Along with the extensive experience of the Crothers Consulting team, we can bring you best practices in all areas of HR consulting and coaching.
When we partner with you, we bring training and assessments from experts like:
Contact us to begin the process!
Manager’s Tool Kit (M1)
Overview:
Often in fast growing organizations, successful contributors are quickly promoted to management positions with very little training. It is common for these managers to struggle as they shift into their management roles. This program provides assistance with this transition as participants learn best practices, common pitfalls and solutions to help them become successful managers in a short amount of time. This engaging workshop provides participants with a number of opportunities to practice and fine-tune the skills they learn.
Topics:
What is a manager’s role?
Delegation and setting performance expectations
Coaching – GROW Model
Feedback and difficult conversations – SBIN Model
How to motivate your team
Recognition – don’t forget high performers
Time management
Overcoming common obstacles
Action plan activity
This Manager’s Tool Kit training will be comprised of eight, one-hour sessions (or one full day of training). In each training session a new skill will be introduced and then practiced. This will allow participants to apply what was learned between the sessions. Tips on managing and connecting with people (employees, clients, etc.) virtually will be woven throughout the sessions. This zoom training is designed to maintain momentum and continuity for new managers to successfully acquire vital management skills and best practices.
Ethics, Boundaries and Professionalism:
Leading Through Uncertainty (M2)
Overview:
With no playbook for how best to respond to the rapidly evolving business landscape, many decision makers are grappling to strike the right balance between prudent cautiousness and panicked over-reaction. With so many unknowns, playing it “extra-safe” is arguably a sensible response. Yet playing it too safe comes with its own risks.
Navigating the uncertainty of the path ahead in ways that minimize the ongoing fall-out will require all who occupy leadership roles to keep fear in check and rethink risk beyond its usual parameters. This course is for leaders who would like to understand how to create a leading playbook that empowers, motivates and brings the best out in their employees during uncertain times.
Topics:
Understand the necessary components of effective crisis leadership
The psyche behind fear and anxiety and ways to address them
The role boundaries and effective communication play in effective leadership
The do’s and don’ts of leading during uncertain times
Leading Yourself and Others Through Change (M3)
Overview:
Change is a reality for every organization and every individual today. Managers face the special challenge of maintaining a positive outlook and helping others to remain positive and productive during times of uncertainty.
This dynamic program provides managers and supervisors with the skills, tools, and techniques necessary to lead your organization and coach employees through the ever changing work environment.
Topics:
Leadership Effectiveness (M4)
Overview:
If you buy into the notion that leadership can be learned and you want to build the leadership capabilities of members of your team, or heighten your own effectiveness as a leader, consider participation in this session. Countless researchers have explored what enables leadership effectiveness and several models will be explored.
Interestingly, most models revolve around many of the same core competencies, practices and behaviors. One’s own experiences with effective and ineffective leaders will, likewise, be explored, leading to a deepened understanding of what behaviors differentiate leaders. Finally, while most organizations expect leaders to also “manage” individuals, teams, projects and organizations, the difference between leadership and management practices will be examined in this three hour workshop.
Topics:
Running Effective Meetings - Hybrid or Remotely (M5)
Overview:
Your organization’s workplace policies have evolved to allow working from home or hybrid; now team collaboration has never been more important. Bringing people together in meetings is critical as leaders navigate important business decisions. In this session we will explore pros and cons of various forms of meetings and provide guidance for running meetings that are effective for you as the meeting leader and all participants.
Topics:
Handling Tough Conversations: Leveraging 8 Simple Principles to Conduct Difficult Conversations (M6)
Overview:
We cannot change what we refuse to confront. Very few of us are at liberty to simply “Quit!” our jobs as a result of needing to deal with difficult coworkers or difficult situations. Not being allowed to ignore these situations or push them off to others, knowing that they may impede our ability to achieve a key business objective implies that WE need to find ways to address and resolve the issues at hand.
This session provides participants with eight simple principles to leverage when they must conduct a difficult conversation with a coworker, superior, subordinate or even a family member. This workshop provides participants the opportunity to practice these principles with one another on existing or anticipated difficult conversations they face. Duration: 1.5 hours.
Topics:
Gaining confidence in leveraging the Fierce Conversation principles
Mastering the courage to interrogate reality
Coming out from behind yourself into the conversation
Being here, prepared to be nowhere else
Tackling your toughest challenge today
Obeying your instincts
Taking responsibility for your “emotional wake”
Letting silence do the heavy lifting
Coming to an agreement on “the way forward”
Courageous Authenticity (M7)
Overview:
Courageous authenticity is one of the major contributors to the credibility of a leader. Considered together with integrity, it enables organization employees to understand and trust their leaders. These capabilities are core to a leader’s ability to establish a vision of the future that the broader organization can follow. Courageous Authenticity is the practice of leadership that is transparent, vulnerable, and honest with those they lead.
The most effective and impactful leaders are the ones who have the courage to speak the truth, even when it feels uncomfortable or hard; they have integrity and hold to their values; they are willing to have the hard conversations that are required if they want to transform their teams and organizations. By attending this session, you will gain insight on the practice of Courageous Authenticity, how to change how you lead and bring those concepts back to your organization.
Topics:
Note: This session is best taken in conjunction with the “Fierce Conversations” offering, as in this second session participants learn and practice eight simple principles of conducting difficult conversations, i.e., delivering difficult/delicate messages to others.
Creating a Vision/Purpose, Mission and Values (M8)
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Overview:
Can you answer the question: “What is your WHY?” Do you know WHY your organizational exists? WHY you do what you do? Can you differentiate your WHY from WHAT you do and HOW you do it? These three questions are central to defining your organization’s Vision/Purpose, Mission and Values.
Central to a leader’s effectiveness is his/her ability to inspire a shared vision within the organization. In doing so, a leader can then leverage that Vision and Mission to connect to the organization’s business strategy and employee work, thereby generating enthusiasm, motivation, commitment and discretionary productivity.
During the first two-hour session, organization leadership will be guided through a brainstorming activity to surface language for a Vision/Purpose, Mission and Values. Participants will then pressure-test these ideas with organization employees and return for a final 1.5 hour session to finalize Vision/Purpose, Mission and Values language.
Topics:
Session One: 2 hours
Personal leadership “best” stories
Core leadership practices
Role of a leader in inspiring a shared vision or purpose
Connecting business strategy and work to a vision/purpose, mission and values.
What is your organization’s “Why”?
The “Golden Circle” – video by Simon Sinek
Guided facilitation: brainstorming a vision/purpose (the ;Why;), mission and values
Pressure-testing ideas with the organization
Session Two: 1.5 hours
Follow-up facilitated group session to finalize vision/purpose, mission and values
How to Move from 'Good to Great'
Business Success (M9)
Overview:
This program is for intact leadership teams, whose business is at an inflection point of growth.
As “tomorrow will look nothing like today,” organizations will be facing both threats and opportunities in the future... so the key question then becomes, now what? Leveraging the learnings from Good to Great, Jim Collins' seminal work on what makes companies great, can offer leadership teams insight and a possible “path forward” as they begin to envision their company’s future. Jim Collins’ influential study answers two questions:
Can a good company become a great one?
And, if it can, how?
This session will explore the core principles that each of these companies followed to achieve significant business success. The session will provide leaders the opportunity to brainstorm how these principles can enable their organization an opportunity to assess their current operational and organizational effectiveness. Enablers and inhibitors of future success will be explored and an Action Plan created. Each action will be “mapped” to understand the effort required and impact of selected actions.
Topics (duration ranges from 4 - 8 hours/2 - 3 multi-hour Zoom sessions):
1. What enabled these companies to move from being good for many years, to become great?
2. The role that “discipline” played in the enablement of business “greatness”
a. Exploration of three areas of discipline that were critical to the success of these
companies: Disciplined People, Disciplined Thought and Disciplined Action
b. Review of the constructs to strengthen their business effectiveness
- Level 5 Leadership
- First Who, then What
- Confronting the Brutal Facts
- The “Hedgehog Concept” – focusing on what really matters
- Creating a Culture of Discipline – Use of a “Flywheel” to drive success
- Technology Accelerators
3. Guided facilitation in the use of discipline and these constructs to examine your organization’s operational and organizational effectiveness.
4. Facilitated brainstorming around enablers and inhibitors of future success.
Impact and effort of each
5. Creation of an Action Plan that your organization can leverage to strengthen its prospects for future business success.
Design Thinking Fundamentals (M10)
Overview:
Innovation is more critical - and elusive - than ever. Yet the potential uptakes are immense - teams that understand an organization’s process for bringing forward new ideas are 83% more likely to achieve successful initiative launches than when the process is unclear. For companies to drive innovation, a mindset of collaborative risk-taking and experimentation needs to be embedded across the organization, including the integration of different perspectives.
This workshop introduces Design Thinking as a core driver of innovation. It enables participants to apply creative problem-solving and develop their innovative capacity.
Topics:
- Design Thinking icebreakers
- Framing challenges & opportunities
- Developing empathy for the user/customer
- Transformative concepting and ideation
- Bringing ideas to life
Session duration: 3-4 hours
Design Thinking for Leaders (M11)
Overview:
While many executives understand the importance of enterprise-wide innovation cultures, a far smaller percentage have realized this goal. Research shows that 89% of executives agree that new ideas must come from all stakeholders, yet less than a third currently have a strategy in place for encouraging this behavior. Companies where failure is rewarded in pursuit of innovative or different approaches are twice as likely to be agile.
This workshop helps leaders develop a design thinking culture in their teams. It equips them with principles and practices to empower the collective to think creatively and drive innovation.
Topics:
Session duration: 3-4 hours
Managing as Coach (M12)
Overview:
Year after year, employees report lukewarm feelings toward their direct supervisors. In fact, research shows that only 21% of the workforce think they are being managed in a way that motivates them to give their best at work.
The traditional command-and-control approach is simply no longer effective. Companies that can support employees through meaningful conversations and constructive feedback with their managers can expect a three times more effective lift in employee engagement and reduced turnover.
This workshop helps build or deepen a manager's ability to lift the talent on their team through focus coaching mindsets and behaviors.
Topics:
The Coaching Mindset
Fundamentals of development
Coaching behaviors
The GROW model
Active listening and powerful questions
Mobilizing change
Coaching practice
Career coaching AND/OR performance conversations
Session duration: 2-4 hours
Creating Psychological Safety (M13)
Overview:
As networked team structures emerge, interpersonal dynamics are becoming increasingly complex. Research shows that matrixed teams are less likely to trust their colleagues and understand their roles and responsibilities.
This lack of clarity and dependability may be a symptom of low psychological safety - the degree to which it feels safe to take risks on a team. Getting this right has significant benefits - nurturing diverse perspectives and a more inclusive team environment is linked to a 77% increase in organizational agility.
This workshop will enable team members to develop a sense of mutual trust and accountability while engaging in more productive interactions to support team effectiveness.
Topics:
Session duration: 2-4 hours
Keys to Performance Management (M14)
Overview:
Why is Performance Management important? This one-hour interactive workshop will address the key pieces of this crucial business process that will engage and motivate your employees and measure how aligned their performance is with your company's objectives.
This workshop can be delivered to managers, enhancing their skills and to employees so they can be accountable for their own performance. Role playing and real time practice are built in, allowing for excellent opportunities to work on building understanding on the applicable pieces of Performance Management.
Our clients have shared, "This workshop was very helpful to guide your thinking about performance reviews, how to prepare for them and how to approach them. I’m glad we’re getting this guidance now!" Also, "Assessing ourselves to help our managers determine if we're being effective affirms the importance of the performance management process." Participants will garner practical and effective tools they can apply immediately.
Topics:
Coaching Skills for Leaders Certification Program (M15)
Overview:
Coaching is the language of leadership. When leaders use coaching skills to develop individuals and teams, they maximize performance, productivity and trust. Learning coaching skills requires practice. This skill-based program provides leaders of all levels with practice coaching skills they can practice with individuals and teams right away.
After kicking off with a coaching fundamentals workshop, leaders will engage in a series of interactive skill-based micro trainings that fit easily into their schedule while giving them communication strategies they can use right away to stretch their own potential as well as those they lead.
Topics:
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