General Information About Our Workshops

Do you want to initiate a leadership development program, build your team, or to create systemic change within your organization?  At Gifted Leaders, we're all about liberating personal and organizational potential.  We'd love to help you achieve personal and organizational transformation and our workshops, along with our customized workplace coaching programs, are designed to do just that.

We recommend combining follow-up coaching with any workshop experience for maximum learning transfer and application in the workplace!

We use a variety of group methods to facilitate workshops including:

• Appreciative Inquiry
• Experiential Learning Activities
• Open Space Technology
• World Cafe

The approach used is customized depending on each workshop's learning objectives as well as the individual needs of attendees.  Our workshops are all designed to leverage the principles of adult learning, to tap into the collective knowledge and intelligence of the participants, and to encourage "conversations that matter."
  

WORKSHOPS

TRUE TALK™ - Transforming Your Work & Life through Powerful Conversations

In leadership, there’s no word as important as trust!  In any group or organization, trust must be developed among every member of the team for success to be achieved.  Developing trust takes work - and excellent communications skills.  Business is conducted and goals are accomplished through relationships.  And trust is the foundation of those relationships.  Learn how you can become a more effective leader by developing strategies for better communication with others.

“At the heart of collaboration is trust. It’s the central issue in human relationships. Without trust you cannot lead. Without trust you cannot get extraordinary things done. Exemplary leaders are devoted to creating a climate of trust based on mutual respect and caring.” - Jim Kouzes & Barry Posner

Workshop Details:

• This workshop draws from content in the book, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott and other related resources
• Half-day and full-day formats

MBTI Team Building Workshop

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has multiple applications and one of the best is for helping to enhance team performance!  The MBTI is a tool for:

1. Increasing self-awareness.  Self-awareness alone is a compelling predictor of success at work and accounts for one-third of job performance.  Awareness of your unique personality profile is an essential starting point.
2. Understanding individual differences.  Social awareness is the key to working well with others and the MBTI helps people understand the differences in how people work and interact.

Check out an outline of our basic MBTI Team Building Workshop

Workshop Details:

• Introductory and advanced MBTI-related topics available
• Half-day and full-day formats

Leadership: An Art of Possibility

Also titled, "Moving to a New Leadership Paradigm: Stepping Into a Universe of Possibility"

The old command-and-control style of leadership never seems to go out of style. Is it because empowerment doesn't work?  Or is it because leaders don't truly understand how to empower?  In this workshop you will explore a new approach to leadership and the mindset required to stimulate learning and change.

There are hundreds of programs built in and around the concepts of leadership.  Scholars have been studying the characteristics of leaders for centuries.  Unfortunately there is no easy 12-step program on how to be an effective leader.  There are countless definitions of leadership and even more interpretations.  Most of these programs take an outside-in approach to leadership.  They focus on what a leader should do instead of who the leader is.

This program is centered around a new metaphor for leadership - symphony - that is, "all voices sounding together."  It takes an inside-out approach to leadership.  It provides an opportunity to discover how to transform yourself into a new way of being by evaluating your current "leadership mindset." 

Workshop Details:

• Based on the video by Ben & Roz Zander by the same title.
• Half-day and full-day formats

Leading Your Team: Building Morale, Pride, and Spirit

Discover how building team morale, pride, and spirit at work enhances productivity and efficiency and leads to tangible economic and relational benefits. When morale, pride, and spirit are present within a team, productivity is high, relationships are strong and it’s fun to go to work.

Workshop Details:

• Includes content from both "Leadership: An Art of Possibility" and "Values-Driven Leadership".

• Half-day and full-day formats

The Veterinary Leadership Experience (VLE) Workshop

During this workshop, we hope to offer you a sense of the five-day Veterinary Leadership Experience (VLE) hosted by Washington State University and held each June with veterinary students and faculty from around the country and world!  Although we are unable to bring you the majesty and serenity of the Northern Idaho forests in which to reenact this experience, we will share a portion of the philosophical groundwork and the experiential exercises of the VLE curriculum with you in the workshop. 

Our premise is that all veterinarians are leaders ... by nature of our training and profession.  The DVM degree confers upon its recipients a sense of accountability, commitment and responsibility perhaps only experienced by others in the medical profession.  Society assumes its medical professionals hold themselves to a higher set of standards than those in other fields.  This professional status brings with it expectations of leadership and commitment to those we serve.  The Veterinary Leadership Experience was created to provide our young professionals with both an understanding of these expectations and the tools to live up to them. 

We also strongly believe that before leaders can lead others, they must first understand, and lead themselves.  Our session is geared to assist you in self exploration, and self evaluation.  This work can only be achieved with your permission, and your participation.  It may be unlike other such trainings that you have experienced, and we ask that you trust the process in order to benefit from its power. 

The philosophical underpinnings of this program include the concept of Servant Leadership, the Emotional Intelligence theory and model, as well as the sixteen Myers-Briggs personality types.  Each of these contribute to a new, more effective leadership paradigm that, when practiced and applied, allow leaders to work together with others to solidify and advance a collective vision.

Workshop Details

• Based on the outstanding program developed by the College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University
• Co-facilitated by VLE-certified trainers
• One to three-day workshops available

Values-Driven Leadership Workshop

Also titled, "Values-Based Leadership: Unlocking the Untapped Potential in Your People"

The key to creating extraordinary results starts with values. Learn how truly successful businesses begin with a set of fundamental values that are energizing and capable of unlocking the human potential of their people and how individual leaders build a foundation of personal credibility.

A values-based approach to developing and implementing organizational strategy is essential for effective leadership and organizational success.   Truly successful companies begin with a set of fundamental values that are energizing and capable of unlocking the human potential of their people.  These values are then used to develop and evaluate management policies and practices.

This workshop looks at both personal and organizational values clarification.

Workshop Details:

• Based on the book Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People by Charles O'Reilly III and Jeffrey Pfeffer
• Half-day format

Customized Team Building Using Appreciative Inquiry

Nearly every significant accomplishment by human systems today comes from the cooperation, positive energy, and learning that result from a real team effort.

Without careful attention, though, teams tend to drift into a pattern of conversation that describes what they don't want: wasteful meetings, conflicts that breed defensiveness and personal attacks, hidden agendas, and poor listening that result in a lack of progress and mutual distrust.  Even if these pitfalls are recognized as activities to prevent, they occupy an inordinate amount of the team's time and foster images of what might go wrong, instead of what can go right.

In this workshop we use Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to create conversations among your team members that will enable them to discover both past successes and future possibilities.  AI is a well-documented, strength-based method to shift the familiar deficit-based discourse of many teams to a conversation focused more on generative stories of moments when the team was at its best.  By igniting engaging conversations around important topics and issues, you'll enhance your team's performance and productivity.

Consider this groundbreaking research ... The Role of Positivity and Connectivity in the Performance of Business Teams

Potential Workshop Topics:

• Aligning Purpose and Goals
• Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities
• Fostering Supportive and Empowering Relationships
• Creating Clear and Shared Procedures
• Promoting Leadership
• Elevating Energy and Spirit
• Advancing Productivity and Performance
• Stimulating Purposeful and Uplifting Communication

Workshop Details:

• Customized content based on your specific team development objectives
• Variable lengths
    

Please Contact Us to schedule a workshop or to discuss a customized solution for you and your team.
  

More Gifted Leaders Services

• Coaching

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

• Leadership Development

• Team Building

• GL Services Page