build their own action plan for overcoming weaknesses. In the second half of this workshop, we take a real world problem and have the teams practice their skills to work through potential solutions to this problem.

Fundamentals of Project Management

This workshop is an introductory step-by-step guide for managers or employees to plan and manage projects. Using a five-step process plan, we provide common, easy-to-understand examples and incorporate actual participant projects into the workshop. Participants leave this workshop with the knowledge of how to manage projects. If projects have been assigned previously, participants can complete the planning of the project.

Problem Solving for Teams

Using the Kurt Lewin Force Field Problem Solving Model, this workshop provides teams with a reliable and creative framework for solving complex problems. This method employs an analysis of the driving and restraining forces in the problem and the potential solution, which help anticipate the ease of acceptance for the change.

Basic Interviewing Skills

In this workshop, we provide an overview of the basic principles and techniques for effective interviewing. We also discuss what interviewers legally can and cannot ask candidates. This is a highly interactive workshop with situational role-plays and critiques that give the participants the opportunity to practice their newly learned skills in a safe environment.

Advanced Interviewing Skills

This workshop provides an introduction to the strategic process of analyzing the core requirements (competencies) in a job and how to use behavioral event interviewing to probe for candidates' experiences and competencies in these areas.

The New Leadership Paradigm

In this workshop, we explore the evolving role of the leader and contrast it to the equally important role of the manager. Through the use of the Kouzes and Possner assessment tool, managers examine their own leadership style. (If appropriate, we can also administer a 360-degree assessment of each manager by their staff members, colleagues and senior managers.) In addition, we discuss the variations on leadership styles (situational leadership) based on the task maturity of reporting staff members.

Continuous Quality Improvement

Continuous improvement means everyone working every day on improving something. It involves an attitude, a philosophy and an understanding of the processes for analyzing and working on the improvements to be made. This course provides a basic introduction to the concepts of quality improvement and the tools employed in this process. We introduce participants to process mapping, principles of quality control, customer demand models, project planning, root cause analysis and a variety of basic quality measurement tools. This program is highly interactive with exercises and games to promote understanding and application of these basic concepts.

Performance Coaching and Conducting Effective Performance Reviews

This workshop explores the key elements needed for conducting a successful performance review. Skills employed in this class include clarifying and confirming, crediting, constructive criticism and goal and action planning. We incorporate these skills around the use of the organization's current performance review tool.